New Songs for Inspiration

With a small poem you can touch a heart, dry a tear, spread laughter, enjoy a friend and show that you care. In this book you can seek inspiration to write a greeting, make a speech or sing and play. In short, the songs can be used in different contexts for joy and inspiration.

Number of songs: 89 Number of pages: 226

A remedy for sadness Advice Be a child of God Be happy Getting old Give...
More Description

With a small poem you can touch a heart, dry a tear, spread laughter, enjoy a friend and show that you care. In this book you can seek inspiration to write a greeting, make a speech or sing and play. In short, the songs can be used in different contexts for joy and inspiration.

Number of songs: 89
Number of pages: 226

A remedy for sadness
Advice
Be a child of God
Be happy
Getting old
Give comfort
Gladden somebody's heart
See the light
Take heart
Work

Abraham L. Gruber
Adam Lindsay Gorden
Berton Braley
Corinne Roosevelt
Dorothea Day
Edwin Markham
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ellen M. H. Gates
Emily Brontë
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I. J. Bartlett
James W. Foley
J. L. McCreery
John Hartley
John Oxenham
Jonathan Swift
Joseph Parry
Louisa Fletcher
Louis C. Shimon
Louise Imogen Guiney
Mason Knox
Nixon Waterman
Priscilla Leonard
R. L. Sharpe
Robert Bersohn
Robert Browning
Rudyard Kipling
S. E. Kiser
Strickland Gillilan
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
William Blake
William Ernest Henley

My pen name is Fred Butwell, but my real name is Ivar Øksendal and I live in Kristiansand, Norway. I write under a pseudonym to make my name easier to pronounce and remember.

I was born and raised in Horten, Norway, 1944. Then I worked different places as a teacher and finally I became a consultant in Kristiansand at the education department in Vest-Agder county municipality.

One day I got this amazing gift of dreaming melodies. It just suddenly started in 2003. I can hear the melody and sometimes also see the performance while sleeping. Then I wake up, hum the melody into a voice recorder and fall asleep again. The next day I write the melodies in the computer software for writing music notes, Finale. When the melodies are made in my mind, there is no need to work with them in the traditional way, e.g. to sit with an instrument and create. There have roughly been 10,000 melodies made this way. The next thing I do is to choose a song from the night's catch and write the lyrics to it. I 'analyze' the melody to find out what kind of genre it sounds like, like love songs, protest, urbanism, children's songs, etc. I also must decide whether the text is to be written in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish or English.

My son, Vidar Øksendal, born 1979, publishes the books through his own publishing company. Vidar holds a bachelor degree in media management from Gjøvik University College (today called NTNU Gjøvik). He is the general manager and I am deputy board member of our small joint stock company, Anapta Forlag AS. Without his enthusiasm and effort, it is possible that none of the books would have been released.