Rarely have I experienced the mythical download of a song in under 3 minutes that walked through the door of a half remembered dream completely finished.
My process is far more fractured than that. I write while walking, sing melody lines into my phone before they disappear , bash around on a ukulele.
I have lost a few songs by not documenting them, right then. Never to return. The only thing left is the thought that it could have been something.
I keep trying on ideas until something has enough to hold onto.
I am the queen of revisiting a song, and holding out for a last verse to make sense.
Sometimes we excavate a few songs, that have been filed under not quite.
One in particular.
I started it years ago, lyrics, a melody line and with the help of my co-writer, we put something together.
It wasn’t terrible, there was something in the lyrics that was almost.
But wasn’t. I put it down.
For a long time.
Then one day, as I was flipping through all my old stuff, the little snippets and fragments of lyrics, melody, or some chord changes that could work somewhere, I re-discovered it.
And there it was, a story about the places we end up and the loss we all experience.
Sitting on the page, with scratched our lyrics and handwritten chords.
And I remembered there was just something about it, it just needed some oxygen, and to breath a little.
We revisited the chords. Played just those.
Then I pretended I had never written a melody for this song.
Which for me is easier said than done.
Sometimes you have to let something go to let something new enter.
New vibe, new phrasing, threw some words out and in.
Pulled some words off another page
And ended up somewhere different.
Because I was now somewhere different.
Someone different.
We move with life and life moves through us.
Even if we think we are standing still, the world moves around us.
So a half-written song became whole and better.
It’s like a metaphor for life.