Songwriting part deux.

Last Monday I made a lengthy list of songs I've been kicking around over the past year and started sorting through them. Some of them I had demoed into various places like my ipod and others I had written down in notebooks or sung melodies into the voice recorder on my cell phone. Whatever works really. Once I had the list of ideas I could take a step back and try to find a place to jump in. Pick a song to start with...one that would hopefully get the train out of the station. I picked three and pushed my way through them all this week. Pushing, pulling, praying, reading, believing, feeling, knowing, not feeling, not believing...rinse... repeat.

I go through these cycles and its pure madness. But that's how you know you are on the right track. You paint all day and then put your brush down, eat some dinner, have a glass of red wine and go to bed. Then you wake up the next day and work some more. Drinking coffee throughout the entire time.

In the past there was always an element of adolescence hanging in the air when I would work on new songs or a new record. An idea that if it wasn't fun or it didn't come easy then it wasn't worth doing. Maybe you can relate ...but I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started writing my own songs back in high school and college. I did it because it was fun and it could give me a (brief) sense of (false) worth or some kind of identity that I felt I needed to have.

And now all that has changed. I know whose I am and what I'm worth. Old dreams die young and now I'm nearly 30 years old writing what I hope will be the best collection of songs I've ever written and it's not only fun but incredibly hard...good thing I don't start recording for a few more months. goodnight.