Singer/songwriter

HA. That's definitely not a description I've ever used for myself before. To be honest, I still don't think it fits. But...on Monday when I was having a hard time (see 2 blog entries ago...), I pulled out my guitar and started messing around. It was fairly therapeutic. I know music has that quality, but I always seem to forget it.

Well, as I was messing around with my guitar, I started strumming some chords and piecing them together. I found a pattern I liked, and I kept playing. Eventually, I started humming over the top of the guitar, putting a melody with the chords. Then I added more chords (a chorus?) and continued humming. I found a pattern of the two combined that I really liked, and kept going back to.

Two days later, I'm finding myself humming this song that I wrote (however impromptu and spontaneous it may have been) and I can't seem to shake it. I wrote some of it out on staff paper yesterday, because I just couldn't get it out of my head and I had a little bit of time to kill in my music classroom.

Here's where I'm struggling: lyrics. How the heck do people write lyrics?! I have a feeling lyrics often come before the music. I know that's not always the case, though. I just can't seem to figure out what this song should be about. I kind of have the sense that I subconsciously know what it should be, because every time I try to put some lyrics to the melody, I get frustrated. "That's not how it goes," I find myself thinking. Now why would I think that? I didn't think, "I don't like how that sounds," or, "That doesn't work how I want it to." Nope, I think, "That's not how it goes," just about every time. So, clearly my brain is hiding the real song from me. Maybe I'm not ready to hear the words just yet. That sounds really ridiculous, but maybe there's a reason I can't sing the words out loud yet, or even consciously acknowledge what they are. I mean, I truly think there must already be words to my song if I keep thinking to myself, "That's not how it goes."

So, I guess for now I'll just keep humming the song and strumming the chords on my guitar. Maybe one day soon, I'll find myself singing words to the melody of humming, or I'll start playing it on guitar and singing along. When that day comes, I promise I'll record myself (however terrible that might sound) and post it here so you can hear it. I think I owe that to the few who are loyal to my blog. And by few, I truly mean few. Be proud that you're one of them, because if you're reading this, you probably are.