Old friends sat on the park bench like bookends

Hinge, it isn't so much the similes and metaphors and the prosody as they are just the tools we use to bring out the creativity in students. In our ever increasing world of technology, we are becoming too much like machines.

Music is a wonderful tool for teaching vocabulary, incidentally.

How so Letty - you mean in terms of the lyrics? I guess you steer away from the current bunch of popular stuff 'My humps, my humps, my lovely lady bumps' and the mo'fo and skanky ho references?

The same teacher once played us a segment of Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn', completely instrumental, and had us write down what the music suggested, story-wise.

And I did the same, hinge. I played Gershwin, Debussy, rock songs, and had the students write. Kids who were very poor at mandated writing blossomed to the strains of music.

What I meant by teaching vocabulary through music, is that I would have students write their favorite songs and I would paraphrase the lyrics with colorful words. They remembered them so well, and then could use them to make their writing develope legs and walk.

I once submitted the lyrics of Pink Floyd's 'Time' as a poem on time and made the student's name Roger Waters (the actual writer - and I did my own crap poem too!) When I told the teacher what I'd done after he'd handed them back he was disappointed, he thought he had a budding genius in the class.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to nought
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desparation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

but ..oh what sad lyrics...


Hear the lonesome whiperwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry

I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide it's face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

from Shakespeare's Sonnet 73

Boomer, my all time favourite two, came from an American reporter at the time of your elections.

He said that "GWB had an expression like a cow, watching a train go past"

...and Kerry looked like "A dog, that knew he was just about to have a bath".

Wonderful!

Love that one, L.E.

This line always gets me:

"From my mother's sleep I fell into the state." WOW!

from mr tom waits (with nods to letty)

"The evening fell just like a star
Left a trail behind"

You keep leaning in on me and you're looking pretty pissed,
That grave you've dug between your legs is hard to resist

from Nick Cave 'Little Empty Boat'

I'm like a mirror, I'm nothing until you look at me.

from Morphine 'Like a mirror'

from ben folds, best immitation of myself

I feel like a quote out of context
Withholding the rest
So I can be for you what you want to see

Nice one. I like that.

....and HERE'S the worst one I ever encountered.......


The thing that goes back and forth inside the old grandfather clock swung like a pendulum.

now now...no need to be shy LE...you write fine prose...

My goodness, how could I forget this one, boomer.

Round,
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it’s own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Like the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that I said?
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway
Or the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the colour of her hair?

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Oh that is very nice.

In fact, there are a lot of interesting similies and metaphors here. Thank you all.

The Pink Floyd reminded me of one of theirs that I've always liked:

We're like two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year.

When I started this thread I thought that I would be able to list hundreds of favorites and now I find that my music memory seems to have leaked out or something. I haven't been listening to much music lately. How sad is that?

From Cake:


I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes...

...With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass.

nanananananananananananananana

I used to love that melancholy little song, boomerang.

.. time it was & what a time
a time of confidence
a time of innocence ...

(I might have that the wrong way around. Relying on memory here ...)

... preserve you innocence.
It's all that's left you ....

<sigh>

Oh, & and I used it in a few classes, too!

Hey, lay off teachers, you guys! We mean well!

I'm thinking Paul Simon wins the metaphor contest. That is a nice one msolga.

Window Shopping For Blinds
The Beautiful South

One day I'm loaded, next day I'm broke
Spent all my money on whisky and coke
Riding high 'till the rock hit the spoke
It's like window shopping for blinds

Spent all my money on a sunbed tan
Spoke the best that a young girl can
Ended up with a blind drunk man
It's like window shopping for blinds

It's like the heartbreak hotel,
with the heartbreak but nowhere to stay
The doors are shut on us,
the neon light fading to grey

They say I drink too much, to me, well that's just profound
How do you know you can't swim, until you have drowned?

Well there's always a drop in the bottle lady
Always a sip of the wine
The glass doesn't seem quite so empty
When window shopping for blinds

It's like gatecrashing a field, that's not true,
they've a harvest they yield
Save your tears for your evening meal,
when you're window shopping for blinds

One day you're sober, next day you're not
One day remembered, the next day forgot
Spent all my money on cocaine and pot
It's like window shopping for blinds

Covered in bruises from head to toe
No-one to speak to, and nowhere to go
A map of nowhere, and nowhere I know
It's like window shopping for blinds

It's like the heartbreak hotel,
with the heartbreak but nowhere to stay
The doors are shut on us,
the neon light fading to grey

They say I drink too much, to me, well that's just profound
How do you know you can't swim, until you have drowned?

Well there's always a drop in the bottle lady
Always a sip of the wine
The glass doesn't seem quite so empty
When window shopping for blinds

But what if my husband should come?
Well tell me what have you done?
I've cherished my vodka, I've cherished my rum
Don't mind us, we're just licking our wounds in the sun

It's like writing 'I love you' in snow
You know when you write it the message will go
I want a message my lover will find
Don't mind us, we're just window shopping for blinds