Songs that Write Themselves

I won't give this is context, but it's something we've been talking about recently; things that just come to you; that just appear in your head, or that become almost automatic writing: have pen, have paper, just doodling, and then you start writing without even consciously knowing that you're doing it. In Arthur Miller's beautiful autobiography "Time-Bends", he talks about how the first half of "Death of a Salesman" came from nowhere. He just started writing and it happened. But the second half, man oh man, hard hard work.

Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" also wrote itself, while he was under the influence of drugs, naturally, being a Romantic Poet, but then the postman knocked and broke the thread/mood and so he lost the rest; an unfinished masterpiece.

Comedy writers/comedians I know have jokes that are so funny you can't laugh for "awestruck" and in every case, when I ask, they all say they don't know where they came from; these special jokes just "appeared in my head".

And songs that wrote themselves?



I picked the Sinead O'Conner version because I find it sublime.

"Streets of London" was written without real conscious thought; Ralph McTell in a London cafe late at night thinking about a friend; had pen, had paper, just doodling, and started writing words without even consciously knowing that he was doing it. He didn't even want to record it because it came too easily so he couldn't imagine it being remotely good. Sold over 55 million copies!

Let's see if we can find another song that wrote itself:



A Canadian muso, Robbie Robertson, busking around England. A late train, a rainy day, a bad cup of railway tea, just killing time on his guitar. And this is the result.

And another song that wrote itself:



Three songs that give you goosebumps. Strange, huh!

This type of stuff happens all the time apparently. Readers Digest once put out a book of "The World's Greatest Artisans", which contained the greatest practitioner in 100 different fields: pottery, rug weaving, glass-making etc, etc., and they were all old folk with the identical story: "I worked in this field was years and years, and then suddenly the gods/the muse/the angels/God took over my hand and these days I don't actually do it myself any more; it's just my form of moving prayer/meditation."

I have a bowl made by Japan's "Greatest Living Treasure" potter, a gift from his gorgeous granddaughter, and it makes me ache just looking at it. It's only the size of my cupped hands and looks like talcum powder held together by magic, but it shimmers and seems to turn even the space around it into "special" and I notice that everyone who comes into that room heads straight for it to pick it up; they don't even appear to be aware they're doing it.

Great gifts to the world from nowhere. It's why the Ancient Greeks believed in The Muses; ladies who descend into your head and do the work for you. However, they don't descend until you're ready; until you've done all the ground work and put in the hours of hard hard work.

So, Calliope, I've done the groundwork, put in the hours and hours, done all the hard hard work, where are you?