True Musicianship, and Coming Down from the Tower

Throughout the writing of this blog, I have established that I am a Real Musician because:

*It sometimes takes me hours to record a single song.
*I am frequently dissatisfied with my work.
*My day job gets in the way of my music-making.

That last one is especially pertinent this week, since working 40 hours means that I'm too tired and don't really have the time or mental capacity to write a whole new song. So I dug out an old song I wrote back in high school to share with you all! It tells the story of a popular fairy tale--I'm sure you'll be able to figure out which one!

I was thinking that it would be interesting to compare this song to the ones I've written recently and see how my songwriting has developed over the years, but I realized--from the sound and feel of this song, my songwriting hasn't changed all that much! Which is a bit discouraging, since one would hope that my skills would have evolved somewhat since I was sixteen or seventeen years old. But, to be fair, this is one of the better songs I wrote back then, and I haven't written all that much since. Now that I'm trying to write a song a week, I hope to see more of an evolution occur...eventually.

It's interesting to think how, back in, say, middle school, when I was in fifth or sixth grade, I wrote so many songs. I had a big three-ring binder filled with several dozen songs I had written; I was constantly coming up with new songs! Most of them weren't very good by today's standards, of course, and I didn't play guitar back then so I didn't have that aspect to dwell upon, but sometime I wonder: where did that go? How did I lose the ability to be so prolific? To revisit the Ira Glass quote that inspired this blog, I think what probably happened was that as I grew older, I raised my standards and acquired better taste. My songs didn't seem so good anymore, and I started to become more critical of my output and of what ideas I would allow to survive.

In the course of a recent entry in Amanda Palmer's blog (discussing a songwriting clinic she did for the summer program at Berklee) she mentioned a Leonard Cohen quote that she keeps taped up next to her piano:

"I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive."

I think this is excellent advice that I need to employ in my own songwriting. I shouldn't simply condemn songs the moment I encounter a snag in their writing. I should plow through and see it to its completion before I decide whether or not it's actually crap.

ANYWAY. I know what you're all really here for.

The title of this blog post includes the phrase "coming down from the tower" both because it pertains to the song (see what I did there!) and also because the theme of emergence is central to this blog and this project. I have been locking myself up in a metaphorical tower, both musically (my personal standards being so high that it's difficult to actually complete a song) and in terms of audience, hardly allowing anyone else but myself to hear the music I'm creating. So now, like Rapunzel, I am descending from the tower and out into the big wide world, letting everyone see not only my creative output, but my creative process as well! Gee whiz!

You helped me let my hair down, now I know what love can be!

Next week will be another older song, thought not as old as this week. (Will probably be 2010 Song of the Year, i.e. the one decent song I wrote in 2010.) Time to add another bullet to the list of reasons why I'm a Real Musician: I miss writing songs!

What are you, new? Go to the first entry to find out what this blog is all about!