Songwriting

Lately I've been writing quite a few songs. It seems everytime I pick up the guitar at the moment I can muddle around with a chord and strum sequence and get something started.

The thing I'm finding strange is where the songs come from? Sometimes I'll start a song and have no idea where the topic came from or how the words found themselves strung together.

On rare occasions it's been very obvious. Sometimes the way I am feeling or what I am thinking will just flow out on to the page and the music will somehow manage to fit itself around them. I find that those are my favourite songs, I guess because they are the most personal ones.

But at other times, I have no idea where the ideas come from. I've heard people saying before that songs aren't really written, you just find them, like the words and the music always belonged together, they just needed someone to tie them to each other. Now I'm nowhere near that new age in my thoughts about it, but it is fairly wonderful sometimes when you finish something and then look back at it and think "where did that come from?"

Last night from nowhere I started writing a really, really depressing song. One of the verses was:

"Somewhere out there, there is a child with a gun
And somewhere out there he's not the only one
And somewhere out there another life is gone
But where do they go when the killing is done?

And I am not the one to bring them home
No, I am not the one to bring them home...."

From there it went on to dying stars, broken hearts, crashing planes, burning houses, hurricanes.........

So where did that come from? I just finished reading Harry Potter after a lovely day off at home on my own and hadn't watched any news.

That's what I mean - it's all a bit of a mystery sometimes.