The Deeper Magic

If you are the kind of person who reflects upon your life from time to time......then you have probably identified various episodes/happenings which were pivotal - or at least appear to have have been pivotal - in molding you into the particular version of yourself that you are today.

Someone gave you your first book, or took you fishing for the first time.

You met someone with whom you found you shared a common interest.

Someone used or abused you.

But some aspects of ourselves......sometimes the aspect of ourselves we value the most......are a little less explicable in their origins.

I love to write songs. But I couldn't tell you why I love to write songs - much less where that love came from. It will - to some extent, at least - be connected to the fact that:

• I love to play the guitar; and

• I have always been more interested in creating my own music than I have been in learning the music of others.

But that's not the whole picture.

It will also be connected to the fact that I love words; both the reading and the writing of them. I love lyricism of a well-coined phrase and the sacred weight of hard-won truths.

Music + words = songs..............right?

Yes......but it's more than that. The simple fact that I love the making of music and writing of words does not in of itself properly explain why I love the craft and experience of writing songs as much as I do. Perhaps it accounts for things as they appear on the surface......but it does not account for what C. S. Lewis might have called the deeper magic.

About 98% of my songwriting is done in my little corner of the family music room, late in the evening, in solitude. In a world full of flashing lights and anger and noise, I write my songs in semi-darkness and peace and quiet.

I used to think that writing songs was my way of working things out; of exorcising my demons......or something. But the older I get and the more songs I write, the more I find myself thinking that I am not exorcising my demons; I'm just making peace with them.

Mostly I just nodded and wave from a safe distance......but from time to time I'll cross the road and we'll shake hands.

I try to not think too much when I am in the creative stages of writing - both in respect of the music and (even more so) the lyrics. I try really hard......to not try; to get out of my own way. To not block the creative flow or otherwise self-censor.

There is always be time to self-censor later.

And maybe that's it. Maybe the real reason that I love writing songs - the reason that writing songs has become so indescribably important to me - is because it is in the act and experience of writing songs that I am truly free and able to speak the truth of myself, to myself, for myself.

Even if the only person who will ever truly hear and understand......is myself.