Do-do-doo-doo//Do-do-doo-doo

Sadly I can't actually get myself out of doing this week's prompt like I usually do, so here's a mediocre blog post

My poem* is Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega. Suzanne Nadine Vega (née Peck; born July 11, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter best known for her folk-inspired music.^[1][2] Vega's music career spans almost 40 years. Suzanne Nadine Vega was born on July 11, 1959, in Santa Monica, California. Her parents divorced soon after her birth.^[5] Her mother, Pat Vega (née Schumacher), is a computer systems analyst of German-Swedish heritage. Her father, Richard Peck, is of British origin.^{[failed verification][6]} Her stepfather, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, also known as Ed Vega, was a writer and teacher from Puerto Rico.^[7] .........................................................................................................

(*A song is basically just a poem with a beat, so this counts as a poem. I mean Mrs. Knudson was literally going to have us do a poetry Harkness on “Anti-Hero”, but then Vijay said he was too traumatized from hearing it every 2 seconds on the radio)

But seriously, Wikipedia aside, Tom's Diner is a song that was originally written and performed by Suzanne Vega in the 1980s as an a cappella track, however, it was then remixed by a band called DNA into a dancehall song, which then blew up in popularity in the early 90s, before being remixed again in 2015 and blowing up a second time.


But I found out about Tom's Diner through what is known as 'YouTube Poop' (YTP) like 2 years ago. Now, I don't really have the time to explain what that is, but it's essentially like a subgenre of shit-posting, except it is done solely by remixing pre-existing audio and/or videos. So in a way, I found out about this remixed song through a modern remix of this song.

(original upload got taken down)

Tom's Diner I am sitting In the morning At the diner On the corner I am waiting At the counter For the man To pour the coffee And he fills it Only halfway And before I even argue He is looking Out the window At somebody Coming in "It is always Nice to see you" Says the man Behind the counter To the woman Who has come in She is shaking Her umbrella And I look The other way As they are kissing Their hellos And I'm pretending Not to see them And instead I pour the milk I open Up the paper There's a story Of an actor Who had died While he was drinking It was no one I had heard of And I'm turning To the horoscope And looking For the funnies When I'm feeling Someone watching me And so I raise my head There's a woman On the outside Looking inside Does she see me? No she does not Really see me 'Cause she sees Her own reflection And I'm trying Not to notice That she's hitching Up her skirt And while she's Straightening her stockings Her hair Has gotten wet Oh this rain It will continue Through the morning As I'm listening To the bells Of the cathedral I am thinking Of your voice And of the midnight picnic Once upon a time Before the rain began And I finish up my coffee And it's time to catch the train

After experiencing this life-changing auditory masterpiece, I looked up the original song and found Vega's original a cappella recording (I'd recommend listening to it in order to get the full experience), and honestly, it's pretty catchy. What immediately caught my attention was the song's unique rhythm and Vega's writing style. While the actual lyrics are mostly void of any fancy poetic devices like metaphors, symbolism (for the most part) or metaphors, the song still does a great job of painting a pretty vivid picture. This narrative-like song feels some what both disconnected like Camus' The Stranger yet strangely vivid and surreal like Siddhartha. I think that part of what contributes to this effect is Vega's selection of detail. The speaker is clearly a regular at this dinner, as he (Vega said in an interview the song is from a guy's POV) are immediately recognized and served, however he still feels alienated by what is going on, as he (44-55) paranoidically believes the woman outside to be watching him, despite her looking at her own reflection. Additionally, the ideas in the song are expressed using only simple sentences, which are not broken up by any sort of punctuation like commas or periods. Instead, the only pauses in the song occur at the end of each line, which is usually in the middle of an idea, which makes these pauses sound almost artificial. This fact is even more apparent in Vega's recording, especially in the 9th stanza (33-36), where although Vega's intonation and syllabic length (? I don't know music theory) shift at the end of each line in the quartet (which would normally indicate the start of a new idea or stanza), her words continue to flow, creating both a smooth and disjointed effect. However, at the end of the piece, we get a bit of a hint as to why the speaker may be so distant. In the last 3 stanzas, the song is no longer taking place at the diner, but we are instead taken to a flashback at a church. Originally I thought he was at the church to mourn the death of the actor "[he] had[n't] heard of" (40), however after looking back at these last few lines, I think that the speaker may have been mourning the loss of a loved one. He mentioned how the "rain....will continue" (65-66), which I'm assuming is probably a symbol for his grief as he later recalls a "time before the rain began" in the last stanza. This would also explain why the speaker sounds so robotic.

Speaking of robots though, I thought that the best way to emulate Vega's poem would be to ask a real robot (my friend and new personal idea generator, ChatGPT) to write one for me. After a few iterations—and a lot of my own edits—here's a combination of the best pieces of the attempts that it generated:

I am ChatGPT, a machine learning model trained to generate text, including poems. Here's my attempt to write a poem in the style of Suzanne Vega's song "Tom's Diner" about swimming laps in a pool doing a hypoxic set while your coach watches, mentioning the lane members you mentioned:  

Colt's Pool

I am standing at my lane

Squinting through my foggy googles

Looking up at the board,

Seeing warm-up's just the same

As it has been ever

Since coach started watching our underwaters

Coach has us doing black-zone

Meaning no breaths in the flags

I dive into the pool the water

surrounding me like a cool embrace

But as I take my first stroke

I realize my first mistake

It's that Johnny's right behind me

And he is a warm-up sprinter

And as he taps my toes impatiently

I stop to move out the way

I glide through the water

With each stroke and each turn
My mind in a trance

As I feel my body burn

The tiles on the bottom blur,
As I swim my laps, two, three

I have seemed to lost count

I'll just stop when they do

I glance up

Coach is watching,
No time to sneak 

An extra breath

I keep going

My chest aching

Even as my lungs 

Protest

And kick off the wall 

With all my strength

to try to make it past

The red marker

Which seems to get 

Even further

After I finish

Each damn 25

Out the top of my periphery

I see my lanemates' feet at the wall

And as I emerge, my lungs 

Are gasping and my body can rejoice

I shake off the water, dripping,

The endorphins rush through my veins
I am left with a feeling so rare
A sense of calm that always remains