Music on the brain.

Song writing. 

I like to write rhymes. 

I can't call it poetry because the way that people seem to define poetry baffles me. I've always thought of poetry as rhyme (for whatever reason). I think I really do get what they mean by poetry, and I think some of my writing is poetic - okay I think all of it is, okay - but I don't sit down to write poetry in the popular sense. So when I feel like rhyming I make sure I have a tune to go with it. And then I can call it a lyric. Cool.

The other day I was fiddling with my guitar (nice trick) and started playing a lick that I kind of liked. It fit the mood that I was in at the time. I fired up the "Voice Memo" app on my iPhone and recorded it. I do this because I've learned -- well, I'll get to that later.   Then I thought about the mood I was in and thought about some things that I've been thinking about for a while (song fodder) and started putting together words that fit the melody, the mood, and the thought.

It was morning so I continued this process on my bike; riding to work. I put together thoughts and words that sounded good and fit the melody (timing and rhyme). Each time I had a line that seemed to work I would stop my bike and add it to the 'Notes' app on my iPhone. By the time I got to work I had the whole song laid out. It was rough but it was there.

Okay, here's the deal - the part that kind of surprised me. On my ride back home after work I tried to remember the song and it was all gone. I couldn't remember the melody or the words.  I have been learning other peoples' songs and playing my own songs for most of my life, and especially in the last few years. I have been memorizing some pretty long ballads. Wouldn't you think it would be easier to memorize my own song? I just made it up this morning, after all. But it has actually taken me just as long - if not longer - to memorize this song, and it's not even a long song. Thank goodness I had the sense to record the riff and write down the lyric. Well, not so much thank goodness as thank past experience for teaching me that lesson. I have lost so many great compositions over the years by believing that the same part of my brain that creates a song is the same part that remembers it. I have learned that I have to be very careful while composing. I can't trust myself to remember more than a line or two at a time and even then I have to repeat it over a few times before I stop whatever I'm doing and write it down.

I wonder if this is common or if it's just me.