Mar 2

Mar 2 I AM NOTHINGNESS

Committed to capturing what’s coming out. There were words from a week ago but I’m letting them settle. Or letting the aftermath I tend to create, settle. I am complicated and it’s not easy.

I’ve had a song stuck in my head. Not one I’ve written, one by another band and I’ve written two different sets of lyrics set to its melody. This is comical in some ways as songwriting comes tough to me. I can put down words that rhyme but they mostly ring very hollow. Like exercises in rhyming more than an expression of an idea. Or the expression of a made up feeling. Not what I’m feeling.

As I am setting out to capture more ideas I let them come. If I’m committed to getting better at songs again it won’t be any different than writing here. Finally, more for the sake of more, matters. Volume will yield something. Of this I am sure.

As I over analyze, because that’s what I do, I can see how vastly different the ways I write can be. Here, I tell stories and weave metaphors non sequitur, less a quilt at the end than a rainbow roll of screen, to be cut to fit later. Every wire going every direction. At once. Impossibly creating a useful product at the end but looking close to a liquid as it spreads out all at once. In my mind I am describing a window screen, but it’s metamorphosing from the center out in all directions, not rolling, spooling and becoming from one side. It’s a warming visual. If you can imagine it.

Songs or maybe poems come out choppy. Fewer words, expected to convey more with less. Inevitably I have to add more, the first pass not making sense. Like these passages, I never have a theme or think of a situation to describe. I just let the words come out. As such, sometimes it all feels like the same song. Over and over and over. The same idea running rush shod out. Meaningless yet maybe more full than anything. Each syllable complicated. These songs lately attempt to describe and convey everything about me while only hitting the top right facet of a million.

Because there’s so much more. The words fall flat.

It will depend on the delivery. Of melody if one arrives. If they live on as a poem then who knows. When I think of that it makes me think of the power of words. Of writing. A song is made to be sung. To bring the words out and add emotion in their delivery. Publicly for others to hear and consume. The same words can be decided to be a poem, to be never spoken aloud or maybe even seen. Two stark paths to their life and what they convey. This morning the thought of this is almost alarming in some way. That you can create a thing that’s dying to get out, and never say it aloud. Ever. Maybe this is just alarming to me.

I wonder if the songwriters I like the most consider this. Or if the machine is oiled and the words roll out upon a predetermined theme. Hooks and choruses. Bridge and verse. It makes me want to ask them. I imagine it’s different for all of them.

I remember the very first song I wrote. In 1988 a kid I knew peripherally killed himself. It was that same story of “Mr. Has It All Together” not having it all together at all. Great athlete, better guy. We walked parallels and like all teens prone to drama, regardless of the lack of depth to our friendship, I embraced the sadness of it all.

The song was very young. Hell bent on rhyme and youthful cliches, it wasn’t great, but I had helped create it, my friend composing the music part on guitar. I still remember most of the chords and I know a four track recording of it exists somewhere. The words, cliched, “maybe there was no way out, your backs against the wall. Maybe there was no way for you to avoid the biggest fall.”

Probably only a half dozen people who knew that kid even know that song exists. As a 17 year old, I thought we should have presented it to his parents. As the father of one, I can’t fathom myself in their position. Thankfully.

Since then, I’ve written many others and think that someone needs to give me a lesson. For a year I’ve been committed to melody without assigning too many ideas to some of the songs. Then I go back and try and add words I sing well to that melody. To the feeling. What happens though is that I use other meaningless sentences as placeholders and over time, they hold place. What’s left feels like the same idea articulated a little differently over multiple songs. It’s neither good or bad. It just is. Teen love and heartbreak in G major or A or Em. 14 year old me sung 35 years later.

I keep trying. I write lyrics without music and music without melody. I come up with things that give me pleasure, record them and listen back and they aren’t what I thought. But that’s what music is. A journey, really. You hope it also gets better and that the stories you try and tell pull a similar emotion from someone else. It need not be the same emotion. Just an emotion. I want to make you feel alive. It may be the bad parts you feel, but that’s a start, right?

This whole thing started today because right when I woke up. I wrote a song. Or lyrics. Or a poem. I don’t know that I’ll ever do anything with it because I’m about 99% sure it’s set to the melody of another song I’ve been listening to a lot. Old me would have gotten pissy and thrown it out. New Year New Me is letting it sit. To gather. To become. Maybe one day I’ll set it to music. Until then... enjoy

#hugsandhi5s

Somewhere along the side the highway

Lies what’s left of our minds

Lies the rest of of our lives

Lives a feeling inside.

I live for the darkness but not how you think.

I live for the quiet.

Im feeling it come down It’s freezing. I won’t crawl outside.

Instead I wrap up and push out the morning.

In happiness and pain.

I am sleeping.

I’m awake.