Actually Finishing

I rarely ever listen to or pay any real attention to lyrics in songs, not consciously at least. I’ll find myself singing them later, so at least some part of my brain does, but in the moment I’m focusing on how they fit into the song. The melody, the rhythm, the harmonies behind it, the place each have in the mix. One big soundscape.

It’s why I listen to a fair amount of non-English language songs, largely J-rock or J-pop, with a smattering of other European countries. On the other hand, it’s also why I’ve long struggled to write lyrics to any songs I’ve written. I can hear the cadence in my head, beat it out on the desk, but any time I put pen to paper it just feels hollow. Devoid of meaning, just words for the sake of words.

On the other side, there was poetry. That I could do.

One of the reasons I keep some kind of notebook with me at all times is I’ll get just snippets pop up in my head. Two or three lines of rhymes or feelings, a snippet of dialogue, a direction in which to go. Every now and then I’d review them, see which ones still have a place in my brain, and try and flesh it out.

And I was kind of okay at it. Put some online, got some praise. In particular a war one I wrote around Remembrance Day that I can neither find nor remember. I’d do open mic nights locally and not totally bomb, which is a solid minimum result. Then I just kind of stopped.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do a lot more recently is avoid over intellectualising things; change course from treating everything like it’s a deep intellectual puzzle that needs analysis and just see if the surface diagnosis fits. In this case, it is that simple: the open mic night closed, so I fell out of that routine, depression and neurodivergence did their work on distracting me from it, and I never allowed myself to go deep in process. It didn’t worm its way into my core.

And I was alone. Not truly, I had friends, I have family, but on this I was alone. I had no friends trying to do the same thing, no mentor I could learn from, and I didn’t have the social skills to try and make one. I was ‘on the breadline’ poor, so taking classes was out of the question, and while there were libraries and books, I had no idea what I was looking for, especially as I was so wrapped up in my perfectionist ‘I can do all the things if I try’ mindset.

But times change and so do I. I may not be surrounded still by poets and artists, but I can change that, even if it’s digital interactions over physical in the short term. I can lean back into my curiosity, expand myself out there again. I’ve got my Zettelkasten ready to accept snippets to flick through, and collect snippets from poetry that resonates with me. And I’ve got a much better selection of research tools than I did 15 years ago, not to mention a much better understanding of my self, how I tick, and how to get around my shortcomings.

I need to finish the three books I currently have on the go, but after that, I’ll be buying/adding A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver and How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy as a starting point. Then we’ll go from there.

The thing about being a relatively busy adult with a load of responsibilities whilst dealing with neurodiversity issues is that it’s really easy to lose sight of the fun and creative hobbies you want to do. This then leads to the skills behind these hobbies atrophying, creating the dreaded skill gap - the distance between what you can do, and what you want to do.

I feel this most with my guitar playing. I’ve been playing on and off for nearly 20 years, but I would say my skills are trapped in that state of high beginner. Theoretically, I can hang at an intermediate level. Modes, positions, fingerboard awareness, extended chords and how to use them. All in my brain ready to use. I just can’t back it up.

I can definitely play, and play rhythm fairly fast and accurate; I can follow along at around 160bpm, and I can sort of solo. Improvisation is an area I often fail in outside of a pure flow state, usually because all I can hear in my head when I’m trying to solo over a backing track is the original solo (or a live recorded version).

Then there’s the fiddly bits. My bends aren’t 100% accurate and I struggle to put vibrato on them. I can hammer on/pull off pretty cleanly up to about 100bpm in quarter notes, but not much further or faster, and not for more than say 4 to 6 bars. Slides often get a bit blurry if I try to apply speed so the target note gets lost. Then there’s the speed picking issue, plus the fact that I struggle above the 15th fret in any position really.

Combine that with the tendency to play unplugged and I’m left with the inability to turn the sounds in my head into reality.

There are other hobbies I’ve let atrophy, or ones that I want to start picking up, that are similarly easy enough to assess the skills gap. The one I struggle with though is writing. How do you assess something essentially subjective? There’s no real 16th note alternate picking or speed legato playing equivalent in the art of writing, outside of perhaps grammar, and even then, there’s ways around it. Hello, Claude.

Experience has told me that unless it’s universally disliked, writing is difficult to qualify. Low effort, badly written books can still pick up a fan base, whilst highly rated best sellers still have their detractors. For example, I’ve personally tried and failed to read One Hundred Years of Solitude 3 times; I just can’t get on board with it. See also: Rivals by Jilly Cooper, a book that seemed more interested in introducing the 6 page glossary of characters than writing about any of the things said characters actually do on the daily, other than cheat on their partners.

ChatGPT (whose grammar opinions I trust less than Claude, for reasons, although I find it better for general purpose use) tells me to try and assess things like storytelling and structure, narrative pacing, scene construction, but again, being a relative novice at this how would I know? Then there’s the directions I want to push into more - poetry, story writing, etc.

Of course, the answer is simple: I find out by doing the thing. Start writing poetry. Start writing more fiction. Make it more of a daily habit. Then assess it. Pick up things I struggle with, just like I notice the struggle adding vibrato to a string bend.

More importantly, stop using the unknown or unknowable as a reason to not do the thing, or even learn more about doing the thing.

My pencils are sharp enough.