Be Still So Scottie Can Get a Lock on Your Coordinates...

     I am a songwriter. I started writing songs as a preteen. Those were pretty entertaining; overwrought with hormonal angst and social discontent. I honed my skills during college and met my future partner in life and crime. He taught me some tricks. He refined my approach. I kept writing.
     For years the only compositions I made public were songs written for weddings, silly songs for friends, etc... But from about 2006 until now I've been writing with a purpose.
     Why do I write? To get it out. To expel my thoughts, anger, joy, love, hate, social commentary, political opinions, worldview, etc. To express it to anyone and no one. To qualify these things first and foremost for myself. Because the mess doesn't leave my head once it's penned into a singable poem... but often I understand the mess better.

I write in strange bursts. Once I would have called them unpredictable. I no longer would. I have learned to see the signs of a writing stretch coming. When all feels lost... when i experience a new level of anger in one of my many roles in life... when the past swallows me up in a cloud of choking fumes and sedating memories... I write. Sometimes, as sleep creeps up, and my mind relaxes, a song materializes almost like a visitor beamed on board the Enterprise... and I write it down.
When all feels warm... when rays of light illuminate a new thing of beauty... when smiles commandeer my face without warning, when happy tears well up... I write.
    
The extremes are difficult. Life in the middle of the psycho-social road is easier, by far. But I learned to appreciate, if not embrace, multi-elevation ride. Without it I wouldn't have this ridiculous body of work, that confounds yet soothes me regularly. There's a rumor, passed around by songwriters, that Johnny Cash once stated "one must write at least one-hundred songs, before he/she will write a good one".
     Well, Johnny...I passed that mark sometime in the past 2 years... Bring it on.
 I don't write to any particular fan demographic. I don't worry too much about genre, or how to "explain" my songs. But I do have a goal. That purpose I mentioned earlier... I have never been moved/touched/changed/awakened/healed/delighted/entertained or heartbroken, by anything on earth, quite like good songwriting. I think of the artists I adore like forefathers. Like my team of psychiatrists... like family... like a mirror for the soul.

    If I do nothing else of value in my years on earth, I want to write songs that take another person or persons to that same place. I want to give back into this incredible circle.
    I am nervous, but ecstatic about the Spring 2013 debut of Honeylark's first album. I am trying to balance my excitement and dreams with doses of reality... that not everyone will like my songs. It's possible no one will... that I will probably not get a fancy record deal, and never again worry about the mundanity of earning income... that people don't buy vinyl, or cd's or even digital downloads, now that the social climate has birthed "spotify" and her predecessors/offspring...
But I'm still excited. I'm excited because my main goal is still attainable. And with that, a renegade smile has unexpectedly commandeered my face, yet again....