‘...If this life is just a puzzle then you’re my missing piece
You make me complete...’
It’s New Years Day 2018 and I’m on the motorway driving home from a wedding ceremony in a little town called Moira. Considering it’s January in Ireland the weather is incredible and the countryside stretching out either side of my car looks even more green and beautiful than usual. The first day of a new year; a year in which I’ve decided to make a lot of changes in my working life, about time I start getting serious about this whole songwriting thing I reckon.
For the past 7 months or so I’ve struggled to write anything more than a isolated verse or chorus at a time.. no real focus, no idea what I really want to say anymore, unsure if I’ll ever manage to finish a full song ever again (dramatic I know.. where’s my Hans Zimmer soundtrack when I need it?!) But now that I’m getting serious about this whole writing thing, I’ve gotta start finishing songs.. so I promise myself that in the few free hours I have that afternoon that I’m going to at least start something to be completed by the end of that week.
I get home, make myself a cup of honey and lemon tea, get the guitar out of it’s case and look at myself longingly in the living room mirror, wondering if I’m wasting my time. Over the past year I’ve decided I want to write some grittier rock songs like those of the Black Keys, so I hop on Spotify and listen to my favourite track from their stellar El Camino album, ‘Gold On The Ceiling’. The thing that always immediately grabs me about this song is the driving groove and I quickly decide to use that same groove as my springboard. I start strumming some minor chords along with that same chugging rhythm and before I know it I’m riffing a melody over them. There’s something about a New Year that always feels reinvigorating and so, feeling excited by the thought of new beginnings in my own personal life, I’m pretty sure I want to write about that. Then suddenly out of nowhere the phrase ‘kiss me like it’s New Years Eve’ falls out of my mouth and my mind begins spiralling in an entirely different direction.
For the past year or so I’ve been fascinated with the idea that there is someone divinely created for all of us, that idea of finding ‘the one’, the person who helps to restore the yin and yang balance we all so desperately need in our lives. In my experiences of love and in particular those times when your heart feels inexplicably intertwined with that other person, everything just feels right. Every kiss possesses the adulation you feel on the stroke of midnight as the New Year begins.. every embrace feels so good you just never want to let go.
‘...You smile at me, my heart explodes, you’ve got my mind believing
In fairytales and legends of a life of greater meaning...’
Over the course of the next hour or so I find myself fully immersed in that flow state of writing, I’m completely submissive to the muse that has found its way back into the room after such a lengthy vacation. I try to verbalise my romanticised ideas of what finally finding ‘the one’ might actually feel like.. the idea that they’re someone you simply can’t live without, the way in which they effortlessly soothe your soul and heal your heartache, and how (despite your imperfections, hang ups and fears) they see you for who you truly are and still choose to love you unconditionally regardless. Here’s hoping my romanticised ideas of perfect love are closer to reality for some than I can often hold out hoping for myself...