SWEET LITTLE SONG (As I Was Walking) "Behind-The-Jazz-Music" & NEW DESIGNS

THE "AS I WAS WALKING" SONG:

This song was born on a foggy overcast grey day. 

Let's reminisce...shall we?

My cheeks and hair were kissed by little specks of the drizzle. The smell of rain, soothing and ominous, lingered in the air alongside bird calls. I looked over to my sister, with tiny water droplets on stray hairs around her face. Her annoyed expression was a reminder that if I focus on the humidity, it will be an uncomfortable walk to school. Although, if I playfully mimic a bird call, turn it into a song, it would be distracting...

It would distract the both of us. 

"As I was walking, walking..." 

Repeating the word "walking" is just enough to create a set of lyrics with the right syllables to follow the melody of the birds. We literally cross the street...and the next stanza of lyrics are born. 

"...down the street, baby...they kept calling, calling...calling to me..."

Of course, the "calling" repeating three times worked to keep the melody in tact. 

"With a sweet-little-song, baby, baby...a sweet-little song, baby, baby..."

Once again, I transcribe the bird call of another longer bird call that slid up to higher notes before coughing out a broken "caw-caw."

Then, just for the fun of it, partly sarcastic, I added a grand finale phrase could warrant the use of "jazz hands." 

"...for yoooou and meeee-eee-eee" 

I would end the musical phrase in a grand way. Like, "look, all this morning fog yet to be pushed away by the rising sun...glittering beads of water droplets forming on your skin and hair....and birds...all for us...geeze, with the rain-hair I kinda feel like a flower or fairy!"

Walks could go either way, I could embrace the distance, the monotony, and attempt to make something out of it all. I could also complain. In the grand scheme of things, these walks are a lot like life. Sometimes life is a sticky-and-icky sweaty walk...but we can choose to make the best of it.

To my surprise, also a way to know if I stumbled on a good melody, my sister would attempt to do the "slide" of "sweet-ee-eet little song." 

So we sang it here and there. She would tell me, "You should write more to that one." 

I would attempt it...but what about?

The walk ended. 

The song phrase was short and sweet. 

Nothing quite "matched" when I tried to write around it...

There is only so much a person can write around "a walk." 

The answer came in a completely different song I started years later...

THE "OFFICE MORNING" SONG:

I completed my business degrees in marketing and management. It was a journey that started with monotonous walks to school and ended with an equally monotonous job in banking. I learned what every disappointed college graduate learned about completing a business degree, the work doesn't stop after a degree...

After learning about business, there is the actually doing business part.  

In fact, for me, two business degrees turned into a routine schedule in a grey looking corporate environment. If someone only told me this while in school, I would have continued my music degree. 

Yes, I'd be somewhere, "nowhere" by the eyes of the successful, auditioning for music parts or to be a back-up singer...or on a cruise ship singing...I don't know...it wouldn't be "grey." 

These "grey mornings" I tell ya...

I started my job excited. I thought, "at least I will make money."

Just like a random psychic predicted, this job became impossibly boring to me...especially as I got further along. 

I could not see myself doing this for the rest of my life, but at that point I was not honest with myself. I could not see myself quitting because of money. 

So a compromise was met. 

I started taking painting classes in the afternoon with the tuition reimbursement from the company. I did a "good job," in fact, the "best job" just to keep the tuition benefit going. This was especially the case when I got a letter from the new university saying I was just hours away from an art degree. I was as committed to the job as I was committed to the degree. It made things in the "grey environment" tolerable. I could stay.

I asked for a new schedule.

I asked to be the very first employee at 5am in order to leave at 1pm. 

Then, I would be able to finish art school in the evenings. 

The most important promise about this arrangement is that I had to strive for perfect attendance (and if I was feeling sick I would have to coordinate with someone - to make sure the job got done with or without me). Essentially, I could not be "a flake" no matter what. So, my grey mornings turned into pitch black mornings. My job was way out in the undeveloped country side. (It was away from street lamps, I learned that deers are all over country backroads at 4 am. If fact, I got into a "deer accident" when a buck charged at my car driving to work.) 

I was excited to start my new schedule. 

It was "different." 

I didn't have to socialize with anyone until about eight or nine in the morning. By that time I would remind myself that I was halfway done with my work-day at the bank. I started becoming an anti-social "mole person." Some of my co-workers I would consider "mole people" because they would only pop up and out of their cubicles briefly enough and scurry...quickly...like moles. I invented the term for some bankers who seemingly avoided people by "popping up and scurrying around." 

A handful of years into banking, I understood the ways of "the mole people."

I had yet to join their morning ritual...

In the break room, every morning, the gurgling sound of a coffee maker would perfume the air around me with an earthly smell. It wasn't pleasant...it wasn't bad...the smell reminded me of a pipe tobacco store I walked by once. Up to that point, I was not a coffee person, and no one in my family was either...so I barely interacted with it. The coffee maker getting turned on was my cue to go grab "tea." I would go for a hot "English Breakfast" tea and use the "hot water" knob on the coffee maker to fill up my paper cup. 

