of horses and hymns

The guitars stare back at me, waiting. They are like horses, with personalities and needs, muscles and smells. I can trust them. Above all else, a guitar is loyal. It will play until it dies. Some days it can be sour, especially if you neglect it. A guitar wants to be played as much as a person wants to be loved. 

I write songs in complete silence, with no one in the house. No one can be in the next room. A shadow falls across the process then, an embarrassing, messy, quicksand feeling of incompetence seeps in between every crack. No one can hear my ramblings, my howls, my off key adventures but the guitars. Eventually, the ship rights itself, the melody is abandoned or refined. The words get whittled down. Sometimes the song dies right there on the operating table, even if we gave it all of the blood we could and kept resuscitating for an hour. 

Today, I turned the corner on a new song, Miss Molly. Some of the chords are from a fragment of something I wrote fifteen years ago. I played it for my friend Felix, who lowered his head as if he would hear it better that way with his chin to his chest. 

"It sounds like a hymn or something." He said, and cracked a little smile. 

I had no idea what some of the chords were, besides part of a D and part of a G. 

Eventually I found out that I was playing a few of the changes you will find in songs like Amazing Grace. So. of course Felix was right. It just took me ages to let his reaction sink in. 

The apartment is empty for the first time in months, and the Waterloo is tuned up. We wander towards an E minor, and the end of the chorus takes an unexpected turn. I like to find those changes, those unexpected page turns that no one sees coming, including me. Jumping horses in midstream, probably changing keys but most important, telling that story that wants to be told. 

Hello, I'm the mayor of 1st Street
And all I can see
Is an ocean of beer bottles
Your freckled shoulders
Looking back at me