Music Lessons
Last April, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I sat out on my back patio and wrote lyrics to a song. A and I had been talking about collaborating on a song together; in 40 years of playing guitar, he’d noodled aplenty, but had never written an original, and he wanted to try. So I wrote the words, tweaked it a bit, and then sent it to him via e-mail, letting him know that it was still in draft form, and that once music started happening, there was no question that major edits would have to take place, so he should take whatever liberties with the lyric he so desired. This was a collaboration, and I wasn’t wedded to anything yet.
He worked on it a bit, but the spring was a busy time for him, work-wise. Then again, I didn’t know a time that wasn’t. But he didn’t get too far, and was unwilling to share early drafts. And then he passed away, and I never did hear the ideas he’d recorded. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I decided I would finish our song, when I was ready to face it.
That point came in January, and I dug the song out and started trying to figure out some chords for it. It was then I realized that, as usual, I’d put way too many words in every line, way too many lines in each verse, and it was a steaming pile of verbiage that was going nowhere fast. No wonder he didn’t get very far; but knowing him, he was probably loath to mess with the words. He kept referring to it as “your song,” and I kept correcting him with “It’s OUR song.” I felt bad; I’d hamstrung him, and maybe he would’ve been able to get further if I had been a better lyricist on the first pass. Maybe we’d have finished the song, and it wouldn’t be one more thing we didn’t get to do. And then again, maybe not.
I came up with some chords I liked, and then started hacking away at the lyrics so that they would scan. I got something that worked, except for one verse. I just didn’t know what to do with it. I just needed to finish that one verse, and I’d have a song. When I ran out of things to do Saturday morning, I decided I’d finish the damn thing. I was tired of it mocking me.
But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to do it, and I decided I won’t. Not because it was a song A and I were writing and it’s too difficult, but rather because the woman who wrote the song no longer exists, and I’m not feeling it. I remember her, certainly. But it’s a cocky little song about being in control of your life. When I wrote it, I was on top of the world, and on that warm Saturday, I really couldn’t imagine things being much better than they were. And I guess they couldn’t be. But one day in July I learned that I had very little control over anything, and that things could get a whole lot worse. I’ve spent the months since getting used to that idea, and I think I’m getting it, and getting okay with it.
I really have no beef with the meaning of the words, but the tone of the piece just doesn’t sit right anymore. I’ve lost the optimistic invincibility that wrote those words, and there’s a smugness to them that I find hard to stomach now. I want to pat the woman who wrote those words on her head, and say “Well, bless your heart, dearie.”
The process that has gotten me to this point with the song, though, is indicative of the lesson I’ve learned over and over in my life, and which apparently I’ve not mastered, because it keeps coming, which is this: to yield. I kept pushing, kept trying, working on this song, and so many other things in my life, out of principle instead of desire, and the harder I tried, the less I got out of it. When I went the other direction, I found the right answer, and I knew it was right because it felt right, when all the effort just felt wrong. And so I will file this song away; it served its purpose, but it serves me no longer. And so I will no longer serve it.
I’m hoping the lesson just might take this time.