I write to process experience and feeling.  For 10 years when my daughter was young, I gave up the daily journaling I had always relied on to sort through my thoughts and feelings.  A nine month long women's circle based in ritual and clearing energy blocks reintroduced me to this practice.  Now, I can't imagine my mornings without my journaling practice.  I sit in my sun room with a strong cup of coffee and write.

This morning I woke with a line of poetry in my head, so I journaled in poem-speak and let myself play with each line.  It was a nice way to write, because I allowed more free drift of thought and the random association of creativity.  

Please enjoy this reflection about the solitary artist's heart.  As Joni Mitchell sang in "A Case of You"-

"I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid"

2.23.22

Back to the fortress of my heart
Cover the walls with Mexican tin
Impressively bright, deceptively thin
Covered with names of past lovers, and the shapes of the stars
Poems to decipher the ways of the heart

My heart and yours, dear
Why I’m alone here

I’ve chosen my songs, I suppose
And men seem to be in rooms of their own
Running scared from the depths below
But that’s where I’ve built my castle, my home

I’ve planted a watery garden with seeds of the sea
The light through the depth is enough for me

Here I listen, dream, and feel

The ocean is big enough to contain
All of my hopes, and each drop of pain
The rocking waves soothe me, they sing me to sleep
I don’t think I’ll ever leave this place

When you come into my heart
You’ll have to face these watery depths

In the life of a siren, the singing comes first
If you sense the danger-  I’ve under-rehearsed

So alone here, with bright walls of Mexican tin
I’ll sing to these walls so deceptively thin
And wait for a sailor so foolishly brave
To cut through this fortress to see what I sang

Heat up my body in carnal embrace
Only a dead man will be able to stay

I don’t mind living with ghosts
Seekers and sayers, spiritual hosts

Do you see the-in between?
Will you chase beyond what we see?

A scorpio moon lives in me
Infused with utter intensity

Bring me brave fools, the ones who feel beyond what they should
Who dive like seals
To play in the depths, bask in the sun

My lover and I have just begun

I’m helping someone write their first song.

She’s a fairly new student and we’ve already had tears and laughter and witchy wu-wu moments together in our lessons.  She’s healing some vocal pressure and tension that runs deep, related to a neck injury and some severe anxiety.

Amazingly, as unique as her particular story is, this isn’t an uncommon story line for the people who come to me for music lessons.

Vocal work and musical creativity are healing arts. They can open a portal to the hidden layers of our bodies and souls.  I wasn’t surprised to find that we were going to be exploring more than the technical work of freeing the physical voice.

I had a feeling that she might enjoy songwriting. She has a creative mind and naturally collects and creates ideas and impressions.  She had written little song snippets before, mostly as jokey jingles she’d sing to her dogs in the kitchen. I believe that if you can write a song snippet- any piece of a song- you can develop it into a song with some basic knowledge of song structure.

I suggested she try to write a whole song.

She took off with it.  She started writing song snippets to process deeper and sometimes difficult emotions.  I showed her the beautifully concise and precise structure of songs. She began to see how the snippets she was writing could come together to form a whole song.

She even found an app to help her play with a chord progression for the song.

We’re slowly exploring what this song will turn out to be.

I joked with her that she was having her first song baby, and I was the midwife.

We have a first version of the song, but there are still plenty of mysteries to solve.

What will the feel and tempo turn out to be?  How will the different sections end up relating and transitioning into each other?  What chords match with her melody? Does the melody in this section go up or down?  Where does this song start, and where does it end, in terms of the key? Does it modulate?

What does the map of this song look like?

I started helping map out the chords and connect the melodies of the different sections together.  My student, understandably, got super excited and for a moment wanted all the answers at once.  Does this chord work here?  What note do I start on?  Is this the right chord for this section?

I thought about my grandfather, who wrote songs during the golden age of Hollywood.  He wrote completely by ear.  He’d literally dream an idea. He’d spend a year slowing drawing the song out of his imagination and into the piano keys.  Then he’d take it down to the club where Nat King Cole was playing and ask him to take a look.  The great musicians of that era appreciated my grandfather’s music because he was writing outside of convention, from a dream, with total surrender to imagination and creativity.

The structural and mathematic elements of songwriting are helpful when finishing a song.  There is a strong mathematical component to music, which is why many musicians become doctors.

I believe that the most important function of a song is the mystery of its depths.

When we write a song, we don’t always understand where it’s coming from, or the story it’s trying to tell.

It’s a message from our subconscious, a place far beyond the capabilities of our analytic brains.

A song is a dream, the spontaneous energy of laughter or sobbing, the timeless quality of intimate pleasure.

When you start writing a song, treat her like a lover you are trying to seduce, a stranger who you are infatuated with and must learn everything about.  Take her to different places, meet with her at different times of day.  Invite her along to a wide variety of experiences.  Stay curious about her.  Let her glow with mystery before you try to figure out exactly what might be going on beneath the surface.  Long for her form before you touch the shape of her body.

After all, chemistry requires a bit of mystery, the deliciously uneasy thrill of not knowing.

Eventually you’ll discover all of her secrets, but it might take years.  Just when you think you know her, she’ll reveal something you didn’t know.