When I was a teenager in high school I decided I wanted to be a songwriter when I grew up. It didn't hurt that nearly all of my "boyfriends" during that phase of my life were musicians, singers, guitar players or drummers. So I kept a notebook with all of my budding song ideas. And one notebook turned into two, then three and then six or seven by the time high school was said and done. The problem was that all of my "songs", I use the term loosely as they were more like badly rhyming poems without music, were so depressing that anyone trying to put them to music would probably end up committing suicide.
Why in the world anyone would want to put that depressing dribble to music is beyond me now, but at the time I thought I was on to something. It is true of many songs and songwriters that they write their best songs when the going gets tough, the songwriters start writing. But I couldn't write a "don't worry, be happy" song to save my life. The problem was, when life was good who wanted to stop living long enough to commit it to a song - it was more fun to be in the moment. But when life sucked, writing a song about it was like therapy, it somehow helped you be in that moment and extract something worthwhile from it, with the word "worthwhile" being in the ears of the beholder.
I remember that I loved the songwriters more than the singers or the musicians. I loved Carol King more than James Taylor for You've Got a Friend, Leonard Cohen more than KD Lang for Hallelujah - heck I loved everything Leonard Cohen wrote and he couldn't sing for his life. Same with Bob Dylan, it was the words not the sound quality that always touched me. And I fell in love with these songwriters, those willing to bear their souls to the world and have it put to music for everyone to hear and know.
So you might have guessed, I didn't grow up to be a songwriter but I thought it might be fun to dig out one of those old songs and dust it off, do what I always wanted to do, share it with the world. So here goes:
Nothing More Than You
Silently and softly
I steal across your mind.
I do not wish
To devour time
But only to touch it.
At this moment
I think
There is nothing
More to life
Than you.
There are other things
That keep screaming
In my mind.
But I don't need to listen
Our whispered thoughts
Are enough.
At this moment
I think
There is nothing
More to life
Than you.
Don't die in front of
My reality.
I'm tired of reaching out
To touch
And seeing things disappear.
At this moment
I think
There is nothing
More to life
Than you.
Keep me
In your thoughts
At least.
Each year, less
But keep me somewhere.
At this moment
I think
There is nothing
More to life
Than you.
Now if there's anyone out there that feels compelled to put these words to music, just contact my agent and I'm sure we can arrange something. That is as soon as I get an agent :-)
Hallelujah.
This post is dedicated to Cheryl P, the one that spells her name wrong. The same one that shot the photo below.
