j.Po Thots: Songwriting Frequencies

Tuned in...or trying to be. Greetings from the Dallas airport. I have watched 2 flights depart to Albuquerque, but apparently am not cool enough to be on either of them...hence I wait. And blog. I've heard many theories and explanations of how one writes a song, and I think two things hinder any kind of concrete study: a) it's different for everyone (how cliche, but true) b) most of the time, songwriters don't know where the heck it comes from anyway. Well, I mean...there's the "formula song" made for radio that is polished and henpecked into perfection. That's an art unto itself and I don't take issue. I would like to try doing that sometime, though it might make me cry on the first thousand attempts. Then there's that...other thing. The muse? The subconscious? Luck? The other day I was doing some really repetitive tasks, assembling packets of paper. Large ones. I have the paper cuts to prove it. I'm thinking along, minding my own business, when this line pops into my head. It was a pretty cool line. Now, I've had this happen enough at this point to know I need to stop and write it down or Jott it to myself (a great service for leaving yourself voicemail notes and things -- it transcribes them for you and sends them to your email! Or you can listen like a normal voicemail. Or you can download thesound file online. Jott is golden...but I digress). So I grabbed a pencil and scrawled it and went along my merry way. That line, from where I'll never know, is currently sitting as the first line of my new song, which is a pretty big responsibility for a line. BUT WHERE DID IT COME FROM? Why did it hit me then? I always quote Mary Chapin Carpenter, who was quoting Bill Monroe when she said she kind of picks songs "out of the air." I always loved that analogy. I've adapted it to my own brain, and lately I've been trying to write more...but when the songs are out there and I am here...what does "write more" mean? I've decided I'm like a radio, and my writer's brain can learn to scan frequencies. Now, the more frequencies you can scan the better, so that means I need to be constantly exposing myself to other forms of art and stimuli of that nature...different genres, new writers, the whole shebang. But it's not just the purposeful scan that brings up those good first lines. It's kind of being in tune to the scan...at all times. When you're driving, when you're assembling large amounts of paper together, when you're taking a walk or writing an email. I do think that as a writer, I am learning to be more in tune with the scanning for a larger amount of time. Maybe one day I'll be adept at plucking those gems out of the air like Bill Monroe and MCC. Or perhaps I am just hearing voices, hehhehheh.