I was with a friend today for lunch who is a gifted and productive writer, and at one point he said how sometimes for him the hardest part is coming up with a topic. And I got to thinking about my songwriting and how inspiration appears to me and motivates me. Looking back over my 170+ finished songs and the one currently under construction I spent a bit of time in retrospection about it.
What is it exactly that moves me to find a song? What things seem unable to? Etc.
There is no shortage of inspiration in life from all directions, and it is almost hard for me not to find it around me and yet often my receptors are jammed and creative flow may stop for a while. Other times it can’t turn off and I can hardly keep up and/or the output becomes too thin of substance for the rush in getting it down and out before a next idea hits me and infects me.
Some examples are:
Suffering; frequently that can indeed be it with me and so certain ballads are a release of small parts of agony into music or lyrics – like “Drift of Snow”
or “Tomorrow”
Joy: Sometimes moments of joy have given themselves to personal inspiration – like “Unwind”.
Humor: This is an infrequent visitor to my musical inspirations, but sometimes I witness something of the ridiculous in others or myself and can’t help but put it into a song – like “Mad as Hell”
Natural Beauty: “I Wish” covers this one both in the beauty of nature and/or the simplicity of time with horses.
Irony: Again this can be cheating towards suffering with personal ironies or disappointments of romance, but it can also be the irony of people wanting one thing and doing everything to prevent it, like “Bobcat Blues” or “Little Squaw”
Mourning: Like “Ebb and Flow”
There are others and I don’t wish to belabor the point, but I appreciated afresh my friend’s comment.
