Campfyre Stories

I’ll admit it, I’m proud of myself.  I set some attainable goals and exceeded them.

Not only did I write a complete song in a week that is ready to play (probably), but I was going through my song book the other day and found a song I had never finished.  I always liked it, so I took some time and finished it up.  It wasn’t until after I had practiced it and walked away that I realized what it was about…  again, it’s not a love song, at least not a romantic love song.  It’s actually a song that I didn’t realize I was writing for my best friend.

Some time ago (I forget exactly when), I was in a pretty deep depression.  Nothing was going right, I felt like I had no real options that would work for me.  Girl kept saying "You’re too close to this, you’re looking to hard.  Step back and the answer will come."  I’m not a very patient person and "wait and see" is just about the worst possible situation for me to find myself in.  I got frustrated with this repeated advice and unwittingly wrote a song that was essentially me saying all those things to Girl and her giving me what felt like useless advice.

But on the other side of things, her advice was completely sound and, eventually, the answer did come.  That was the missing piece of the song that I couldn’t see while I was in the middle of all the internal melodrama.  I was able to wrap up the song with solutions and answers, and to some extent an acknowledgement of all the things she had said to me.

What I find interesting about the whole thing, though, is that Girl and I are in an opposite situation.  She’s now telling me that she feels lost and that she doesn’t have the options in front of her that she’d like to have.  I’m the one saying "Step back and let the answer come" and, heh, she’s not really feeling it.

And now I have a song that’s really about the relationship that we have, each of us taking one of the two sides, non-exclusively.

I fully intend to perform it tonight.  The only downside is that she won’t be there to hear it.  But at least I have it for her.  It’s a really good feeling to have done this.