Sleepthief - Writers Forum

Mystery · 07-13-2008, 11:19 PM

Deep in the darkest black of night
Through your windowsill creeps moonlight
White flowing curtains, I'm certain
It'll be a tragedy tonight

Sleeping beauty, sweet angel in velvet
Smooth as a pearl, iridescent to count
Fragrance of roses, lost in your doubt
You give me my dreams, many to count

I come to visit, as a phantom did once
You are not alone, bird of a feather, many no doubt
Do no fear, do not cry, do not wake it's a lie
I shall love you forever, thought it must come to goodbyes

I stand over you gently, and touch on your skin
It is then I am consumed, and you bring me within
I stand then before you, we come face to face
And a moment of parish, you are lost in my grace

I walk to you smoothly, gliding of joy
And I hold you closely, willing and coy
For a minute I am troubled, as you are shaken with fear
It saddens my heart, to think that your dreams end crawls near

But you keep us together, in your heart
Your dream does not end, and you surrender your part
I take you away, across purple skies and creamy white clouds
Our Arabian nights, sands and silks do invite

I give you my love, cherish it I hope you will
And a dream in a dream, my gift to you
As your eyes do lay still
I get up and begin to fly without you
Leaving you there, you wake and you see me
Neither says goodbye, you have me right there

And you wake sudden and shocked
A cold sweat passes by
You look desperately around you
but I'm no longer there
You fall back down, and close your eyes
To find my face before you, and my love deep inside
Your pain keeps you awake
In the darkest of night

And there I am, sitting right besides you
Sometimes by your window, sometimes right beside
Forgetting you never
Until I must say goodbye...

And I travel the starlight
As the night turns to fire
As black does burn brightly
I look far behind
And thought it saddens me so
As the distance does grow
I am drawn ever forward
To another I must go
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is nothing I can tell you to help you understand this. I saw the word "Sleepthief" and I had to write this, it's an eccentricity of my mind. Needs some phraseology and vocabulary(for imagery) work, but I'm pleased.

T.W. North · 07-14-2008, 04:58 AM

Eh...no where near your best. Despite the typos, it doesn't flow too well, it doesn't seem to consist of all that much thought. Just you rambling about your love for someone in different, not particularly effective ways. I'm sorry, but I seriously don't like this. As always though, you know thats just my opinion.

Jack Daniels · 07-14-2008, 02:29 PM

I thought it was interesting work in progress I think. A need for stronger structure perhaps? And bit less of a scatter gun appoach to imagery?

You could do with losing that line though IMHO. Just made me go, huh? lol
I walk to you smoothly, gliding of joy

Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your pieces and thanks for posting this piece.

JD

Mystery · 07-16-2008, 01:34 PM

Long post ahead, if you don't care what goes through my mind, why the hell are you reading this in the first place?

Its funny that most of you say it lacks structure/thought because its blindingly simple. It's a story, each verse progresses the story like so:

Verse 1 - Prelude
Verse 2 - Setting of the story/context(introduces two characters) can be seen as extended prelude
Verse 3, 4, 5 - Context, surrounding, setting, time, also gives distinction to the "sleep thief" persona and starts the actual crutch of the story(what he does)
Verse 6, 7 - Conclusion of main story if you can call it that, where he enters the womans dreams, does some ambiguous things to her

and leaves her alone in her dreams.
Last 3 verse are the conclusion, why he is called the "sleep thief" just that as opposed to making him a nightmarish creature in which the person stays awake because of horror, I made him a pure creature where the people(women in this case) stay awake out of awe/lust/want of his presence. The last verse just reiterates something that is said in the first verse to give his persona, he travels from place to place, finding beautiful women and robbing them of their sleep with passion. Don't ask me why, this is just what he does.

I also grouped verse roughly under generalizations like (development). Each verse can be seen as him taking an action

Verse 1 - Prelude, but it is also him having a premonition about the night, tradegy fits in the fact that he must leave her alone afterward, I tried to make it seem as if he was a nightmarish creature but I never intended that to pass off, it would have been nice to have a twist though

Verse 2 - He find a woman he finds gorgeous, and he just thinks about her before he does anything(you can also diverge why he steals peoples sleep here, if you want to take it that way)

Verse 3 - He goes to her in an operatic, mystic manner, thats why there is "as a phantom did once". Maybe I'm stretching for an inference here, but in my mind it's not hard for me to link it to the phantom of the opera, or to just mentally picture a creature coming as a phantom(unseen, glides, shadows etc)

Verse 4 - He enters her dreams and for a minute she is shocked(there is a lot else that you can infer, but this lyrics is more story than mental processing, so I'm not going for that) by his grace/beauty. The basic idea is that he appears to her as perfection.

Verse 5 - This is just a basic reaction of seeing something out of the ordinary, shock, followed by fear of the unknown. The woman who's dreams he has entered is so shocked, and afraid of his since if a perfect being entered your dreams and happily glided toward you I don't think you'd be calm, she nearly wakes up which would end his excapade.

