How to Write a Song

My sister sent me a link to a blog at The New York Times called Measure for Measure: How to Write a Song and Other Mysteries. I whipped over there, thinking I would scan whatever it was and go make dinner, but then I got to the welcome box:

"With music now available with a single, offhand click, it's easy to forget that songs are not born whole, polished and ready to play. They are created by artists who draw on some combination of craft, skill and inspiration. In the coming weeks, the contributors to this blog -- all accomplished songwriters -- will pull back the curtain on the creative process as they write about their work on a songs in the making."

Whoa, right? If you are a creator of anything that takes craft, skill and inspiration, you've got to feel gratutide for The New York Times taking the energy and space to devote to such a thing.

I continued to read the particular post, which was written by Roseanne Cash, daughter of the legendary Johnnie Cash. It's a really lovely tribute of a daughter to a father, and a musician to a musician, and it also manages to capture the poignancy of the recent inaugurantion. Here is a tiny piece of what she says:

He looked back at me over his shoulder and gave me a little self-satisfied smile. He started tapping his foot, swinging his ankle back and forth, in a way that was so iconic, so him: the sultry internal rhythm of a boy from the Mississippi Delta. He was grooving with the band. He let another 8 bars go by as he settled in, and then he sang the first line of the song. After the show, Dennis, the drummer, came up to me. “I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget the way he tapped his foot,” he said. I never will, either.

Further down on the blog is another amazing post by Suzanne Vega, where she chronicles the thought process behind the writing of a song about her Puerto Rican roots.

The whole thing reminded me what a very personal thing it is to make art.