Today, while driving home, I began to feel a song coming on.  So I started “writing” it in my head, trying to remember it as I waited for traffic lights, stopped at stop signs and finally arrived at my house.

I went up the steps, into the house and started to write the lyrics as I had been singing them in the car.  And then I wrote a second verse.  Now I go through the torment of wondering if this is a melody I have heard somewhere in the past and if I have hijacked it as my own.  I am always concerned that this could happen, what with all the songs that live in my head.  I just now wrote the lyrics and rewrote them once already, so I am pretty sure that they are original.  Time will tell.

It is a gospel song and there are patterns and repetitions that are common in this vernacular.  So sometimes, I worry that I could be unintentionally copying part of another writer’s work.  So far, to my knowledge, this has not happened.  But it concerns me nevertheless.

But I am so amazed and happy that these songs come to me just begging to be sung.  That’s not the way it really happens, of course.  They don’t beg.  But it sure seems that way.

Music, writing, dancing, performing music and acting, the visual arts and so many other creative ventures can elicit joy, sadness, frustration, anger and every other emotion that humans can feel.  It is all part of human expression and communication.  

Many, many more people have multiple skills and trades for designing and building things of all kinds. Others of us are gifted in occupations that go unnoticed and underappreciated.  But nothing else would be able to function without all of them in our world.

All work is valuable and necessary to create the world we live in.  All are important.  We each have something to give and we all benefit from each other’s labors.  Everyone is needed in our society and our world.  For that I am more grateful than words can express.  And all of these thoughts occurred to me just because I was inspired to write a song.