On Songwriting

There’s something about songwriting that feels like a release. A journal that you can hear. It makes me feel like all of the traumas, all of the everything that I’ve been through is worth it.

I go through spells where I can’t even get my pencil to move fast enough, those lightning strike ideas mean the world to me. But then there’s the rest of the time. When I’m too busy to sit down with an instrument, and so I function off of small snippets in my notes app or scribbled in the margin of my notes in class, to be forgotten about. I feel like my mental health is a determinant of my writing. If I’m busy, I’m not thinking as much and I don’t have the same wallowing that I do when I have time. This is a blessing for my relationships, for my own health and wellbeing, but I feel like my writing suffers. The tortured creative trope is very real to me, and I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but it is. Even when everything is going well, the only songs that come out of me are gutwrenching explorations of old wounds. I can’t help but pick at emotional scabs when I’m in a dry spell. It opens me up creatively but kills my mental health.

I know that this is not sustainable, but I haven’t found another way. I take my meds, and they dull the edges of my writing. Not a bad thing in the long run, especially when trying to commercialize. Too sad and nobody can stomach it—not sad enough and it doesn’t fit this manic pixie dream girl situation I have going on. I’m unsure whether this is just my early twenties on full display, and maybe when my prefrontal cortex develops I’ll figure it out, or if this is the side-effect of being a creative. Either way, I am driven to writing sad music because it feels universally cathartic.

I’m not one of those people who doesn’t listen to their own music. Call me a narcissist but I think it feels good to hear all of my emotions channeled into something. I could never liken myself to my idols, but I do feel that our creative processes are the same. When we are sad, we write. When we are happy, we write sad songs until we’re sad again. These are my thoughts on my creative process and I hope to come back with an update saying, “Hey! I figured it out! I CAN write something that doesn’t feel like I got punches in the stomach,” but until then this is what wisdom I have to impart.