My Second Language

It’s a random Thursday night, and I’m sitting in my room at 11:58 p.m. I'm beaming with anticipation for what’s just around the corner. 2 minutes. I’m on a Spotify page, waiting to refresh and hear what I’ve been waiting on for the past few months: a new album.

This is a routine I have the privilege of performing once or twice every few months when someone on my elite list of top musicians releases new music. That was me Thursday night, actually. Waiting for Taylor Swift’s new album (or two), along with the rest of the world.?

But, this blog isn’t about Taylor Swift. It’s about the language of songs—a language I’m fluent in, and one I like more than English most of the time.

I began songwriting the moment I described in my first blog: under a tree in my neighbor’s yard growing up. The topics of those songs have seriously shape-shifted over the years, from chicken tenders to princesses to heartbreak to the intricacies of life and growing up—much bigger thoughts. Recently it’s been about the road of unknowns ahead, and the peace that grounds me: my faith.

I’ve always been fascinated with the way lyrics are crafted. As a writer and a musician, songwriting is the marriage of my two greatest passions—and I’m obsessed with it. I'm not a math girl by any means, but songwriting is its own equation. It's a puzzle you have to solve. Message + metaphor + cadence + syllables + rhyme scheme + hook + melody = a song. It takes a healthy balance of artistic ability and logic, and when it's done right, it's magic.

When I hear a song for the first time, I dissect every single detail; the array of words that have been stitched together to create a perfectly designed meaning. Behind a song, there’s always a story, an alternate meaning, a person, history—and I love getting to uncover it.

Being a songwriter means that the creative aspect of your brain is always turned on. At any given moment, someone could say one thing that sparks a memory or a feeling or an interesting concept—one you can’t help but explore.?I have over 800 voice memos on my phone and thousands of notes in my notes app. Yeah, my storage hates me. But the most important part is always writing it down.

All that to say, songwriting is an escape. It’s a whole lot more than a catchy heartbreak song or a few good rhymes. It’s a portal into an alternate dimension where everything is amplified, magnified, exposed, discovered, reinvented. It’s a new way of seeing the world.?

Songs amplify everything—they elevate how you feel. You may look back at a season of your life where you felt a lot of sadness, but songwriting asks you to dive into it; to dismantle each tear and explain the why. What was once sadness is now despair. What was once anger is now fury. What was once happiness is now euphoria.?

Songs magnify everything—they invite us to zoom into moments (a glance, a racing heartbeat, a familiar sound), every single stage. It’s holding a magnifying glass to your life, mind, dreams, fears, in one hand, and a pen in the other.?

Songs expose everything. They reveal who you are in your rawest form. They demand authenticity and ruthlessly peel apart the phony layers we paint to hide our pain, deepest wishes and most extraordinary thoughts.

Songs help you discover things. There's a moment after you finish peeling back the layers, where you sit there, staring at all these pieces of yourself laid out in front of you. In dissecting your own mind, you are face to face?with your innermost thoughts. You get to reflect and morph your jumbled thoughts into poems.

Songs reinvent things. Hope becomes a morning glow after months of darkness. A broken heart becomes shattered glass. Questions become a crushing weight or a memory becomes a shadow lurking behind you, reminding you of what was. You can pick apart every “what if” and reimagine history. You can invent characters and weave together stories you've conjured in your mind. The possibilities are endless and the only rule is that there's no rules.

There have been seasons where I needed songwriting; where I was so thankful to have an outlet that allowed all my messy feelings to be made useful. No matter what holes I'd found myself in or mountains I had to climb, turning them into art always gave me some sense of satisfaction, gratitude, and understanding.

There have also been seasons where I've struggled to write a simple verse and I've had to actively fight to be creative. I've learned that that's okay too. In my ENGL 408 songwriting class this semester, I've spent all semester co-writing songs with other writers. I've been amazed at what you can still create when you both show up feeling frustratingly uncreative.

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Most of all, I've been amazed at how true all of this is when sitting in a room among other writers. In a class of a vastly different combination of people, most of whom I didn't know at all in January, our differences don't matter one bit. We share a deep understanding of the language of song, and we see the world through the same lens. I still may not know each of their stories, but I can tell you a lot about each of their minds.

And that's the beauty of songwriting—it doesn't quite reveal everything, yet somehow, it's a portal into the deepest parts of ourselves.

In an image-obsessed world, songwriting is real. That's why we crave it and celebrate it. It says the things we're all a little afraid to say out loud.