The songwriting challenge continues. Two more have peeked out of the covers that are my head, and I notice rumblings suggesting that one will be born today. 

 

I listened to a Ted talk about muses. The speaker compared how we consider genius today with a few hundred years back. Language expresses it well. Once upon a time society described genius as someone who visits you. A muse. Recently the notion has morphed to be an attribute of the creative person, like the color of their hair, or the curve of their nose. 

 

I concur with keeping company with, rather than ownership. Songwriting for me has been like turning down the volume around me and listening to a tune that is skipping by. I believe that everyone could compose. Just eavesdrop on a three year old crooning to her shoes. 

 

There was a period when I was invested in shoving our songs into the public ear. I went so far as to write to John Michael Talbot, and sent a recording to the team that produced Fireproof. I begged our son, who worked for a big name musician in Hollywood, to leave a cd on the kitchen counter. But he thought that was unethical. I am his mother! What do ethics have to do with it?

 

For reasons I cannot justify, my ache to fling them to a broader audience was coupled with shyness about sharing with my non church friends. I kept that part of me a secret. 

 

When we were leaving California my inhibition expired and we hosted a concert, unabashedly singing fifty of our favorites. It brought more joy than I could swallow in one dose, which is why it continues to bless me twenty years later.  

 

Anyway that drive has expired, and I sing because it feels like praise. And prayer. John and I long ago agreed that if we die and our job is crafting music, we will know that we are in heaven. But if our job is recording, or marketing that music, we will be sure that we landed in hell.