I Wrote a Song

So, I've always wanted to be a poet or a songwriter. I've never really spent a lot of time on it.

However...after a rough one-sided "breakup" several years ago, I took to playing my guitar daily as a form of self therapy. I was just messing around most of the time, or trying to play songs I really liked ("Let it Be" by the Beatles, "Love is All Around" by Sonny Curtis - also known as the Mary Tyler Moore theme song, etc.).

One day, though, I found a chord progression I really liked and kept playing over and over. Eventually, I started humming a melody over the progression. The melody changed a bit each time I hummed it until I found a melody I kept humming over and over.

I started thinking of this as a song. I had written the music for the song. I just didn't have any lyrics. (See: Singer/songwriter)

Finally, using my "heartbreak" (because really, looking back it WASN'T truly heartbreak, just sincere, heavy disappointment) as inspiration, I wrote lyrics. My first focus was fitting the words to the rhythms I had created in the melody. It was rough. I played around with it some more, and I found a set of lyrics I felt ok about. I recorded myself a few times using my iPhone's "voice memos", and eventually sent recordings to a friend to listen to and give some feedback. (See: Update on "the song")

My friend listened, gave feedback, and I again got "stuck". She told me to try to change a couple of the lines of lyrics, because they just didn't feel right. I can't remember what I did at that point. I typically take criticism pretty hard, so I suspect I might have gotten frustrated and done other things for a while. I may not have even truly revisited the song after that.

Fast forward a little over 5 years. Today, I was reading through my old blog posts. I literally went all the way back to my first post and just read them chronologically. When I arrived at the posts linked above, I was immediately drawn to listen to the recording. I HAD to know who I sent the recordings to so I could listen. I mean, it didn't take me long, but I wasn't sure I knew where to look. I'm glad I just searched "song" in my gmail records. It was pretty easy to find using that and the date from the blog posts as an estimate. BAM. There it was.

I listened to it, and immediately felt those raw emotions coming through again. I'm well past that "breakup" and have actually been through a couple since. (Also one-sided...and not real "breakups". That's for a completely different blog post.) I read through the feedback my friend had sent me, and I grabbed my guitar. I realized I had no record, or at least didn't know where the record was, of the chords. It was pretty easy to figure out while playing along. I then transcribed my original, recorded lyrics. I saw what my friend meant, and I'm sure I was just too stuck in the emotions of the moment to push past and make the song better. But today, I am MUCH further from those emotions and I was able to play with the words a bit more. I like them so much better now, and I'm content to approve them for myself without a friend's input. As she said when I asked for her help in 2013, "it is your song so you have to decide what to change and what to keep. besides it's totally subjective and just cause I would do something different doesn't mean that is right. you can totally ignore my suggestions!"

So, I wrote a song. It's not ready to share yet. I think I will share it, but I haven't recorded again since I changed the lyrics, and I kind of want to keep it special for a short while and enjoy it for myself. Also, I have to get to the point where I'm willing to be brave and vulnerable. I'm not very good at that. 😉