 |
| Hasty scratchings of a lyric forming, all raw with excitment and imperfections. |
There’s a particular kind of morning I love, where the music’s down — not finished, never finished, but down enough that it breathes on its own. The structure’s loose, like a tent held up with a few good pegs and a lot of faith. Verse here, chorus there, maybe a middle eight if it fancies one. Nothing’s nailed shut. That’s the beauty of it.
So then comes the part where I have to go looking for the song that’s already hiding inside the song. Lyrics. Except not lyrics yet — first I just sing. Open mouth, no words, scanning over the chords like I’m running my hand along a wall in the dark, feeling for a door. The melody’s in there somewhere. It’s a slippery little rascal, the vocal melody — you think you’ve got it and it wriggles off into a different shape three bars later. So I chase it. Mostly around the chorus first, funnily enough, before there’s a single word written. The tune insists on existing before the meaning does.
And the words, when they start arriving, don’t queue up politely. They slosh in like a wave you can’t quite catch — you reach for it and it’s already pulled back out. Nothing’s certain. Nothing’s certain. Nothing’s certain. And then suddenly, everything is, all at once, and the flow just opens.
That’s the bit I write for, honestly. The burst. Thoughts tumbling over each other, tripping over their own feet, and my hand just trying to keep pace with whatever’s racing through. Half-finished sentences. Words missing entirely. Spellings that wouldn’t survive a glance, scrawled fast because slow would lose it. Capturing the smoke before it’s gone.
And even after all that — even with the words down and the take recorded — it’s still not over. Not really. Right up until the final bounce, the whole thing’s still breathing, still capable of changing shape on you.