Somehow, even though it still fills at least half my day, I miss music. I physically feel like I can't possibly have enough time with it. Even when I am listening or playing, it's like I can't get to the next song quickly enough. I can't wait to hear the words and feel the chords and what the next person or song has to express.
I think it is the only thing I love. I hear lines and songs and intricacies I wish I had (or could) come up with. I think anyone who creates anything feels that. The longing to be better at what you love, as if you owe it to the art itself to do it justice. In futility, your failure to be perfect shapes what you become, what you create. I'm sure well over half the music I listen to on a daily basis, the artist would like to have back for a couple days. Adding lines, changing a word, adding a riff. It blows my mind to think that music is never a finished product. Even the people I think are brilliant, hear music and think the same thing I do, "I have so many more places to go."
There comes a point in the creative process when it becomes less about what you need to say, and more about doing right by thought- the one that made you grab the pen in the first place. You put words on the page and then you need to come up with the perfect melody. The melody that sounds like the words. The melody that showcases the words. And vice versa. You come up with a melody, and putting the wrong words to it can make it sound terrible. The hard part is to not abandon the thought when things start going sideways. I have a theory that if something is that easy to abandon, it never meant that much to you in the first place. It may be part of a bigger feeling- the path that gets you to where you need to be.
The greatest frustration in writing comes from not getting what you think you want out of it, which isn't the point at all.
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