One of My (new) Songs

Years ago, I won second place in a writing contest whose challenge was to write a six-word memoir. I wrote: Everything I’ve done is behind me. I won a plastic cutting board for my effort. The judges let me slide on the contraction, something I wouldn’t have done, but I accepted my prize anyway. If I were to write a six-word-plus memoir now, I would write: Everything I’ve done is within me. There’s something about the first version of my winning memoir that doesn’t ring true to me now. It’s too clear-cut; too final. Details from my past come back to me regularly and at odd moments, then pull me back to whatever the setting was at the time. I’ve processed and grieved, laughed, and forgiven, but I haven’t left any of it behind.

Even in my exercise class this morning my past came back to visit. The teacher was using a soundtrack of songs familiar to her sixty-something students but with a drum track added and a jacked-up tempo. As I was doing the steps, sweating, and wondering if I could keep up, I realized the music was made by people like me. My first job in New York City was recording background vocals for a company that distributed re-makes of hit songs to karaoke machines everywhere. Our job was to re-create the backing vocals of those songs as accurately as we could. It was an hourly gig that ended abruptly when I cleaned off the very expensive “sugar” I thought had been spilled on the glass table we used for our lunch break. I had never seen that kind of sugar before. Not since either.

Then, in my class this morning, a Leslie Gore re-make of “It’s My Party” came thumping into my ears, reminding me that I opened for her once. She was past her prime then, but her fans adored her. Me? Not so much, which reminded me of other gigs I did, mismatches, like me opening for The Blind Boys of Alabama, or the time I opened for Jesse Winchester (an honor, just as all these gigs were) and a man in the audience suffered some kind of stroke as I was starting my final song. Medics were on the scene immediately, the man was fine, but it had to be one of the oddest moments I’ve ever had on stage. Awkward gig stories abound. No doubt everyone has their own versions from whatever life they’ve lived. I sure hope so! How boring our stories would be if that weren’t true.

With all of that in mind, here’s a new song I finished last week. I should wait until it’s officially linked to iTunes and all the rest, but I get excited and don’t really want to wait. It’s called “One of My Songs”. It speaks to those thoughts that creep up from behind.

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Ok. So I’m proud to say that I did all of this myself. In the olden days, I might apologize for the imperfections or whatever, but these days, just getting something done, being content with the-best-I-can-do, is a whole new realm of experience, and I like it a lot. Life is short. Let’s make things and share them!

One of My Songs

I was a hero, I was a liar
I was a cheater and someone you could admire
I took a dollar here, I left a dollar there
I could be real cheap, but I was mostly fair
And I was always a dreamer, not a firm believer

I was a lover, I was a mother
I was the other, and often just another
When I was “so hot” I was so not
I never gave a lot because it cost too much 
Ya know, I was a dreamer, but not a firm believer

I’m lookin’ at me to see what I see
For one of my songs
So you can hear it

Lookin’ at me, I see what I see
I know what it means 
For you to hear it

Now I know that there was so much more to know

I had a silver spoon I had a gift to prove
I bought a new guitar and started playin’ all of my tunes
I sang a la la la la, la la la, a la la la la la la la la la

Because I was a dreamer, the ultimate believer
‘cause one of my songs, yeah, one of my songs
One of my songs, I sung on TV

One of my songs, yeah, one of my songs,
Just one of my songs, I sung on TV, yeah, yeah
In 1993 

…A collage for the artwork, and mostly, for the fun of it…

…or buy the tune if you want. Send me your email address and I’ll send you the file.