• You get an idea for a song. But is it any good?

On evenings when moisture is mostly in the water and not in the air and the sun is at the right angle, I could look outside the kitchen or living room window and snap the above photo. But I don’t. Because while this scene is common, in that it happens on so many evenings, it is also rare in that I so often fail to see it, or if I do see it, I am too busy to grab the camera and the tripod and do the scene justice with proper equipment.

Ideas for good songs are similar. They, too, happen every day, but mostly I miss them.

Of course, unlike a sunset, song ideas cannot simply be captured and remembered forever in under a second, regardless of any equipment on-hand, so even if I do notice them, they still, mostly, slip away. Further, song ideas can’t be immediately sized up and judged, at least not by me. I have to notice them, capture them, cage them and then observe them for a little while before I can decide if they’re worth further effort. And this is the hardest part. I mean, songs are so subjective and it is so hard to tell what’s good and what’s not. It’s like that scene Basquiat in which Warhol (played by Bowie) looks at a piece of his art and says, “I can’t even tell what’s good anymore.” And then I want to be brutally honest but how do I that if I don’t know what’s true?

Sigh...