Monday, January 31, 2011

One Gift of Songwriting

Right in the middle of the process, all seems lost.

I have a chorus, but no verse.  Or everything is done except for a few troublesome lines.

I know that everything might stop here.  The song may go no further.

It is this point in the creative process which may be its greatest gift.  I'm neither lost in the infatuated euphoria of my song's beginnings, nor happily satisfied with my catchy finished product.

I'm in the "neither here nor there", which can be a place of openness and wonder.  What will happen next?  What will rise up to fill the gap?

Something will.  And before long, another song will be finished...neatly framed and solid. 

I like to focus on that finished, definable thing. 

But I am learning that the greater gift is the Mystery. 

1 comment:

Mnemosyne said...

This reminds me of a story about Richard Wagner when he was stuck:

One of the most difficult tasks Wagner faced was how to begin Das Rheingold. What kind of music could possibly launch not just this opera, but the entire Ring cycle? He later related the events that inspired the creation of the prelude (as always with Wagner, his reminiscences are to be taken with a grain of salt). He had gone for a long walk, then returned to take a nap. Falling into a state of half-sleep, he suddenly felt as if he were sinking into a flood of water: “The rush and roar soon took musical shape within my brain as the chord of E-flat major, surging incessantly in broken chords: these declared themselves as melodic figurations of increasing motion, yet the pure triad of E-flat major never changed…. I awoke from my half-sleep in terror, feeling as though the waves were now rushing high above my head. I at once recognized that the orchestral prelude to the Rheingold, which for a long time I must have carried about within me, yet had never been able to fix definitely, had at last come into being in me: and I quickly understood the very essence of my own nature: the stream of life was not to flow to me from without, but from within.”

May your own dreams be as fruitful in aiding your musical endeavors :)