Tag: people

Long Hunter Pow Wow

My tires matted the grass as I turned off the main road, into the middle of nowhere, also known as Long Hunter State park. From the moment I stepped out of my car, I could hear the mournful voice of a Native American flute winding its way through the trees and to my anxious ears. I had gotten a great parking spot by the entrance of the festival, and my first destination while there was the bleachers surrounding the small stage where the performance was taking place.

While walking through the clearing in the wood, I felt overcome with a sweet sadness I didn’t know how to reconcile. My soul wept with the sky in my loneliness, and yet I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Seeing the livelihood of a people who are too often invisible to me reminded me of my need to connect with nature, to bask in the beauty of the earth. Solitude has a way of doing that to you: of wringing your heart free of the shallowness of petty problems and leaving behind a core of raw emotion, an essence of what it means to be human.

I walked around the field for hours, visiting the different vendors and admiring their art. Not wanting to leave, yet not wanting to stay, I had to tear myself away like a child from her mother. Something inside me connected to this culture, to the stories, the traditions, the heartache. A connection which only a deep loneliness could reveal in its rugged beauty.

I, Songwriter

I thought I wanted to be a songwriter until I realized what went into writing a good, popular song.

As a child, I grew up in a religious (and sheltered) home, so I patterned some of my first songs after hymns, which could have up to seven verses. Not until I was older did I realize most songs have only two verses, because that’s all that can fit into a song most people will listen to.

As I wrote more, I became more creative with beats and instrumentation, but my songs were still overtly religious. The famous saying goes, “Write what you know,” and that really was all I knew. But my musical tastes began to change, and I listened to more mainstream music. My eyes opened to a vast world waiting to be explored. I had had no idea just how big and diverse the world was until I entered college.

A lot of songs you hear these days revolve around love, breakups, sex, and going to clubs, among other experiences, many of which I have never encountered. I have learned much just by listening to songs many deem shallow or cheesy. Songwriters will say they write from their experiences, and people relate to them. I desire to relate, not because I want to be just another crowd-follower, but because I want to understand the people around me. I want to understand what public school was like, how young people learned about the world around them, how they experienced pop culture.

I cannot write mainstream music because I do not have mainstream life experience – whatever that is. I have been in love before, but I have never had a boyfriend, or gone to a club. Not that these are the only things I need to do to “fit in,” but I still feel very naive about the world. I yearn to grasp the way people interact with each other, what they do on weekends, how they have fun, what gives them meaning. Every person is different, but some life experiences are more common than others.

My lack of common experience limits my ability to write catchy songs. I am not denying that I have something of value to offer the world, I just haven’t figured out what that is and how to do it yet.