Auditioned a new song for Donna today tentatively titled “The Frets on My Guitar”. (I know, another punny title, but you’ve come to expect that, right?)
It made us both cry so I guess it hit its target. She says it’s good. I even inserted some prurient jazz chords (m9, 6/9, etc.) I just have to find time to record it….
Here’s the lyric.
A million wrongs to a thousand souls, I cannot make them right.
Yet, in the silence of my mind, they wake me in the night.
Nocturnal worries, they compete for attention like baseball bats on cans.
The dissonant reminders of a million abandoned plans.
I’m forced at last to accept the obvious; I’ve peaked, there’s no going back.
I recognize the downward slide. It’s a biological fact.
I used to believe I lived in a world that was big enough for me.
Plenty of room to walk away rather than disagree.
Whenever I didn’t like where I was, I packed up and walked out of town.
But I’m older now and feel somehow that I may have walked clear around.
The land I’m in is scorched and bleak. It feels like I’ve been here before.
I never thought I’d be coming back searching for something more.
(chorus)
I don’t want to hide in the maze.
I don’t want to rant and rave;
Don’t really want to make waves,
But I will not waste a new day.
It’s too late for a family, too late for new friends and I’ve already forsaken the old ones.
Too many loose ends, too many pretends, too many “doings” and not enough “dones”.
Oh, what’s it like to be happy? I’ve never really known.
I don’t even know just what I want. I just know that I want to go home.
I don’t know what would fulfill me or whether it would last.
What is it I’ve still got to learn by dwelling on the past?
I am compelled to be dark, tragic and somber. I’ve never understood why.
Will I carry this feeling of impending doom until the day I die?
I’ll suffer and wither and fade and fail. A waste of this gift of life.
But every time I think to complain, I’m reminded that misery is rife.
In search of the undefinable, I circle endlessly.
Neither reaching conclusions nor self-discovery.
(chorus)
I don’t want to do what I’m good at…don’t know how to do anything else.
I’m too far away from my childhood and not close enough to myself.
I need the comfort of fellowship, but don’t know where to begin.
Hiding in verse is my usual way of getting out what’s in.
Some are driven to distraction, but drive IS the distraction for me.
I’ve been driving myself since I was a child ’cause I really don’t know what to be.
We toss & turn through unending nights and fret compulsively.
For, without struggle, we have no point. Still, we owe ourselves clemency.
So I meet with the dawn, leave the darkness behind and keep fixing what is broken
I’ll fight for my causes, accept wins and losses and isten as well as I’ve spoken.
I do believe we all feel these same feelings from time to time
We struggle, we cry, we win, we lose, we commiserate in rhyme.
(chorus)
I don’t want to die in a maze.
I don’t want to rant and rave.
I don’t really want to make waves.
But I will not waste a new day.
No, I will not waste a new day.
I. Will. Not. Waste. A. New. Day.
Today.
