I Wrote a Song!

Yesterday, I wrote part of a poem, and suddenly I wondered what it would sound like if I put it to music. Then it hit me...I should write a song!

For a long time I had ignored my guitar hanging out in the corner of my room. I had gotten bored with it. I never felt like playing, and when I did play, I just wanted to stop.

I think I know why. All I ever do is play other peoples' songs. I never write my own. The other day, I had picked up my guitar and was flipping through my binder filled with songs and playing several here and there when I started thinking about the musicians who created them. I highly doubt any of them play mostly songs by other musicians. I'm willing to bet that they play mostly their own.

Instruments were made for playing songs, but in the beginning, when music was just getting started, when minstrels traveled from town to town, when cavemen sat around their fires, when David played his harp, before the era of pop music and cds and youtube and all that, people wrote and played their own stuff. It was an expression of themselves and their times, it was entertainment to cure the boredom and the blues and to give birth to creative sparks.

So yesterday I was frustrated that I hardly ever wrote poetry anymore and when I did write it, it felt forced, contrived. So I started writing one off the top of my head that had rhymes in it because I never write with rhymes. My poems usually are completely freestyle. Yet the thing is, by using rhymes, I used words that I never ordinarily would use, and suddenly meanings that I had never intended starting showing up, meanings that felt right and were much better than anything I could have planned. And then I picked up my guitar and put the words to music. If only I knew a cello player and a violinist, it would be amazing... I love songs with those two instruments in it, and they would definitely enhance this song.

Anyway, I've been having fun! I never pegged myself as a song writer, but I think I'm going to break out of the box and give it a try, even if I'm only writing songs for myself. Maybe that's the best reason to write them after all.