Song: The Folk Process

[mneme]

The Folk Process
Joshua Kronengold
Tune: Original-ish

When you can't recall the words while standing on the stage,
Don't stop to find them in a book or storm off in a rage,
Do not scream or shout or call for lines or pound upon your head,
Just recall the shape the words once had and make them up instead.

It's the folk process, we do it all the time,
We change the music or the words, or even change the rhyme,
With the folk process, we make a song our own,
For music is not made out of a hard unyielding stone.

When I write a song and others sing it back...a little wrong,
I am tempted to sing back "What have you done to my song,"
It did nothing much to hurt them, but they haven't killed it dead,
For we know our music lives when we see blood flowing red.

It's the folk process, we do it all the time,
We change the music or the words, or even change the rhyme,
With the folk process, we make a song our own,
For music is not made out of a hard unyielding stone.

When I hear some words in music and they will not leave my brain,
And I twist the words and sing them back, quite wrong on each refrain,
It may start when I mishear a line, or have an evil thought,
But once I'm done, my victim justly fears what I have wrought.

It's the filk process--you need not show alarm,
For when you parody a song, you do not do it harm,
It's through this conversation that our music flows around,
And through these changes large and small that our hearts sound.

It's the folk process, we do it all the time,
We change the music or the words, or even change the rhyme,
With the folk process, we make a song our own,
For music is not made out of a hard unyielding stone.