Your Mind Was Made

It’s funny. When you’re known for writing songs far too honestly and from personal experience, it sucks showing people new songs. Because even if the songs are based on imagination, people assume that the song is your actual opinion. And you want to explain that the song is a dramatization; it’s not really exactly how you feel. But no one believes that.

And then you start feeling really fake and guilty because you’ve always written from what you feel. Suddenly, you feel like you’re writing not for you but for other people. It’s as if you’re writing something so it will sell (as if) or that you’re lying so you can pull at people’s hearts. You start thinking about the person that the song was written about (or the muse, as it were) and you start wondering if they will be offended or if they will be prideful about it. You start wondering if they will know it is about them; you start wondering if they will feel sorry for you. I don’t want that. It was a song that came out in fifteen minutes. I didn’t think at all about the whole first verse. I just started singing it and wrote it down, and everything stuck. But should it really be that easy? I want my music to mean something. It does mean something to me, but… I guess I’ve grown comfortable with being completely vulnerable in my lyrics. I’ve grown comfortable with tearing up in a song, having my voice crack, being embarrassed and seeing the looks on everyone’s face. I’ve grown comfortable with being bare in front of people, being real. So when I feel like I’m stretching the truth or the emotion in it, something feels wrong. I start wondering if I’m even that good of a writer. I start wondering if I can feel anything at all anymore. I start feeling non-human, unfeeling.

And then I wonder if the lyrics really are how I feel after all. I start to wonder if it’s simply a song that is more honest than I’m comfortable with placing in someone else’s ears so soon. I start wondering if that is why I made up the excuse of detachment. I start wondering if that is why I stretched parts of the song, just so that I could say the whole song was a dramatization.

I get lost somewhere along the way and everything starts to feel off. I over-think it, but it's only because I really do care so much.

Either way, a song has been completed. It’s a good simple song, nothing special. But there is a great deal of emotion in it. Whether it’s all real or not, I don’t know. I hate that I can’t just pump out songs and be okay with it. I want every one of them to be my baby. I want to know exactly what I felt when I wrote every single one.

I guess I’ll remember what I felt about this one after all. What a strange feeling.

On another note, it feels good to have some form of artistic expression come out. It's been months.

Also, my work decided to block Pinterest.... :( This is more upsetting than I would like to admit. Haha