Thankfully, my swollen eye subsided a little today and I managed to record this week’s song this evening. Yup, Sunday night is the absolute latest to upload my song for the week, and I just made it. Phew!

It’s been a loooooong week. The 13:34 musical on Thursday night was a blast, but it was tiring no doubt with all the rehearsals. Plus my eye infection didn’t help much. On Saturday, we took our cat Kooshie to the vet to be sterilized, and the poor boy has been limp and feverish all weekend. It’s quite worrying, not to mention heartbreaking, to see him like this. He’s lying beside me right now with a plastic cone round his neck, looking very pathetic.

Anyway, with everything going on this week, it’s a miracle I managed to finish the song at all. I actually wrote it on Tuesday because I knew I’d be busy with rehearsals after that. I would’ve recorded the video on Friday, like I usually do, but I decided to give my eye a rest and do it tonight instead. Everything worked out fine, thank goodness.

This Unfinished Song is literally about songwriting. It’s tongue-in-cheek of course, but I think fellow songwriters might be able to identify with it. It is about the challenges I face as a songwriter in finding my “muse”, so to speak.

Sometimes, inspiration leaves you high and dry and I can sit all day with my guitar and come up with nothing. Then the next day, all of a sudden, something hits me and a new song is born in 20 minutes. The process of creation, the spark of inspiration when an idea pops up in your mind, exploring different melodies until something sounds right – that’s why I love songwriting.

Have a great week ahead everyone!

This Unfinished Song
© Music and Lyrics by Marcel Lee Pereira, 8 June, 2010

I sat down with pen and paper
To write a letter to my muse
For she seemed to have deserted me
And left me all confused

My guitar won’t give me a tune, I said
Stop running, I implored
But the notes kept playing hide and seek
They wouldn’t form a chord

Chorus
I thought maybe it’s not meant to be
Maybe I just don’t belong
I guess I’ll just move on
From this unfinished song

With a silence ringing in my head
And a hollow in my chest
I tried to be like Dylan
And find something to protest

But my angst has come and gone
And so have all my rhymes
Synonyms and conjugations
Have escaped my mind

Chorus
I thought maybe it’s not meant to be
Maybe I don’t belong
I guess I’ll just have move on
From this unfinished song

Where are you?
What am I supposed to do?

So I looked for inspiration
I tried to improvise
Movies, posters, advertisements
Were all a bunch of lies

I picked up the papers
They were full of hate
And I flipped through the Bible
But I couldn’t find the faith

Chorus
I thought maybe it’s not meant to be
Maybe I don’t belong
I guess I’ll just have to move on
From this unfinished song

Maybe it’s best to move on
From this unfinished song

***

P.S. I’d like to leave everyone with a quote from American author Jack London, which I find very meaningful in my songwriting journey: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” How true.