Wrote this this morning after I'd seen a Swedish singing star interviewed with torn, torn jeans talking about how he came to be no longer nervous when performing.
Sing Your Song All Wrong As Long As It Feels Right

(a prose poem  - meter but no rhyme – well, a little)



I used to be invisibly controlled by rules,

Sometimes blamed on pressures peer:

Perhaps I am still, will be ever.

Rules inhibit, yea, dear reader,

Leading art and your behavior.

Double whammy*, inspiration, guide and model

When you would most like to feel

Creative, and spontaneous,

Well pleased, extemporaneous.



Subtle, so immensely, so intensely so;

Astonishing how much one swallows,

Soaking up, believing garbage as god’s truths

So hard to scrap;

All those rules coming from the praxis of the earthliest of mouths.



What is it sought beyond all else?

It’s freedom, spontaneity,

Belief that what you’re doing

Is its own confession, own possession;

Valid as the others

Always followed and believed the best.



Now I’m older.

Times have altered.

Folk appear on television with torn jeans.

Fashions once thought awful - trends.

In the end,

The young will always be impacted by

‘The others’ they think templates,

Patterns, blueprints, guides.

I have seen the light.

Sing your song all wrong as long as it feels right.



Sing Your Song All Wrong 4.21.2018 Vaguely About Music II; Our Times, Our Culture II; I Is Always You Is We; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

whammy |ˈ(h)wamē|

noun ( pl. -mies) informal

an event with a powerful and unpleasant effect; a blow : the third whammy was the degradation of the financial system. See also double whammy .

• an evil or unlucky influence : I've come to put the whammy on them.

ORIGIN 1940s: from the noun wham + -y 1 ; associated from the 1950s with the comic strip Li'l Abner, in which the hillbilly Evil-Eye Fleagle could “shoot a whammy” (put a curse on somebody) by pointing a finger with one eye open, and a [double whammy] with both eyes open.