Nothing more than feelings.

My family is going through a huge transition phase at the moment; various family members are dealing with evolving health situations, various family members are dealing with new jobs or new career situations, and we’re all in the process of making major changes to our various living situations…so, yeah, we’re all wound pretty tight, and peaceful moments are rare.

I did happen to be sitting on the piano bench at my grandma’s house the other day, playing the guitar (like you do) and just fiddling around with strumming patterns and chord progressions. A particular set of changes caught my ear, and I started repeating it to see if it was something interesting that could evolve into a song. I played with it for a bit, and eventually added in a vocal melody. It started to come together in my head: a sort of slow, sort of sad, not very urgent but still kind of intense bit of music. The vocal line had the somber movement of a cello line, and tapped into the low end of my personal range, which isn’t something that happens often (I tend to have a bias for the middle or top).

In sitting in my grandma’s living room twiddling alone while everyone else bustled around the house otherwise occupied, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed. A song I hadn’t even yet written words to, a bare hint of melody and a few bald chords, moved me to tears. Maybe it was the stress of the past month, maybe it was the day or hormones or whatever, but I sat there and cried. I couldn’t even stop when my grandma joined me in the room.

Music is like that, though. When properly constructed, a few notes strung together with the right inflection can open the doors in our hearts that we always try to keep closed.

I have since written lyrics for that song, and you can expect to see or hear it posted here in the near future.