Let me sing you to shipwreck

It's normal to almost always wish you were somewhere else, isn't it? Like right now I'm watching the live stream of Radiohead's set at Coachella and I wish I was there, with Thom Yorke and his Pyramid Song instead of sitting in my bedroom with a half eaten apple and the remains of my hair that I feverishly cut off a couple of days ago and am yet to actually clean out. Taking a break from working for a couple of hours. Working, writing. Not really 'work' in the true sense because I love it and I am so lucky to be like this. 


Writing songs is a very personal, very serious, usually very private thing that I spend a lot of my time doing. By keeping the manic ritual really private, I read almost straight from my diary and piece together some kind of musical scrapbook entry. I write so much, it's all sacred - even the terrible songs I have written (and I've written many, so many) are sacred and something to take pride in I guess just because I have produced something honest.  


Once I show another person something I have spent my hours pouring over, it's not mine anymore. I guess the reason I take this thing so seriously is because I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with what I'm giving away. Once my own feelings and stories aren't mine anymore (the only things I have that make anyone any different from anyone else) and suddenly belong to the world (or just my mum and dad, or whoever I've sheepishly shown a new song to) I always feel as though I can't write anything that does justice to existence. Everything that I thought I saw with my 18 year old eyes is stupid and once I show someone what I have produced, I can see how oblivious I am to everything ever. And how often I fall back onto what I know, the same stories, the same feelings. 


I gasp for criticism but at the same time I dread it. I take it and almost always use it and find it to be amazingly helpful, but sometimes let myself fall into that melodramatic idea that I'm impossibly deluded, that everything I do is so much less that I think it is and everything I have ever written or will ever write isn't worth the time I spend on it. Which is when I start thinking 'Oh God I have no backup, I have nothing but this thing that I can't even do well anyway!' 


So I guess I almost always wish I was somewhere else or doing something else or being someone else, perhaps less so but even still in this situation at present, where I pretty much have everything I could have ever asked for, this time last year. I will keep showing people my songs because after all, I do think I have something to give, however small, or something to say, even if I don't really know how to say it yet. I think that maybe what I'm trying to provide for people is reassurance, that everything that you have ever felt ever has been felt a million times over and will continue to be felt a million years into the future. By using songwriting as a cathartic/scrapbooking exercise I help myself, and by writing about universal feelings and whatever I guess I especially hope to help someone else. 


By writing heaps about my 'practice' I suppose I'm trying to zone in on why I feel like this is what I want to do for the rest of forever. By justifying the work I do I give it context which in turn is conducive to productivity! Yeah!