Starting From Stuck

I had set myself a challenge. I was going to write a 12-song series...and I had only written Song #1.

Song #2 wasn't going well. I found myself feeling self-critical and increasingly blocked, while I was trying to write something that celebrated a prolific and generous writer (which is to say, the person I feared I wasn't).

The breakthrough came when I acknowledged to myself that I was, indeed, stuck.

I wasn't writing anything good. I felt like a failure, a fraud, completely unlike all the artists I planned to use as inspiration for my series.

Admitting that to myself turned out to be the key to the song.

When the darkness overtakes me, and I can't drift back to sleep...when the right words still escape me and my dreams have dimmed too deep ...

Well, maybe these lyrics weren't as brilliant as Bruce Cockburn's, but at least these lyrics were true I thought, as I tossed out all my horrible faux-enlightened verses.

As I kept writing ( When there's nothing I can write now that I see how much is wrong...When I can't seem to recall how to turn sorrow back to song) I realized that it's that characteristic in particular--the ability to keep working and writing even in the face of sorrow and injustice--that I most admire in Bruce Cockburn.

It's not just his finger-picking style or his detailed lyrics or even the fact that his songs are politically and socially motivated. It's the fact that he's seen so much horror in the world first-hand (far more than I probably ever will) yet still finds the energy, courage and inspiration to make new songs.

He's gone deliberately into dark places in himself and in the world...and come out, well, singing. That, to me, is the heart of his songs and the reason they've inspired me for so many years.

It's when I can't move forward that he (and people like him) come to mind: people who find ways to make meaning and even joy in the midst of fear.

It's when I feel the most down that I need these artists the most: I need their songs, and their example.

"You Come to Me", April 4th, 2006