a few months i picked up my strat again and remembered how right it felt in my hands. in between all the rest of the stuff i was working on, i tried to set myself a basic goal, to write a song again. i'd written so many. it should be easy? but something had atrophied, and i couldn't find my to the words that would fit the mood of a particular set of chords.
a couple weeks ago, sitting in the corner of the living room with a cooling cup of coffee, i found my way through:
(broken chord intro)
(verse)
(chorus)
(verse)
(chorus)
(instrumental verse & chorus)
(broken chord outro)
i'd been messing around with the chords long enough that i knew i had the mood, and then i finally found the lyrics that worked. this used to be quick, easy. but a decade and a half of telling myself this part of my life was done, and moving on to other creative pursuits, had meant that finding my way back took some time.
i've been thinking of next steps. maybe next summer i sit down with my guitar and amp and mics and put together a basic lo-fi bedroom thing. i missed the best window of my life to be doing this. i should've started guitar as a teenager, like my friends were doing. but the past is immutable, and maybe now is good enough. record something simple, find the courage to find an open mic and perform that one song. start saying yes, and stop finding reasons to say not yet.