Relish

          I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but for the first week and a half of term, I was without a bed.

          I was living on a mattress on the floor with boxes everywhere. In those first few days, papers, clothes, books, and miscellany leaked out of drawers and off of shelves in order to strew themselves all over my half of the room in a state of cheerfully democratic chaos, so my guitar cozied up to dirty socks and my computer languished under a pile of old class syllabuses and my floor lamp got friendly with a Pashmina.
          I discovered that it's hard to be motivated to put anything away when you can't put everything away.

          But yesterday afternoon, while I was in class, I'm told that a lonely Physical Plant worker, cursing and clumsy, wrestled a bed frame into my room.
          I dismantled it when I got back (I felt capable and grown up using that wrench), flipping the bedsprings around in order to lift my bed without using bed risers. It wasn't much of an accomplishment, but I did it without qualms or dithering. I secretly relished when I was pinched or scratched or scraped by the old nuts and bolts - it was that pride you get in doing something with your hands, something tangible and immediate.

          The entire room shifted around the addition of the bed - it was like introducing a new planet into a solar system; everything adjusted, leaning into the new gravitational pull. The fridge and boxes were drawn under the bed, and my roommate's appliances took up position instead. Decoration finally went up on my bulletin board (a scarf, a framed photo, calendar, ticket stubs, posters, letters), even my desk and wardrobe - feeling left out of the festivities - were organized.
          I finally feel like I've moved in. I don't dread being in my room anymore. It's an extension of myself now, not just a storehouse for sad and disconnected belongings.


          In other news, I'm writing another song. I don't know why I continue to write things on piano, when it's plain that my voice can't compete - I just don't have it in me. I've always admired those people who can belt, singing over the keys without strain, just effortlessly. I'm more suited to the guitar, and probably more suited to nylon strings than the steel ones I actually use.
          I'm getting over my need to write a song in one sitting - in the past, if I didn't finish a song in an evening, it would die right there. Something would go out of it, and the song would molder. Any attempt to resuscitate it would fail. But recently, I've learned to hold onto the moment.
          Part of it is that I've learned to let the trigger go - if the tone of the lyrics slides away and wanders into meanings I'd never meant to write, so be it. Forcing a song to conform to how you began it spells death. It was hard learning to let it go. There were things I'd wanted to say, and I was damned well going to say it in the three minutes of song. But I found myself wrestling with tepid lyrics, insipid rhymes, trying to force a specific meaning to fit the grid I'd set up in the first verse, the first chorus. The second half of my songs lacked the honesty and freshness of the beginning, the part written from nothing.
          I'm finally understanding that it's all right if the song drifts away from the original intent. And, usually, it'll still end up saying what I need it to say. It's like trying hard to see something in the distance - when you fight it, straining your eyes, you can't see it; but when you relax, let your eyes soften, allow things to blur a little, it suddenly comes into focus.
          So we'll see how this one goes. I'm into the second verse (I'd written one, but ended up scrapping it - it was too bland, too insistent, tried too hard to be clever), and I think it's going where it needs to go. Give me another few days, and I should be finished. No promises though.
          You can't put a deadline on inspiration.


          You know. Except in the real world.


          Which I'll ignore. Relish the lifestyle while you can.