My White Whale.

For a long time now, I have wanted to be creative. My friends and family usually say something like, "But you play musical instruments! And sing! And you've written a song!" And I hate it when they say that. Yes, in some sense, I am creative. But only an incredible small portion of my creativity is being used. Mostly when I'm playing an instrument (or even, to a certain extent, singing) and am interpreting someone else's idea or regurgitating it note-for-note. I'm pretty okay with this, though.

It's all the downtime.

When I have the time to write.

And don't.

CAN'T.

About a year ago, I purchased the book Writing Better Lyrics. The author, Pat Pattison, gives a lot of exercises and ideas and examples. I haven't been able to actually do any of the exercises (nor finish the book for that matter...it's kind of a "work-through-this-section-and-then move-on" kind of thing).

Back in May, I took some time to visit my friend and songwriter-extraordinaire Jon Weisberger (http://www.facebook.com/jonweisberger) and we set out on a three hour journey to write a song. In the end, we succeeded. We found a melody. Then outlined a basic idea of what we wanted to happen. Then we haggled over words (syllables are important, folks).

I learned from this experience two things:

1). Songwriting is much harder than people make it out to be. I think most people that give you that line, "It just came out of nowhere!" are either incredibly modest, intensely secretive, or the best bullshitter you've met that day. Song most certainly do not "come out of nowhere."

2). I also learned that it is MUCH easier to write when you have someone to write with. For a majority of the session (that's what the people in the biz call it when people get together to write...I just made that up) I threw out ideas and Jon was able to distill them into lines. THEN we would haggle over words.

Since that time in May, I haven't been able to be quite as focused when I attempt to sit down with the guitar and figure out a song. I feel that since I've experienced the process, I should be able to duplicate it. But alas, I am still without a song.

Thus, I am Captain Ahab and creative writing is my Moby Dick (a metaphor, and probably not executed properly).

But I will strive on.

I've got plenty of downtime coming this winter.