Creative Output

Note: The whole time I was writing this, I was rapping it in my head in the voice of Devo Spice, or maybe Luke Ski. I guess I can’t really blame them for it, though. A few months later I recorded myself rapping it out loud and also changed one word below and added a stanza and colouring to better represent what happens in the recording.

Are you the kind of person with a song in your heart?
Well, how about a thousand? This is state of the art!
Only Auricle will do, that’s A-U-R-I-C-L-E,
bringing hearts and ears together with the m-p-less-than-three.
With Langendorff technology to keep alive each atrium
and keep the heart cells pumping that potassium and natrium,
Introducing Beat Box, it’s a heart drive full of fun,
a briefcase full of rabbit hearts, a song in every one.

Well, I’m that kind of person, and so when I saw that ad,
I wanted that new Beat Box really really really bad!
but I didn’t have the money and I didn’t have the doe,
so I waited for the copycats to give it a go.
The Tucson Diagnostics artificial heart looked nice,
but how could processed tofu go for such a meaty price?
The chicken hearts were cheap, and beats per minute were comparable,
but animal rights groups said the battery life was terrible.

Well how about this earthworm with its five aortic arches?
It fits straight into the ear and plays imperial death marches.
My hacker friend said he could make a second one for free,
so we pooled our cash to get him one and he made one for me.
At the twenty-somethingth segment he proceeded to hack,
and we waited three long weeks for both the halves to grow back.
I loaded mine with compost and I put it in my ear
heard the music starting up as it climbed into my cochlea.

After that it wouldn’t budge and the controls were disconnected,
and every couple o’ seconds it screamed ‘Copy protected!’
Well I really should have paid to get an Auricle instead,
’cause now my earworm’s in a loop and I’ve a song stuck in my head.
Well I really should have paid to get an Auricle instead,
’cause now my earworm’s in a loop and I’ve a Copy protected! head.
Well I really should have paid to get an Auricle instead,
’cause now my earworm’s Copy protected! I’ve a song stuck in my head.

Well I really should have paid to get an Auricle instead,
Copy protected! earworm’s in a loop and I’ve a song stuck in my head.
Well I really should have paid to get Copy protected! instead,
’cause now my earworm’s in a loop and I’ve a song stuck in my head.
Well I Copy protected! have paid to get an Auricle instead,
’cause now my earworm’s in a loop and I’ve a song Copy protected!
Well I really should have paid to get an Auricle instead,
’cause now my earworm’s Copy protected! I’ve a song stuck in my head.

Not long ago I had this Twitter exchange with Glen Raphael, a singer-songwriter I met on JoCo Cruise Crazy when I filmed him playing an unofficial concert in a hallway.

I didn’t think any more of it, until I saw this card come up. I’ve said it before: The ’52 ways to say I love you’ deck is my favourite. Each card has a clear instruction, and most of them sound ridiculous out of context. Really, who would fill a briefcase with cut-out hearts? A serial killer? A transplant surgeon? A werewolf from the Supernatural universe? A music lover?

Of course a music lover. Sorry, Glen, but only music Philistines would use spleens.

At first I was just thinking of this in terms of an alternate history of the portable music player. I thought I’d maybe make a timeline, and draw some cartoons or fake ads to go with it. But I’m not particularly good at cartoons, and the timeline seemed a little sparse on writing. I couldn’t think of a decent short story for it either. As soon as I eventually gave in and decided on a poem, some silly rhymes came to mind and I was off. There are still parts where I couldn’t find a good pun or a good rhyme (imperial death marches? Really? That’s not even worm-related), and the rhythm is a bit weird in places, so there’s definitely room for improvement, but I’m pretty sure this poem is better than the timeline would have been. The clocks went forward this weekend, so I had less time to work on it, although that’s really no excuse.

I think the fact that I was rapping it in my head made me a little freer with the rhythm. It’s also what inspired me to spell out Auricle (part of either an ear or an atrium of a heart, not some kind of prophet) and have the repetition and random ‘Copy protected!’ sound bytes at the end as if it were a real song that people were listening to instead of reading.

Some scientific notes: The earthworm Eisena fetida has five aortic arches (sometimes thought of as ‘hearts’) and will regrow its head if cut in the right place. I’m not actually sure whether the head end will also regrow a tail in that case, thus forming two worms; I didn’t read the whole paper. The Langendorff preparation is a way to keep a disconnected heart beating outside the body so it can be studied. All cells, not just heart cells, pump sodium and potassium in and out of them to maintain the optimum concentrations; I studied the mathematics of this at university, though I don’t claim to understand the biology.

This makes my second blatant ad for Artificial Heart in three weeks. I didn’t mean for that to happen, but it was an obvious addition. Tucson Diagnostics is the ‘company’ that invented the diagnostic metrics for Artificial Heart.