Painstaking

I love creating stuff.

Music, sketches, poems, dresses. . .blog entries. . .haha.

But 90% of the time I hate stuff I make. I was pretty notorious for this as a kid with my sketches, I'd throw most of them out. I still do it, too. Haha. I hate most of what I draw. Lyrics. . .I hate most of what I write. Songs. . .I'm not easily impressed with melodies and things that I make up. The only song I've ever really been satisfied with is "September," and even that, I'm not sure I like the bridge very much, and I think I overuse the word "waiting" because I stuck it in the chorus at the last minute. . .which might be why I don't like the bridge?

Clothing, too. I picked through the laundry yesterday and found a shirt I'd made, and cringed at the visible zipper. Also it doesn't stay up very well. Might be tolerable with a white tank underneath, but I'm still dissatisfied with it. I also made a bag that I'm pretty bored of. If anybody wants a green bag with pink polka dots let me know.

Le sigh.

I was glad to have Erica over the other day to look at some of my lyrics and tell me what she liked and disliked. Actually the song she didn't like I looked at afterwards and was wondering how on earth I had liked it in the first place? Super lame. I completely revamped it but I have to let it sit for a bit to think about how to complete it. I'm not sure what I want the main point of the song to be.

I think when it comes down to it, I need inspiration.

Maybe I should give more priority to going away somewhere, giving myself time to ponder, making time to do something that will inspire me. One thing I've always dreamed of doing for a living is being a writer, not because writing is what I love to do the most (although I enjoy it. . .hence the blog), but because I love the idea of being someone whose job is to go around searching for inspiration, and then go into a creative frenzy and make this inspiration-fuelled masterpiece that everyone can enjoy.

Inspiration is a strange thing. I'm not always sure where I'll find it.

When I wrote September, I had some lyrics first which came together from a bunch of diary entries over the summer. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to put it to music in the way I wanted to. I tried over and over again for days and weeks, sitting in front of my webcam with guitar in hand, only able to come up with cheesy melodies that sounded like they'd be sung by Jewel. . .no offense to Jewel.

Then one day I was hanging out with Dad in Vancouver and we watched a video of The Who, and I was super inspired to play guitar after that, so I went to my room and just started strumming some chords I found off the internet for "Only Hope" from A Walk to Remember. . .they were the wrong chords, but they still sounded cool. Anyways I guess I just kept strumming and then took out my lyrics, and then the melody, the exact one I was looking for, just kind of. . .came.

The past couple days I've been trying to put together a song, and I have an idea of how I want it to go rhythmically and all that, and I have some chords I tried out, but something's not quite right. . .I'm not satisfied. I don't want it to be just another song. Some boring song that nobody wants to listen to twice. It has to be special. I need something to make me figure it out. . .I need to go outside and be inspired by something. Maybe when Erica, Lisa and I go to that hill where the fog sits on the ground at 5 in the morning, maybe then I'll find it.

Or maybe I should just go watch that The Who video again.