When You're in the Groove...

Who knows where the heck songs come from. When you’re not plugged in to your creativity, it can seem like an impossible task even to write one line of a song. But when you’re in the groove, you’re invincible. You listen to everything around you with one side of your brain while the other twists it all into lyrics. You walk aimlessly through the aisles of the grocery store dancing to a band playing deafeningly loud melodies that only you can hear. Your phone voice recorder stays clenched in your hand in the middle of the night because the moment you put it down on the bedside table, you get another idea and you can’t fiddle with the buttons fast enough to capture it. You drift death-defyingly across lanes of traffic on the way home from writing two songs because your brain is in another world dreaming up the perfect chorus for the third one. (I have no idea how I make it anywhere in one piece sometimes.)

You also forget to eat, forget to pee, can’t sleep because ideas keep waking you up, and you drive your family crazy because whenever they try to talk to you, you’re gazing at a distant spot just over their shoulder, mumbling “uhuh, uhuh, yeah”.

It’s the best torture and the worst rapture, and it’s totally unsustainable because at some point the flames on both ends of your candle are gonna meet, and then you’re gonna burn out. But while you’re on fire, let it burn, baby!

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