How funny, I face a dilemma all the year round when I look at my bitten-down fingernails and think, "hmm, why on earth can I not just let them grow?" but I'm grateful for the fact that my fretboard on both my gorgeous Takamine and Fender are protected from the sharp cutting blades of my fingers when I play a simple D-chord. But with more time on my hands, less immediate stress, and a feminine feel, my nails are beautiful. Painting them regularly and filing them down, looking at them occasionally, optimizing what it means to be a woman (apparently)...and then, like a haunting memory from the past, it niggles at me from the early hours of the morning to the late hours of the night and into the earliest hours of the next morning. Creeping into my mind with words, and causing rapid palpitations of my heart, I can't sleep for fear of forgetting, and I sleep with my phone at my side to record anything that I might otherwise miss... You ask what it is? The rare beauty of a beast that they call songwriting.
Mark Knopfler once said Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing. Hysterical and totally rock and roll, what a legend. It made me giggle and brought to my attention the sheer complexity of what it means to song-write, but possibly one of the most fantastic lines I have ever found, was from Tracy Chapman, who said Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control. This is something that rings true I think of all song writers. In truth, I feel massively naughty writing this blog, I am no famous musician, not even a professional one. But I love music, my heart beats to its rhythm, and I long to create, just to create.
It has to be said, song writing has never really been my fort-ay, and neither do I think that I will ever consider that it is, but lately I have found my beating heart for creating these songs is keeping me up at night. Some of my most beloved musical inspiration arises from lyricists like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Kim Walker, and Missy Higgins. Varying capacities for different things, but all brilliant all the same. I have listened to all of these artists, often asking myself the question, "how on earth do they do it?"- This wonderful ability to transform emotions into words with melodic prose, seemed to me to be a gift that I would never possess. The majority of me argues that I still do not! But it does not and can not take away from the feeling of utter contentment in doing it.
It ebbs out of me, a pulsing iambic pentameter of emotion. I have to rein myself in from rhyming, and often have to re-erase several classically cheesy lines that have worked their way in there, but I can't seem to stop myself from coming back to it again and again. Even now, I sit here thinking, hmm, would rather go and pick up my telecaster and create! But I have already worked on it a little tonight and thought I'd share some thoughts on it...
I am feeling a little impatient at the moment, so desperate to finish my degree and get editing; unfortunately, I am aware of my need to accept criticism better in order to mould these songs into the sculptures that I can see in my head that maybe aren't coming out on the page. It is terrifying to think that something which has sprung so much out of your heart, has the potential to be torn to shreds with others' opinions. However, I can't wait! I am so looking forward to making these little scraps of creativity into something that might be worth something, like perhaps extracting diamonds from rock or separating the wheat from the chaff (and a lot of it is chaff!)
Some songs are out of extreme levels of emotion, but recently I have found mine arising completely from God. And I think that is where all my creativity lies. To be honest, I reckon God just has a massive drawer of creative resources, waiting for me to delve into it and pull it all out, mixing it into all the little capsules of imagination from the shrapnel of creativity that I have in me. My heart is for new worship songs, to spring out songs from my heart which resound the same wavelengths as other hearts to increase people's capacity to feel close to God. Song writing as a release is amazing, but I'm less talented in that area, but I find myself so happy to just listen to God talking at me and try to write this stuff down. To horribly quote Aerosmith, "I don't wanna miss a thing"...haha. Utter cheese I know... But it captures it well! God talking at you, who would want to miss that?
So there it is. A naive, child-like song-writer, new at the whole gig, but looking forward to diving in, with the assurance that my desire to project comes from the harmonic heart that God has delicately placed in my chest. The slightly erratic rhythm of it, is just me getting used to it, trying to rein in those cheesy lines and cliche beats. Time to cut those fingernails to bitten down, guitar playing shortness... sigh!
Love your closing paragraph!
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