Verse 6 - She doesn't wake up because fear turns to lust/passion etc, so their dreams continue and its just a bunch of romance scenery bla bla.(this is the verse where my rhyming/flow breaks down, this is what I was hoping people would help me with)

Verse 7 - (again, a bit of disjointed flow) After he does said ambiguous things to her, he leaves her dream while she is still stuck there.

Verse 8 - She wakes up and frantically searches for him, but he is invisible to her, and the 'pain' of her not being able to experience him again keeps her awake.(Better to have never loved, than loved and lost, just replace love with experience perfection or whatever rocks your boat

)

Verse 9 - This is the part that I just put in to make it clear that it's not that he left her, or abandoned her, or doesn't love her so to say, but that she cannot see him. Also, it shows that he does not willingly leave, but that there comes a time where he must.

Verse 10 - Conclusion, the process repeats himself, he is sad to leave, but happy to find another, thus the whole lyric would repeat itself in slightly different manner/descriptive sequence.

I don't know if its because most people here don't ever write lyrics that posses no depth so to say(purely stories in lyrics) or if its because I am making references which, well, I don't realize how hard they are to infer because I know what I'm inferring to, or if its because I'm an alpha self-important artsy tosser, but the last thing I expected was structure/thought troubles. I have the layout as I want it, I've put thought into the story and what sleep thief is, the inspiration for this character(if you want to know, it will help you better understand the type of music around it, is Sleepthief(the band)'s Sublunar(sweet angel)).

I was expecting people to rag on about verse 6,7 and 8, meh.

In any case, try to point out why you can't follow, or why it appears im rambling, or where structure/flow/imagery breaks. The whole idea is to give soft, smooth imagery, colors of the night, purple, dark blue, black etc.

T.W. North · 07-20-2008, 03:07 AM

Deep in the darkest black of night
Through your windowsill creeps moonlight
White flowing curtains, I'm certain
It'll be a tragedy tonight
Alright, got nothing in particular against this verse. But it doesn't introduce the story as you may think. The story isn't particularly clear at all through the whole thing.

Sleeping beauty, sweet angel in velvet
Smooth as a pearl, iridescent to count
Fragrance of roses, lost in your doubt
You give me my dreams, many to count
'iridescent' is too chunky. and then count...doubt...eww. and 'many to count'...wha? It just doesn't work for me.

I come to visit, as a phantom did once
You are not alone, bird of a feather, many no doubt
Do no fear, do not cry, do not wake it's a lie
I shall love you forever, thought it must come to goodbyes
'many no doubt'...again...weird. and the last line is pretty tacky.

I stand over you gently, and touch on your skin
It is then I am consumed, and you bring me within
I stand then before you, we come face to face
And a moment of parish, you are lost in my grace
'touch on your skin'...the on is unneccessary. and the rest is just tacky.

I walk to you smoothly, gliding of joy
And I hold you closely, willing and coy
For a minute I am troubled, as you are shaken with fear
It saddens my heart, to think that your dreams end crawls near
'gliding of joy'...again, not phrased exactly to my liking. and the end is chunky.

But you keep us together, in your heart
Your dream does not end, and you surrender your part
I take you away, across purple skies and creamy white clouds
Our Arabian nights, sands and silks do invite
TACKY!!

I give you my love, cherish it I hope you will
And a dream in a dream, my gift to you
As your eyes do lay still
I get up and begin to fly without you
Leaving you there, you wake and you see me
Neither says goodbye, you have me right there
Again...incredibly tacky

And you wake sudden and shocked
A cold sweat passes by
You look desperately around you
but I'm no longer there
You fall back down, and close your eyes
To find my face before you, and my love deep inside
Your pain keeps you awake
In the darkest of night
Eww...

And there I am, sitting right besides you
Sometimes by your window, sometimes right beside
Forgetting you never
Until I must say goodbye...
Doesn't work in my eyes. No real reasoning, just don't like it.

And I travel the starlight
As the night turns to fire
As black does burn brightly
I look far behind
And thought it saddens me so
As the distance does grow
I am drawn ever forward
To another I must go
Eh. So so.

Litharukia · 07-23-2008, 02:15 AM

The biggest problem I had with this was a) I didn't see it as a story and b) I felt like there should be a tune, like I should be able to feel the music behind it, but I absolutely could not. The best lyrics I find I can hear music to them, but I just felt the presence of the silence in the room more clearly than usual when I read this.

Gnomes Amok · 07-23-2008, 05:22 AM

I think Im beginning to understand why I always get the harshest row from North! Everything he thinks is weird I think is kickass

I come to visit, as a phantom did once
You are not alone, bird of a feather, many no doubt
Do no fear, do not cry, do not wake it's a lie
I shall love you forever, thought it must come to goodbyes

This was my favorite part because 'many no doubt' sounds like something from a Modest Mouse song, I love it

Put to the right music, everything here that would seem tacky, becomes perfect

This is one of my favorite pieces by you.

T.W. North · 07-24-2008, 02:14 AM

^Ahhh....THATS why I don't like your stuff Gnomes, you do it like MM. And they are just too weird for me.