The "heat" of the hot water was enough to kind of wake me up (at least keep my stomach at ease until breakfast could be served around eight. This was my lunch break and everyone's breakfast). 

Then one day...

The tea bags ran out.

I don't know why. Possibly, these boxes of tea bags were supplied by another employee and not the bank? (Side note: Thank you random tea supplier. I never knew the situation. So, I took your tea.)

Without the tea, I could drink hot water...

There were frequent reminders that I could try coffee...

I have "tried" coffee before, once, and as I recalled...it wasn't good.

When one of the morning people spotted me just drinking hot water they offered me, "coffee."

This coffee was special. It was "Folgers." It didn't "taste bad" they promised me. I should give it another chance...

No, not at that point...it felt like "peer pressure." It felt like, "everyone else does this...join us...become like us...mole people." 

My abstinence was all well and good until...my guinea pig had a rare nose infection I needed to clean and apply medicine to at three in the morning...so I could be on the road by four...and at the bank "on time" everyday like a reliable postal service.

I became a zombie.

A morning zombie. 

It was on a particularly rough day, when I was late for my first and only time, where I found myself in "the adult world" explaining to my boss that I was late because my guinea pig escaped the cage...

I was scolded on how my timeliness mattered. Finally, given a tour on exactly why it impacts everyone else's job if I wasn't "on the dot." I was given a number to call in the instance I was running late. 

All because of such an elementary school problem, "a guinea pig." 

I felt five.

I no longer wanted to feel five. 

I wanted to feel like an adult. So, it was in that instance I poured myself a steaming cup of black coffee...and took a large gulp. 

Just to realize that I burned my mouth...and tongue...and throat. All right in front of the manager who just got finished with my warning. With watering-eyes of pain, I must have looked deeply remorseful for being late. I was forced to play this off too, because I couldn't exactly spit the hot coffee back into the cup and it was too hot to swallow... 

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

So, I stood there with slight chipmunk cheeks...

Hot coffee stinging the floor of my mouth while I took in very subtle "goldfish-mouth" breaths (when the manager turned away) as I hoped some cool air would cool the liquid I had already committed to swallowing...

I dared myself periodically to finally swallow it...

This coffee...it burned...it was disappointing...nothing like I thought it would be given the expressions of other people who drank it...it tasted just like...adulthood. 

As soon as I could, I walked my coffee cup to the water fountain and attempted to mix in some ice cold so I could dilute the rich "bold' flavor into "almost water."  Then I drank it again. This time it wasn't hot. It was just barely considered warm. 

It was definitely gross.

Yet, there was an effect...I felt the "buzz" of caffeine. I could sense all those little tree branches in my brain start to wake up. A visual played in my mind, from something I saw in science or psychology class, my brain was lighting up with little lightening bolts...I could feel it...and then I was so alert...anxious even...

This was the cure for "zombie mornings." I understood it now. I "got" why people drink coffee.

Eventually, I was so into the office coffee I learned how to start the machine on my own. I received instructions from the eight'o clock people. I would have a half a pot of it all to myself as the loner at five in the morning. I could mix it with the 'hot chocolate" packets that added an element of cream and marshmellows to it. I'd experiment and pride myself on how well I disguised the flavor to taste more like hot cocoa.

I felt proud of my concoctions. 

 Eventually, someone told me what I was doing was already invented...

"It is called a mocha." 

As I acquired a taste for coffee, I found myself enjoying a "coffee break" from time-to-time and befriending those I considered "the mole people." Besides, I now understood they were only trying to help me with their witchdoctor-medicine-brew that tasted of tree bark. I owed them one.

LYRICS BORN IN THE BREAK ROOM:

As I familiarized myself with "the break room." It was a place I rarely visited before, but I started to understand rituals I have only heard about in comic strips and TV sitcoms. 

The water-cooler conversation.

Everyone embarked in surface-level conversation in the break room. Mothers and fathers discussed kids. People asked what they would be doing for lunch or dinner. When it would rain, it seemed like absolutely everyone would have to make a remark about it. 

I observed this about office-talk. It wasn't deep. It wasn't soulful. 

It was very safe to discuss the climate changes. 

"It was raining pretty hard this morning..." 

"Yep...my driveway was almost flooded..."

"Rain..."

"Rain again..."

"More rain..."

Eventually the conversations all sounded the same to me. How did mole people withstand this? For years?

As time went by, the novelty of discovering new rituals and coffee wore off, and I too felt like a mole person...

The only thing getting me through was my art degree. 

During one grey-looking overcast morning I decided to start writing a song while stuck in traffic. This song was about banking. 

"Every...single...day...the same..." as little droplets landed on my windshield. To the pitter-patter of the small specks turning into large raindrops, I added, "nothing changes but the rain...and they...well, they...they act like they've never even seen it rain before." 

I invented another little segment of a song for my brain to fiddle with as I was coming and going to work. 

MIXING BOTH TOGETHER

THE "WALKING"&"OFFICE" SONG:

It was while singing out one song...

....and then the other...

The "idea" came to just combine both into one song.

Why did I not think of that before?

Even with a "new direction," the phrase "for you an me" in "As I Was Walking" implies something to do with love. 

