stuff i spend a day playing with (book title ideas)

this started the process:

a fist full of dollars, a hand full of rain

i was thinking about the line in the song where louise holds out a hand full of rain
and since i had done the ending beginning
that's got me thinking again
and i'm all with the names and titles and such
and this is maybe the clickbait equivalent of a book title
i would pick it up

plus
ya know
there's a level on which it totally works
except
fist full of dollars is all
anti hero and violent and not happy
so then
i had to spend the rest of the day
thinking up
like
counter arguments to that one--  which i really like


so, like my old working titles had been
the adventures of jack and lucky & the sound of rain

those are both fine
but
i think the jack and lucky is either a story within a story
or like a whole nother thing that what i'm writing
and the sound of rain
was a meta concept thing that isn't what i'm writing now
besides
it's kinda dull as a title



then i've got a whole slew of ones derived from the song lyrics


holding out a handful of rain, daring you to defy it

holding out a handful of rain

hand full of rain

to catch the rain in the palm of ones hand

clutching the rain

catch the rain


of which, i think i like  hand full of rain the best


then i just started kinda free associating


rain in the hand is worth...bird....

four and twenty blackbirds/hand full of rain

i think there were more
but
i left the paper in my apron pocket
those were the ones i liked best

what i liked about them
was the non-sequitur-ness and the punctuation
i love the idea of a slash in a title
i love the idea of incorporating a nursery rhyme
or an idiom
plus
that particular one reminds me of one of my favorite "jokes"


that requires an aside

i don't like "jokes" like "telling a joke"  like a set thing
like "a priest, a rabbi, and a somethin else walk into a bar"
i don't like that kind of stuff very much
i like more conversational/monolog-y humor
observational and whatnot

this is the kind of stuff that ashleigh was usually trying to tell me
that i wasn't laughing at
i'm just not into it

i do however have one that i love
so
if i ever like have to tell a "joke"
this is the one i would tell
very deadpan
and no one ever laughs
which i like


how many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb...
...fish

i love it love it love it
but, ya know, i don't laugh either


and
to me
there is something about that joke
contained within  rain in the hand is worth...bird

the "/" is like
suddenly a mashup of
sing a song of six pence, a pocket full of rye
there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
four and twenty black birds baked in a pie
the ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
and when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing
while my conscience explodes
now wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king

which appeals to me
but
might not make any sense to anyone else


and
i know
i should write it first
then pick a title
but
in the way that the ending comes first
the title influences what the book becomes
like when you name a kid
they live up to their name, ya know

and
i mean
actually
there is still the option to change the title
if it seems warranted later
so
in that sense
maybe it's a working title
but
maybe i'm just weird like that