Looking for Inspiration... at MOMA, Kudo Beans, and so forth

I feel like I would like to complete one more good song before 2005 comes to a close. I have completed a song recently that I am pleased with, but I wrote the first two thirds of it three years ago, so it hardly counts as "new." Tonight I went searching for some creative inspiration at the MOMA, followed by a little solitary coffee-house session which involved me nursing a decaf with two pens in two hands, writing verbatim the sentences to come out of other coffeehouse patrons' mouths, until finally I mustered something somewhat orginal in the form of two poem/prose pieces. Okay, so they aren't songs. They could use some vocabularic tweaking. But it's better than nothing:

God Thoughts at the MOMA

The painting makes me feel like God may not exist.
Why is it, that inside a man-made structure, murmuring over brushstrokes, I doubt,
But standing outside in the sunshine, I can't not believe?
Does God's kingdom seep into and overcome even those dark interiors that I see rendered in abstract on the inky canvases before me,
Or are there truly places on this earth - locales physical and metaphysical - that God forsakes?
How then would he be Love?
Does Love leave a rebel to her own blind prison?

New Yorkers

What does God think of 5th Avenue?
The same window displays that launch a thousand eating disorders
Send me a wistful wave of longing for beauty that seemingly transcends life in gravity.
The perfectly sculpted mannequins dressed in jewels and the most exquisite skirts
Are the copper Athenas of this time and place,
Where we've atrophied, jaded and sophisticated beyond all reason.

John Lennon Songwriting Contest

A few years ago, in 2000 and then in 2002, I entered the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Five years ago the $30-per-song entry fee was a big deal to me, but so was the contest, and I submitted four songs... at the time it felt like putting $120 into investment bonds. Two years later, it felt like playing the lottery. This year, having put musical eggs into other baskets, it feels more like buying vitamins. Can't always tell, really, if it's making a difference, the money I'm spending, the capsules I'm consuming, and it's not like I'm not taking caring of my health in other ways. But it seems it can't hurt at all, and it might just be really productive in the long run.
I went with two from Most of It Is True: "Lost" in the pop category and "Living in Fantasy" in the folk category.

John Lennon's life ended tragically 25 years ago. I was three months and one day old the day he was killed.

Gathering my thoughts.

I returned to Caffe Vivaldi open mic last night after taking leave of it for a year. Met with a friend, a new transplant to NY trying to break into the music scene. I feel like I've learned a lot since being in her shoes at this time last year. Since the last time I was at Vivaldi.

The evening showcased a cool variety of talent. Besides my friend Katie Arnold, who has this great Cranberries-Irish lilt thing going with her pop guitar sound, there was a classically trained vocalist who raised the roof, and, very interestingly, a trio of guys playing together a cello, a viola, and a guitar, and singing along, and doing a lot of crazy counterpoint. (Whoever was playing the guitar for a song would also be the singer on that song). It was the ensemble's DEBUT performance; they have only been together for a month or so, and they're just trying this thing out. But I was immediately impressed, and the wheels started turning... it would be awesome to collaborate with them for a show, and awesome to have them play with me on some of my songs.
They called themselves "Burn Down Rome." I snagged an email address afterward.

More later.

To Catch Up - a poem

These days we have much to discuss
We could pull our saucered coffee beverages off the counter
to be balanced precariously in our laps as we’d kick back on an old hipster sofa and trade our stories and our latest hopes and fears.

Of course, it would be snowing outside.

There are the little matters of latest movie actor fascinations
and the things with which we have to deal in our places of work and study
And the larger matters of you being married, and me living in 12 square feet in the city of my dreams.

The smaller bond that we both name cats not just our friends, but roommates,
and the larger bond that we’re both on a path to glorify, to the same end, and it’s hard not to get easily, absurdly sidetracked, every hour.

But I wish we would have this afternoon, this conversation I now imagine,

Because I remember the many that we used to know, when our hopes and fears were other matters entirely,

and beautifully intertwined.