Once upon a time, I sat trying to work at a coffee shop in Los Angeles. I watched people come and people go and a few people who sat down (at 2pm on a Tuesday) and begin playing board games. As I watched those players, I also took note of the young girls (whose freshness and wide, starry eyes screamed “Innocent from Iowa”) with lip gloss in pocket and “actress” on license plate meet up over coffee and promises of stardom with strung out, jaded, perverse “directors”. And sitting there, I came to think: It’s really all just a game. Then I began to wonder: who is playing whom?

Lyrics:
All of my dice, precariously in your cup

Firmly held along the life map on your palm.

You sit and you stare.

You judge me. You dare me.

You ask 20 questions while the jury is at play.

You and I.

You challenge my mind with games not sold on a store front shelf.

We pick our pieces to go into battle

A battle that never should be fought.

You sink my ship and twist my thoughts into knots as words climb high as the ceiling.

Roll a die to life, to death

Your scalpel-like pen poised at my little brain

Mastermind.

A monopoly of you, turning pain into debt

Until I am alone in a room with only a candlestick

I am clueless, yet forced to make a move

Pawn.

Dealt by default into a game of life where I cannot win.

It’s 2 fingers on white plastic highlighting random letters, numbers, ages, forming sentences without sense.

You are bringing me closer to the surface than is necessary, or comfortable.

A not so random slash of tic tac toe from my head to my heart gouging deep as my soul

And I slip from my ladder and collapse down these chutes

I hear you ask me, “Where in the world…?”

As you tap like some junkie twice on your arm

Three words that will never know meaning.

Two more syllables.

One of you.

One for me.

Split the deck in your superficial attempt to make things fair.

I hold 29… Busted.

Each year, each day piles high, like wooden blocks with my name burned into the side.

My tower…

Sways with the doubt of my conviction

Sways with the doubt of all my questions

Sways with the doubt of your intentions

Threatens to tumble and

destroy this house of glass

Game Over. Game.

Game. Game Over.

(Games referenced: Yahtzee, Palms, 20 Questions, Battleship, Upwords, Operation, Mastermind, Monopoly, Clue, Chess, Life, Ouija, Tic tac toe, Chutes and Ladders, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Charades, Black Jack, Jenga)

( © Blink of a Mind Publishing, elina cate ASCAP )

Mind Games

Collaboration with Scobra (producer) from 2007.

Lover Boy(s)

VI
When you’re never good enough
When you couldn’t fly high enough
When you didn’t sacrifice enough
When you’ve lost your way

CHORUS
Come to the land of the dreamers
Stand with the never-achievers
Best to dream big and fall
Than never  dream at all

VII
When time is running out
When you’re full of doubt
When you try once more
When you fail like before

CHORUS
Come to the land of the dreamers
Stand with the never-achievers
Best to dream big and fall
Than never dream at all

This New Life

Never Achievers (rough cut/rehearsal)

Student researching the influence of the humanities on environmental behavior with a background in photography, ballet, music and acting (SAG/AFTRA/ASCAP).

Elina Cate