Yes...another love song.

This time, I wanted "the story" to be about how love breaks the monotony of these day-to-day experiences. I wanted to give the song the excitement of "love at first sight" or that "first cup of coffee." (Well, maybe more like "third times the charm" in my case...)

I wanted to make a point of the redeeming quality of love. That life can seem like this monotonous task of having to wake up to a new day, maybe even the same routine kind-of-day, but through finding little joys we can make something more of it all...

Just like my "little songs" did for me.

So my "Sweet Little Song" turned into a much longer song...

Listen to it here:

INFLUENCE FOR THIS SONG:

KAZ HAWKINS (SOUL SUPERSTAR) 

When it came to the "jazz set" of songs, another artist who inspired me to finally finish was Kaz Hawkins. I don't have her rich and strong vocals. My vocals are different, for sure...so it is actually in a more "round-about" way that she inspired me to finally finish my own jazz song. 

First, let's visit her music:

Her own "behind-the-music" video inspired me. She wrote a song "Lipstick and Cocaine"(recently changed the name to "One More Fight") in which she describes how her life fell apart...and how she put it back together with music. 

In her words:

The song that saved me.... The story goes.. I was a drug addict, I wanted to die, I was depressed, I was being beaten to near death by an ex partner. A policeman rescued me. A doctor helped me heal & when I lay dying on the floor my mother's face came to me from the grave and said "you can do this, it's just one more fight". I then fought harder than I ever had, to LIVE, because music was my destiny. Talk to someone about depression or anything that you are going through. Don't think your worth is being beaten or brainwashed into submission & don't ever think that this world would be better without you! I am proof that life can be wonderful. This song is for all those who dare to speak up against such things. As hard as it is to sing it, I wrote it for my own recovery but also for you, YOU who are fighting the fight. If you need advice on anything I have posted please contact your local mental health charities or authorities but do not stay silent. With all my love.. Kaz xx

Watch it here:

I liked the song and went to see other songs by this artist. I came across "Soul Superstar." 

THIS IS HOW SHE INSPIRED ME:

Let's rewind, back to when I was writing "As I Was Walking" on treks to school. I lived by a stretch of road behind an amusement park. The amusement park (at least for around three or four years) maintained a wall of bushy flowers with the most beautiful smelling yellow blossoms. As I would walk past them, I would envision me singing this song and I twirled in a yellow tulle dress designed to look similar to the blossoms. I would spin with my hands out (like the famous scene from "The Sound of Music").

"For you and meeee..." hands out twirl in a tulle skirt.

A camera follows me in one extremely long shot (kinda like the Coldplay "Yellow" music video. Trust me, when my brain creates, it gathers little themes. It is no small coincidence that "Yellow" is the music video I thought about and the dress/flower wall is also yellow). 

I didn't realize how much of a "dream" this "daydream" of mine was becoming until the day the amusement park completely removed all the flower bushes...and my daydream for my music video as well...

It was like a funeral for my imagination when that happened. I was deeply saddened. R.I.P. Dream. 

"Why did you wait so long to put this song together?" I scolded myself internally. Where was I ever going to see miles and miles of yellow flowers blossoms like that again? 

There were so much obstacles to that dream besides writing the song:

...I didn't have a camera crew.

...and I never even stepped inside a recording studio at that point.

...I did not even have the yellow dress.

My "daydream" seemed impossible on so many levels...then I came across "Soul Superstar." It was much, much later from all the daydreams, walks, and coffee breaks. Here Kaz walks around a garden with a dress that has a bell-shaped skirt to it. Yes, it isn't my "yellow tulle" imaginary dress, but she twirls around in it confidently while the camera follows her around the garden with walls of shrubbery surrounding her.

It is "pretty close" to the idea I had for my own imaginary music video. 

It you listen to "the lyrics" of her song...you will understand how I could be "re-inspired." 

So that's it folks! Years in "the making." 

Many walks, many long and murky days later...

I finally wrote out these songs so they met a "conclusion." 

Will I make a music video? 

Of me in a yellow tulle dress twirling around like Kaz Hawkins?

Well...I at least for right now, I created the fashion-sketch of Kaz in the yellow dress that exists in my mind:

(Below: Fashion Sketch of Kaz Hawkins French Blues Singer in yellow tulle dress) 

Other "Kaz" Fashion Illustration/Designs: 

I came with a few other fashion sketches before a final "female power suit" design.

This design has two versions. Either a white "dress-like shirt" with "rockabilly flair" with a red scarf tied around the next...

The design on the bottom, which is a pin-striped suit with a long pencil skirt bottom. Both designs contain shiny crystals. In fact, I can see the necktie looking more like jewelry. 

Final Design:

MY FASHION DESIGNS AVAILABLE ONLINE

If you enjoyed this blog post, and would like me to describe my artistic process more often, a good way to help support my art is through my "art-fashion accessories." 

This is a recent design inspired by the grey mornings and sound waves of music. On a business suit, it gives a nice eye-catching wavy optical illusion and just a little bit of "playfulness" to offset the monotony of a pattern. 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW OR BUY