Status Updates From Resistance: A Songwriter's ...

Music theory people can help explain the language far better than I can. There are people I know who write great songs who have not studied much theory. I am finding music theory to be quite useful these days and not tedious. (My teenage self found it a snore.) But like most things, music theory is a language, and if you are engaged with it, it can become a world in itself, an adventure.

On a daily basis there are moments of taking ideas in and then forging them into art. It takes devotion and unrelenting discipline. All artists during a project will have to chop wood and carry water. Because songwriting can be such a loner occupation, it can be perceived as ephemeral.

Some writers create havoc in their own lives in order to bring this tension, which pushes them to a point that gives them new material. Trust me on this: there is new material out there and enough for all of us.

There can be Eureka! moments in songwriting. You can be banging your head against an imagined wall, and then there’s Carl Sagan talking to you through time. Through his science-mind, his explanation of what defines being human.