Why do we write songs?

I often wonder why I write songs. After all, I don't make much money from it, and I have a fairly small audience. I'm often less than satisfied with the results; there's so many amazing songwriters out there whose output leaves me feeling inadequate. So why do I persist? I wish I knew. But it's an incredibly strong drive - strong enough that I classify my need to make music right up there with the need to eat, drink, or breathe.

Writing songs isn't about coming up with new ideas. In fact the songs that work best speak to the feelings and concepts which all of us share and can identify with. What makes a song great is that it speaks to these universal feelings in a novel or poetic way. It might provide some imagery that makes us say "that's exactly how I feel, but I haven't been able to put it into words so well."

Sometimes I think that our drive to create - whether it's art or music, or whatever - is about tapping into the interdependent ecosystem of humanity. When you and I sit down and have a conversation, we could share all sorts of thoughts and ideas; we have memorable conversations, or we discuss the mundane. But our language, while connecting us, is still unable to connect us the way music does. You and I might be different on almost every level. We may have different politics, different philosophies, we may live in different moral universes. Yet we can both hear the same song and get the same feeling from it. For those three or four minutes, we are sharing a connection that is more primal than any of those surface differences. When Joni Mitchell sings "I wish I had a river I could skate away on," we can all identify with that feeling.


Music may be the idiom through which I express my creative urge, but the arts aren't the only way we express this drive. We might love carpentry, writing, painting, knitting, scrap-booking, anything really. Pretty much anything we do can be a way of expressing our creative drive, if we approach it with attention and mindfulness.

Finding this within ourselves can be difficult. In our culture, we are divorced from this idea from a young age. We categorize and separate everything. People are taught to think of themselves using classifications. "I'm not a creative person," people will say. I think that's simply untrue. All of us share the basic drive for creative expression.


Think about your life; what's the way (or ways) you express this drive? Maybe you collect stamps, or make needlepoint designs, or cook. Maybe you like to decorate your walls or furniture in a particular way. Perhaps you love to go out dancing, or ice skating. Ideally, perhaps we can approach everything we do from this creative perspective. Even the tasks we don't really enjoy, like washing dishes, can be done with mindfulness and attention and become part of this creative expression.