Saving the Singer’s Inside Stuff

Two weeks ago I checked into Nashville Southern Hills Medical Center for the removal of approximately a dozen tumors in my large intestines. Each tumor was about the size of a golf-ball in diameter. My surgeon had many concerns about the damage the swelling from my diseased intestines could have caused to my diaphragm, etc. Knowing that I am a singer/songwriting, he assured me that everything possible would be done to save my “singer’s inside stuff.”
 
Unfortunately, when he opened my abdominal wall, he also discovered that my Gall Bladder also had tumors in it, and was nearly gangrenous! It had already started to seep toxic fluids into the already incurable large intestines, as well as the abdominal wall! It took nearly a six-hour operation to remove all the toxics and diseased tissue from my abdomen.  My abdominal region was damaged far worse than we had originally thought it to be.
 
But here’s God’s beauty in all this damage! Once all the disease tissue was removed and the diaphragm (the main singer’s inside stuff) could be seen more clearly, my doctor said it was smooth and pink: “Like a baby’s behind!! It was as if someone had gone inside and wrapped my “singer’s inside stuff” in a protective layer before any of the intestines became disease.” I know that someone had done just that—My God!

Journaling: A Songwriter’s Creative Deposits

This is an example of how patched together one month's worth of my journaling can look! 

My very first writing happened as a preschooler. I would draw curvy lines and pretend that I was writing. I was always compelled to draw stick-pictures of what I wanted to remember. Over the decades I have refined my journaling skills, and often still doodle on my pages as I am thinking. My journals have outgrown the old cedar chest, and now have a closet of their own. Guess you could say I am a “Closet Journalist”!

As a songwriter I have come to respect each of those pages as a valuable, creative deposit in every song. My “Hook Books” are filled from unexpected lines gleamed by rereading my journals. For example, the chorus of my next song was literally taken from a journal page when I was eight-years-old. The beauty of journaling is that you will always have a bank of ideas that are written by a writer you know well!

Nashville renowned songwriter, Cindy Wilt Colville, recently posted a very interesting blog about how journaling has contributed to her twenty-five year career. She graciously granted permission for me to share her ideas on my blog. Enjoy and learn!

- Carolana 

Writing Your Life

(Reprinted with permission from cindywiltcolville.com)

A valuable tool for capturing your life experience is journaling. This week I had a conversation with a songwriter who is in her first year of college. She is taking eighteen credit hours, so her plate is full. She told me she is committed to journaling every day. She is also engaging another tool to capture her life experiences, that is, to document any memorable events by writing them down on small pieces of paper and collecting them in a jar.

One key part of your songwriting life is your own life experience. It is the struggles, challenges and joys, successes and (to quote Bob Halligan, Jr.) the things that bug you that will inspire your songs and give them uniqueness. I believe that the desire to create songs is a gift that comes from God. It is your choice and opportunity to respond to this gift by doing the work it takes to write those songs.

I challenge you to journal: fifteen minutes every day for the next month. Set a timer and write whatever comes into your mind including scriptures, conversations, feelings, and any other details about your day. Do not edit anything you write. You will not have to show this to anyone. At the end of the month go back through your entries and highlight any insights and themes that have potential to be sources for song ideas. I would be very interested to hear if this discipline helps you to listen to your life.

I encourage you to write songs true to your own experience. Your most authentic creative expression will come from this place and have the greatest impact on those who hear your songs.

Melody Writing: When God Sends His Joy in My Mournings

Just a few weeks ago, I blogged about how God had sent the perfect guitar into my life. What joy I felt! But my joy was short-lived, last week my MS (Multiple Sclerosis) caused my left hand to freeze around the neck of my guitar. The MS was causing dreaded muscle spasticity in my left hand. I cried with panic at the thought of not being able to play the guitar. I grieved that loss.

I knew I had to move on with the co-writing of the song, “Pain Beyond My Prayers.”

He called, and suggested that we try the melody on the piano. He said, “This song just needs a smooth piano sound. Just something I am hearing with it. But I am not real great on the keyboard. Can you do it?”

I sat down at my piano, frozen with fear, and tried to remember all the technical stuff to playing the piano. Then, one finger at a time, I played the notes that my heart was feeling --D minor-- the notes of sorrow and sadness — the sound of mourning a loss.  I can't tell you exactly how it happened, but the melody was written in less than an hour!!   

My robust, six-foot co-writer stood in tears at the sound of notes. He said, "This song just needed you to pour out your pain on the piano! That is something that only your heart could understand how to write!"

While my left hand lay asleep in my lap. But my right hand worked away - one note at a time. Even though I am left-handed!

Then I realized, God just needed one of my hands to do this particular job. He is faithful to give us exactly what we need - like manna from heaven - He gives us no more nor no less than what we need to get His job done. Anything extra just weighs our hearts down. We can only fly with Him, when we have just what we need!

Have you had times when you had too much weighing your heart down to do a song with a free, light heart?  What did you have to release to get your song done?

Photo Credit: Google Images

Lyrical Sizing: Tiny is Mighty

One of my pride and joys is my reclaimed Mercedes. Even though I bought it very used, I will still park over in the next county to avoid a scratch or ding. Heaven forbid that my baby should get dinged.

Then it happened! While in the drugstore, someone had hooked and torn the left bumper-clip off my baby. Probably the smallest part on my car—the tiny bumper-clip—was broken and failed to hold the entire bumper in place. But when the drugstore bumper grabber damaged it, it suddenly became the most important part on the car!

Writing song lyrics can be that way, too.

Recently, I labored over changing one word in the chorus of the song “God is Everywhere.” That one word was the smallest word of the whole lyric and took me days to write. And just like the tiny bumper-clip on my Mercedes, that one tiny word could make or break the impact of the whole chorus! 

Am I the only one this happens to? Are there others of you? Tell me the smallest word you have obsessed over for days.

Photo Credits: Mercedes - mine, Crashed Bumper - funjooke.com