Beyond This Me (Stop and Stare by OneRepublic)

Dreaming Out Loud - OneRepublic

Album Cover

Artist: OneRepublic
Song: Stop and Stare
Album: Dreaming Out Loud
Label: Interscope Records
Year: 2007
Genre: Pop


Song Selection/Research:

Finding my next song took quite a bit of time. I think that is the tough part about the pace of this project. I’m not necessarily allowing the inspiration to find me so much as going in search of it. If I could relate this somehow to watching a pot of water boil, I would, but my brain is not really up for that analogy. Hopefully, you can piece the idea together yourself.

Anyway, I found myself with two songs vying for this week’s inspiration. I know, in one breath I’m saying it was difficult to find a song and in the next I have two. Another piece of logic I cannot explain. In the end, I settled on Stop and Stare by OneRepublic. I think at different points in time, everyone feels like everything is just passing them by – like spinning in circles, trying to move forward, but finding yourself back were you began (with nothing). I guess that’s a bit how I feel with my writing.

In selecting the cabeza for this glosa, I pondered several different thoughts. When I settled on the three lines that follow “Stop and Stare” in the song, I had to make a decision about whether to encompass another line (in particular the one that falls at the end of the song, “Oh, do you see what I see?”) or just go for a triplet. My decision came from (a) having just done a variation with five lines, three made sense and (b) my time was limited so it meant one less ten-line stanza to complete. So, you guessed it, I stuck with just the three lines.


Cabeza:

"I think I’m moving but I go nowhere
   Yeah, I know that everyone gets scared
      But I’ve become what I can’t be."


The Writing Process:

(03/13/2018)
As I started my writing, I looked first at the final line of the first stanza (the first line from the cabeza) and automatically the first six lines flowed out of me. When I got to the end of line six (the first rhyming line), I found myself uncertain how to connect the start of my stanza with the last line. I sat and pondered for a while, until finally I thought to myself that it would fit better following the tenth line of the first stanza. After a few more seconds of thought, I transposed the first five lines to the second stanza; six was left off as the rhyme was technically not a perfect rhyme. With that done, I found my new line six, followed closely by seven through nine, finishing off stanza two.

Once complete, I started to erase the lines from the first stanza. Starting at line six, I disappeared the last three words before I realized it was stupid. Line six still had potential. So, I rewrote the three words ending line six and proceeded to erase only the first five. And that is where I left off as life distracted me from continuing any further – well for that session of writing, not for the whole poem.

(03/14/2018)
Upon sitting down to continue writing, I reread stanza two. This led me straight into stanza three. The flow of words was smooth and natural. By happenstance, line three and four ended with the same word, which interestingly had happened in stanza two as well. In noticing this, I also saw line one and two ended the same; that seemed to bother me and so I tweaked line one a bit. Ultimately, the change was unnecessary (though I left it), as I ended up shortening line two after reviewed the completed piece.

After a short break, I focused on stanza one. Oddly my need for structure and pattern did not have me overly conscious of ending line three and four with the same word, but again it came naturally. I did manage to maintain the original line six that I almost erased, but then thought twice about. The only other interesting thing to come out of stanza one was the alteration of the start of the tenth line, but in the end, I put it back to the original from the cabeza. All in all, though I got a late start on this one, I think it unraveled itself well.


The Finished Piece
(03/13/2018)

Again, I will be sharing the cabeza and opening stanza for this glosa. That said, here’s the opening stanza of “Beyond This Me”.

"I think I’m moving but I go nowhere
   Yeah, I know that everyone gets scared
      But I’ve become what I can’t be."
                                               –Stop and Stare
                                                 OneRepublic

I have this image of me,
this image of who I should be,
yet somehow, no matter how I try,
she's always just out of my reach & I try,
trust me, I try, but I seem to be
forever wading through this despair
that always keeps her poised
in front of me, a horizon line,
always moving with me, always there;
I think I’m moving but I go nowhere.

…

…



Work Cited

OneRepublic. “Stop and Stare.” Dreaming Out Loud, Interscope Records, 2007.