I've been listening to my music library on my iPod at work, song by song, in alphabetical order. I'm not sure when I started, but I'm currently in the Os. When I hit H, I decided I should start writing down the songs that really stuck out to me, for any number of reasons. And then I thought, "Well, I'm sitting here for seven and a half hours every day having these thoughts about all these songs, why not write them down?" And so developed the idea of the song-based blog.
Not a new idea, really. I'm sure if you followed me in the past, you know I have a history of blogging about songs. But it's been a damn long time since I've done it and never this extensively. I feel I need to show a little love to the songs that I don't give quite as much attention to, and of course, to the ones that I shout about from the mountaintops, too.
It has been far, far, far too long since I've really sat down and written. I think about writing pen-and-paper style every single day, but somehow that seems more intimate and frightening than blogging. Go figure. Guess I'm not quite brave enough to be alone with my own thoughts, yet.
However, this is the first of October, and that means that the first of November is one month away. Ever since hearing about NaNoWriMo from my friend Rena in college, I have always wanted to do it, and it starts the first of November. As I haven't flexed my writing muscles in ages, I thought a good ol' blog-post-a-day would help warm them up a bit and maybe get me prepared to start on National Novel Writing Month. Who knows if I'll finish, but I just have to try.
I think about writing every single day, but there's something that just so intimidating about it. Probably because I'm trying to look at it on the whole instead of in tiny pieces. It's pretty terrifying to think about having a novel written and how badly it will probably turn out at the end, but I've just got to do it. Once the first one is out of the way, all the rest will be easy, right?
Another major stumbling block has been what to write about. I have several ideas, of course, but they all are going to require more than just skimming the surface. They're going to require some digging under the foundation, some excavating, and you better believe some skeletons are going to be unearthed. That's pretty damn scary, if you ask me.
So, anyway, back to the song project. Something I've been known to do in the past, something I plan to do in earnest, at least in the next month, to prepare me for getting that first book written. Of course, I won't get through all the songs I've written down if I only write about one song every day, but hopefully I'll come back 'round to it once NaNoWriMo is complete.
And so...
Hannah - Ray LaMontagne
I re-organized and integrated some still-boxed-up CDs last night and started reflecting on how much music my friends have given me. It's incredible, really. A whole, whole lot of music has been passed on to me by others, and Ray LaMontagne is no exception. This song was on a mixed CD I was given, and as it started playing after some other just okay songs, I thought, "Wait. Stop. What was that? Play it again". As I do with songs I immediately connect with, I listened to it over and over and over.
I can't pretend to know what the story is about, and for as many times as I've listened to it, I honestly still haven't figured it out. But the sorrow and the hope.
"I'd walk one mile on just broken glass, to fall down at your feet."
It puts you on both sides of the song almost all at once. You feel for him, and you are him. You've been there. You feel his sorrow, and it's your sorrow at the same time.
It's a song that seems intensely personal to the writer but is open enough to have the listener pour their own experiences into it.
And that's some damn good songwriting, if you ask me.
No comments:
Post a Comment