"Dream" is Becoming my Nightmare!

I have been trying to finish Dream for a couple of months now. I can't even remember the last time I struggled so much to write one song!

What I have so far is a very simple and sweet chorus. It's all about why I love someone who is very important to me. I even have a numbered list of reasons why, but I just cannot seem to make it work for the song. I don't understand why this particular song is so difficult to finish. It's about my own feelings and my own reasons for why I care about somebody. Am I really having this much trouble putting my OWN thoughts and feelings into a song?

It is honestly beginning to alarm me. This song has a simple concept and a very sweet chorus. There is nothing complex or even challenging about it. It's one thing to need a fresh perspective or approach now and then, but this is getting ridiculous! It has been almost four months since I determined that I wanted to finish this song.

This is not the first time that one song has taken me a long time to finish. "I'd Rather Feel Nothing" took me about six years to complete. It's about my struggle with chronic pain. I came up with the idea when I first started getting sick, but could not finish it until about a year ago. "Bad Boy with a Heart" was started in August 2011 and was not completed until May 2012. Many of my other songs have been completed over the course of a few months. The rest are fragments, the most frustrating of which being "Dream".

It's normal for certain songs to take a long time to finish. I would rather spend time to write a song the right way than spit out something I'm ashamed of, but there is something about this particular one that is an extreme challenge to me.

In a way I suppose I feel more pressure with this one. I don't plan on sharing it right away or immediately trying to have it published, but this song is important because the person is important. This one cannot be average. It has to be wonderful. It has to show that what I'm feeling is real. It has to accurately portray something that I have been feeling for the past few years. It's not just any song. It is a song that I truly have my heart invested in.

I only hope that I can manage to overcome these apprehensions and turn "Dream" into exactly what I have imagined it would be.

~Eliza

Using a Song as an Explanation

There is someone that I love and I find it difficult to explain why. I started a song about him a couple of years ago. It's just a chorus and the song is called "Dream". And even though what I have to work with is obviously not a lot, I like what I have and I'm anxious to finish it.

It's one of those cases where the emotions are hard to explain, even though I want to explain them. I have a list of reasons, a list of reasons why I feel the way I do, why I admire the characteristics that I admire, why I am attracted to the features that I'm attracted to, why I want the things I want, and I why I don't want more or less. At least I have my thoughts organized on the matter...somewhat.

Sometimes when you care about somebody it's not just about something that they did or said or something that you expect to get from them. Sometimes it is simply a matter of appreciating how someone makes you feel and recognizing how important that person is to you. And if it's simply a matter of those things, it should be easier to explain.

There are so many factors in this, the majority of which do not make sense to me. How, then, can I break down my thoughts, emotions, and feelings into a list of reasons or a simple explanation? Should I write a song that's twenty minutes long? Should I sell myself short and sacrifice a realistic sense of what I feel in favor of a simplistic rhyming pattern? Or should I make light of the gravity of the situation just so the song flows the right way or has the right appeal?

Human beings can act simple minded sometimes, but we are not simple. We are anything but simple. And as frustrating as it can be, sometimes we are more difficult to explain than we would like or hope for.

~Eliza