Words and Music

I have never considered myself to be a writer of any consequence. Even creative writing classes within my English classes in high school were difficult because it was tough coming up with a subject that I wanted to write about.

During my freshman and sophomore years in college, I was still kind of dating this chick that I had been dating in high school (even though she was in college out of state. Man, what was I thinking?!) Anyway, in November of 1990, we had a very bad breakup, and it took some time to get over it, and we eventually patched things up about a year later. After the breakup happened, I ended up taking a Sociology class, and did fine in the class (a "B", iirc).

It was what happened during that semester, in that class, that has become the subject of this blog.

When I was in elementary school, I took piano lessons for a few years, and enjoyed it, but I can't play today, and never really learned any theory to support any future dealings with a keyboard.

(Note: I am at work right now, and I just met this wonderful girl named Emma. She is from Australia...what an accent! She is heading up a travel seminar tonight. I might have to sit in just to listen. I really need to get some business cards. And, uh, a life).

Oh, uh, where was I?

So, post breakup, I start writing. Sometimes it is in the dorm, but mainly, it is during this sociology class. I guess the teacher thought I was taking prudent notes. The best I can figure is that all of the lyrics that I wrote are worthy of country song types of music, mainly dealing with breaking up and lost love. Anyway, all of the craziness that I had been dealing with came out in the form of lyrics, and later, music.

Way back in 1995 when I was living in Florida, I decided to buy an electric guitar. I learned quite a few chords and found that I was able to play along with a few of the CD's that I had the arsenal that I had at the time. In a few fits of creativity, I was able to add music to some of the written lyrics, but I never recorded any of them, so I don't remember what any of the tunes were like other than the chords that are written down.

Last night, I found the notebook that not only had all of the things that I had written back then, but other songs that I had written out and added chords to play along. Looking through it, I was transported back to '91-'92, to a state of mind that I had totally discarded. Looking at it as a snapshot of my life from a few years ago was pretty fascinating.

One other fit of creative writing came, of all places, in church. I don't know if it was a morning or evening service because it was so long ago. All I remember is I really couldn't believe that it was happening, and I couldn't write the words down fast enough. For a few years, I wasn't able to finish the song. My life is generally organized by piles. And I know exactly what is in what pile, but not necessarily where it is in the pile. So, this unfinished song would appear in a pile occasionally, and mock me because it wasn't finished. It had some temporary lyrics in the final verse that I really didn't like and didn't really fit the song. In 1995, I finally finished the lyrics and added music to it.

Now I have a new goal. I tried to restring my guitar a couple of years ago, but I couldn't get my fingers to work properly. So, I am going to get my guitar restrung and work on recording these songs that I wrote. Now, if I could only sing halfway decent.

To this day, I still can't figure out why the muse decided to descend on a 20 year old and made me write out everything that I had gone through.

And sadly, it hasn't ever happened again...