#30before30: Write a song

The amazing thing about this #30before30 project has been how incredibly generous people have been with their time and expertise. I'm just some schmuck with a wish list, and people have bent over backwards to help me out. It's extraordinary. A few of my challenges were music-related, and I got a lovely email a few weeks back from the good folk at the Independent Music Academy at Bowen Hills offering to "teach me music". I rocked up one Saturday, was handed a guitar, and sat down with a lovely lady named Miranda, who was tasked with being the wise Yoda to my petulant Luke Skywalker.

Miranda is one of those effortlessly cool people. She has long, wavy dark blonde hair that looks like it gets washed everyday in a fresh mountain stream. She's about 6ft tall and wears boot cut jeans and a t-shirt and looks more stylish than 100 models. She'd be on the front cover of Frankie magazine if she was in the least bit pretentious. Because that's the best thing - she's super nice, and watches my fumbling attempts to move my fingers across the frets with the patience of a saint.

Our first lesson is some basic chords to a popular song (which I won't mention here, as I need to do it for my upcoming busking challenge and I don't want to spoil the surprise). They were actually only half chords, as my fingers are so clumsy I could only manage two out of three fingers on each chord. Miranda then asked me about my song idea. I'd had a thought about something that I thought might be a song, and hummed a few bars of the melody that had popped into my head. She picked up on it straight away, and noted them in the TAB notation system guitarists use so I could go home and practise.

During our second lesson, she helped me practise again, and work my dodgy lyrics into a half-decent rhythm. She also worked out some "power chords" for the song's bridge, even though I hadn't fully fleshed out the words to it yet. But it was enough to allow me to wind up with something that at some point in the future could one day maybe resemble a song.

It's a quasi-whimsical piece about "beautiful women" of days gone by, and how we'll never actually know what they looked like. I like the idea that there are women walking around the world who look just like Helen of Troy or Cleopatra - but we have no photos so we would never realise.

After my two lessons though, I think that if Helen of Troy looked like anyone - it would be Miranda.

The video clip was shot on an iPhone, and it's been squished by conversions and whatnot. It was shot on October 7, at Uber in West End after I was asked to go back and try stand-up comedy again. I'll get to that in a future post but for now, excuse the dodgy singing and the even dodgier playing - here is my song Helen of Troy.

There's no reason, there's no rhyme

Why beauty standards change with time

What ancestors considered fair

Judged today would not compare

But what about stories of yore

Of famous beauties found in lore

And if I might be so bold

What if I might fit that mould

What if Helen of Troy looked like me?

What if Helen of Troy looked like me?

Would people drop down on their knees

Write poems of love and worship me

Would your stomach tie in knots

If I looked like Mary, Queen of Scots

And would I cause a rift with the Holy See

If Henry the Eighth had fancied me

What if Helen of Troy looked like me?

What if Helen of Troy looked like me?

Would people drop down on their knees

Write poems of love and worship me

And would it matter about my lips

If my face could launch a thousand ships

And would it matter about my thighs

If I had Cleopatra's eyes

And would I be less pessimistic

If I was a lot more narcissistic

And would I get free flights on Qantas

If I looked just like Pochahontas?

(OK, I realise that one's quite unlikely)

But what if Helen of Troy looked like me?

What if Helen of Troy looked like me?

Forget that Angelina Jolie

What if Helen of Troy looked like me?

What if Helen of Troy looked like you?

You're a Capulet next to a Montague

Someone should really write a haiku

I think Helen of Troy would look like you