Songwriting

Songwriting seems so easy when you just listen to someone else's lyrics. As a child there seemed nothing to it except in many cases having to find words that rhyme (oh no...). That same deluded place of knowing-it-all as a child is where I begun when I started trying to write songs. You write a couple of lines, they rhyme and whoop-di-doo you have a song. However, when I read over the lyrics I realized that something seemed off. That's when I started looking up basics of songwriting and I found myself embarrassed, realizing that I knew very, very little about songwriting. I was like a house cat that thought he'd discovered all of his environment until he escapes outdoors one day and finds himself surrounded by a complex diversity that blows his mind... and often enough, he, the house cat is so shocked by the vast expanse of unknown that he tucks his tail in and immediately returns to the shelter of what he knows, the house. After, looking up the basics of songwriting, I crawled back into my previously imagined "mansion of intelligence" and recognized it for the shack that it was. I didn't know squat about songwriting. The blow struck deep...

But I've never been the kind to give up on things that interest me so I kept writing. The lyrics were and often are still crap but I've learned about writing with a melody in mind (at least sometimes). I've learned that metaphorical language doesn't automatically mean quality. I'm improving though and that's what counts. My greatest issue right now is trying to be so complex that my wide web of creativity is impossible to fit into one song. But... I have to start somewhere!