The other day it occurred to me that the most uncommon interest I have, the one I am least likely to get into a conversation at work about, is songwriting. I know plenty of other people who write songs, I play in a band with three of them, and I have a lot of songwriter friends but as far as “normal” people go, songwriting is not a common activity. You can’t just drop “so, I wrote a new song the other day” into casual office conversation and expect anybody to say “Oh really? Me too! Have you recorded a demo of it yet?”

I work with lots of people who play a musical instrument of some kind, piano or saxophone or guitar or violin, but they don’t compose new music, they just play music written by other people. I work with lots of people who enjoy music, who listen to it constantly, who can discuss it at length, but it never seems to occur to them to write any of their own.

Even my mom, from whom I inherited my musical talents, a woman who sang on stage semi-professionally for my entire childhood, is not a songwriter.

It’s mystifying to me because I’ve always written songs, quite naturally. It is so natural that for a long time I just assumed it was something that everybody did.

The first song I ever wrote that I still have a recording of is from kindergarten. I wrote (and recorded) a lot of songs in elementary school. They were mostly silly lyrics but I made sure even way back then that I had verses and choruses and melody and structure and rhythm. One song I wrote called “I’m Insane” even had several movements in different musical styles. When I listen to the recording today I’m kinda blown away by how musically sophisticated it is for a second grader. There is even a piano piece with no lyrics called “The Burner” that I wrote back then.

It’s not like it’s ever been easy. Even now, after having left a trail of over four decades worth of songs strewn in my wake, I still wrestle with the challenge of composing new music. I think of it like fishing for some sort of elusive species of fish. I go through all the trouble of waking up at dawn, loading up the boat, heading to the lake, and then I cast and cast and cast for hours without so much as a bite until I manage to land one. It’s lonely work and for every time I succeed in finding a song, there are a dozen where I get nothing or wind up with a song I don’t even particularly like.

If I’m being honest here I think it’s one thankless pursuit.

And yet, also being honest, it’s the thing I have the most pride in, the work I find the most personally rewarding. Songs I’ve written are also my anchors to important pieces of my past. When I hear a song I wrote, either as an actual recording or just playing in my head, I remember the time and place of my life when that composition happened and I relive pieces of my past. Sometimes it works the other way around, I remember something that happened to me and then a connected song comes into my mind. The times in my life when I let myself fall out of the songwriting practice are the ones where my memories get the fuzziest, the years that feel “lost” somehow. As if, failing to enshrine them in songs, I never really got a good mental record of what happened. Times in my life that I remember but don’t have songs for feel as if they could have happened to somebody else or as if I could have read about them in a book rather than having lived through them.

Even though I haven’t released much music of my own over the last several years, spending my time playing with other bands doing other music, I have written dozens of songs at home that will probably never be heard outside of my studio and my head. Even when I don’t perform or record my songs for other people, I still write them. I have to.

Weird, right? Of all my interests and pursuits, songwriting is easily the weirdest one, and yet there it is. A thing I do because I am compelled to do it.

Last night I mentioned to Esther that I had written a new song the other day. She asked about it, what was it called, what was it about, could I sing it to her, and so I pulled out an acoustic guitar and played it. After I was done she asked me to read the lyrics back to her again and told me that she thought they were really beautiful and that my lyrics are one of the best parts of my songs. I thanked her and felt a little flustered, showing a new song to another person (even one who I have known intimately for 18 years), is one of the only things I get legitimately nervous about. Most people don’t know how to respond to a new song. They either love it immediately (if it’s super catchy) or they listen without really hearing or absorbing. New songs from any source often take several listens to find their way into your brain and during those initial listens a person may not even know whether or not they like the song. They may just be absorbing it.  A lot of people struggle to internalize new music after they hit their 20’s so it’s a lot of ask of somebody, if you think about it.

If the source of the song is a person they know, they may feel as if a response is required of them, as if they need to say something about the song, “that’s really great” or “I liked it” but it’s kind of a lie because they probably don’t actually have an opinion yet. There is novelty and there is familiarity and a song that is catchy often gets you with the former while a song that stays with you often requires the latter. If I was the sort of songwriter who created a lot of catchy ditties that set toes a tappin’ it might be easier. Unfortunately(?) I’m the sort who often writes intellectual/emotional poetry set to guitars and drums. I am what I am. I have my “catchy pop tune” moments and I know them when I hear them, but they’re the exception rather than the rule so I have become used to keeping a lot my music to myself and avoiding putting people in the position of having to respond in real-time to my face. I prefer to record and release, thereby allowing the listener to engage with what I make on their own time and on their own terms without my awkward presence standing by.

It’s not as if I get a lot of negative responses. I’m happy to say that I’m objectively pretty good at songwriting. I’ve written some songs that are excellent and I know it. I’m a lifelong student of music of all genres and eras, I know the difference between good music and bad music and I’ve written both, but I’ve written more good than bad, which is nice. Writing music is a tough thing to do and it’s good to know that I’m good at it but that doesn’t help with the whole awkwardness thing when it comes to presenting it to other people.

It’s now 7:15 in the morning, I’ve been up with my coffee since 6:00, and most of that time has been spent writing this post. It’s the Tuesday after the long Memorial Day weekend and I need to be back at my job today, doing technology things, the work for which I have been paid in the filthy lucre of the realm for most of the last three decades. Most of my three day weekend was spent doing work around the homestead. I dug out and replaced a broken fence post that supported an automatic driveway gate, which I also repaired. I filled some gaps in a few retaining walls. I did some photography and developed and scanned a few rolls of film. And I composed drum parts for the new song I played for Esther last night. I’ve recorded two demos of it since I wrote it and I think I now know it well enough to attempt to track it for real this week.

I need to post this, jump in the shower, put on some clothes that aren’t pajamas, get a warm up of coffee and then I think I’ll head out to the studio and take a crack at writing another one before I turn myself back over to the world of corporate America. You never know, I might get lucky and catch a big fish before the morning stand-up meeting. A kid can dream, can’t he?