Song Twelve (How Much Is A Good Song Worth?)

Hello Saturday!

The danger of being family or friend to an artist is you don’t know when they’re gonna put you in a song! 🙂

My family and the people around me are nice people. And they love me very much. My parents are artistic themselves, but they have their fears. They consider an artistic endeavour frivolous: if it doesn’t make money, it’s best to stay as a hobby! Or if one really wants to pursue it, one’d better be trained professionally.

I try to reject both notions!

I started this path because I had something to say. And as long as I still feel that strong need to bare my soul to you, dear world, I WILL find a way to express it, using whatever little I’ve got.

And I want to see how far I can go with it!

For me, this path is strangely both a need AND a choice.

A need because if I don’t do it, I feel miserable!

A choice because I can do many other things well, and have earned a comfortable living doing them.

I’m certainly not a starving artist, who can’t do anything else! But that means that taking this path is a strong need, and for that matter, a strong choice.

It’s easy to say, “Don’t worry about others’ opinions.” The thing is when that opinion comes from a person you love, it matters! The greater the love, the more it will devastate.

* * *

Being an artist, I feel like a self-involved egomaniac sometimes. And I feel lucky that my family and friends do care about my works.

It hasn’t always been like that, though! My family hasn’t always been comfortable with my songs. One of my sisters kept sending me motivational stuff, but refused to listen to my songs. I told her, “Stop sending me these stuff! Just listen my songs and let me know what you think, for goodness’s sake!” So she started listening to the songs, just so that I wouldn’t yell at her anymore. But eventually she came to like them very much, and has been giving me great constructive feedback since. I consider that a true success, I’ve earned myself a real fan!

* * *

The thing that worries me the most is having nothing to say. I think that’s the thing that haunts most artists, that the well inside has dried up. And it can happen anytime, at any stage of an artist’s career.

People think because I have this “talent”, I could whip out a song, whenever I want to, just like that! The thing is it is just as mysterious to me as it is to you how a song comes to me. How did I get that line? Or that melody? I don’t know! They just came.

Many times they woke me up in the middle of the night, and I had to get up to jot them down quickly before I forgot. Then the next day I sat down and worked on getting to know them.

* * *

This song is mainly Pentatonic (5 note scale), because I like the sweet sounding and simplicity of it. It’s only until near the end of the song that I break out of the scale to reach for some heights.

With this song, I tried to improve my time-keeping and rhythm-playing. And I feel I’m closer to become a musician because of that.

There were quite a few mistakes in this recording, but I wanted to start a new song already, so I just accepted it as it was.