Good songs

After reviewing many of my own songs written so long ago as to not be instantly recognizeable as to what I was thinking, I realized something.

Maybe I was a good song writer because I could not express myself. Because, I was not able to follow the thought I had, I applied what I said to what I was currently thinking and thought, brilliant! Although, at the time I "meant" no such thing, It feels like I wrote about what I got out of it. So, maybe good songs and poetry are the ones that capture a relationship's dynamics and yet remain vague enough to apply to anything the audience thinks up. Thus, each reader independantly thinks the words were  written precisely for their situation, and appeal can reach greater numbers.

Everything I write is like that, and I was working on fixing it.I was working on trying to say exactly what *I* was thinking. Instead of being "cryptic" I could be "concise". Usually, I just am writing as I think only my fingers cannot keep up so I have to see what I was saying and that generates a new thought, sort of a tangent from the original until the original is forgotten in written words and a new meaning takes shape in my songs, peobably entirely unlike what I started to write in the first place.

I remember in English class in high school (Elkhart Central) a teacher sort of disected a song as a piece of literature. It was by the walking dead I believe all I remember is that it made no sense at first, but that was the charm. It called out for instrumental help and we had to actually study it out, for surely the writer had something worth saying. This was quite influencial to me cause I thought, "hmm. This is what the kids like? Well, anyone can say things without making sense." As we delved into it one peer asked, " how we knew that was what it was about, maybe it just said something backwards. Another answered and said, "Yeah, It doesn't seem any different than those poems that you tell us means something, but how do we know? The teacher explained that was precisely her point. I thought it was that songs are nothing without music, but she taught us that poetry and lyrics have meanings and they are worth our time to figure out.