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As a kid I fell in love with the song The Boxer by Paul Simon. In a way, every song I’ve ever written wants to be The Boxer, in some fashion or another. The imagery, the movement, the soaring melodic bridge, the sadness, the triumph… I’ve listened to it hundreds of times and will never tire of it. I began to wonder, how did he do that? Where did he begin, with a piece of melody, an image, a phrase? What was first? I still don’t know the answer and suspect there isn’t a simple, direct one. It’s probably some personal alchemy of influences, emotions, intentions…and whatever other strangeness is inherent in the writer.

Now I ask the same questions about my own stuff– where does a song start and how does it go from a flicker of an idea to a complete story? I was discussing the writing process with a friend recently and described it like this:

“Whenever a song presents itself in that gauzy, shapeless stage, the feeling tends to be that something transcendent is about to emerge. You hope that by the time you’ve hung chords and words on it, it’s still transcendent. It’s like painting a ghost.

You fill in where all the mystery was but then might realize, ahh, it’s just some dead guy.”