This month’s free mP3 download from Love & Honesty is “I Don’t Wanna Have to Use It.”
I’m not sure I wanna tell you about writing this song. I’m torn. I really am.
I don’t mind sharing that I wrote most of it while driving. And I don’t mind telling you I was on my way to my old volunteer post at the hospital (where I would sing and play for patients). I also don’t mind letting you know that as soon as I got to the hospital, I sat right down with my guitar and wrote out the chords and lyrics. It was fast. Most of the work had taken place in the car.
But telling you what it’s about? I’m hesitant.
There’s no mystery to songwriting. You just do it. Some days find a gal writing without even meaning to, like when driving. Other times it’s work. A song can be born all at once, or it can come into being slowly, deliberately. Some songs take years. Getting to write a song is a gift, and I’m grateful for any and all inspiration I get. But it isn’t magic, folks.
Then again, as I’m thinking about the magic of December, maybe I can see some pixie dust being sprinkled about during the process of writing. Maybe just agreeing to hold the danged pen (or put fingers to keypad) and working out the tune is a little on the magical side. It certainly is lovely to think so.
So if I tell you how “I Don’t Wanna Have To Use It” came into existence, will the magic melt into ordinariness? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, here goes…
I don’t love my cell phone. I don’t go through my days with the danged thang attached to my ear, and I don’t jump to check it whenever I hear the text “bell” go off. But I do drive a very old car, and a cell phone comes in mighty handy when a distributor cap cracks. So I carry a phone. When I wrote this song, as I drove down the road in my wonderfully old car, I looked over and saw my phone on the passenger seat beside me. I looked back at the road ahead and thought, “I don’t wanna have to use it, but I wanna be prepared.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Happy December.