the tao of tracyshaun

… in which tracyshaun reflects on being a songwriter, poet, performer, etc. …

a typical view on my walks along Corte Madera Creek

It’s mid-October here in northern California. I write this from my little studio set-up in a small downstairs room in an old house in Marin County. It’s close enough to Corte Madera Creek that I get to walk along its banks with my dog and watch the movements of the tides from day to day. Mt. Tamalpais keeps watch over Ross Valley.

All this to say… I’m reconnecting to my daily songwriting and rehearsal schedule. It’s been a long time since I last completed a song. Over a year, in fact. I wonder sometimes if I hit that “sophomore slump” that I’ve read about from other songwriters. Typically, a songwriter would burn through a lot of new material when first starting out. Songs would come easily as one moves through various latent emotional states that have been waiting to find their expression within some creative vehicle.

I had the same experience back in the mid-90′s when I started writing poetry seriously. I wrote a *lot* of stuff in those first couple of years but then they didn’t come so easily once I had “gotten it all out”.

Now that I have a sizable chunk of music written (and some of them recorded), the new songs are there, but they’re hanging out in the background and seem a bit shy. Whole song structures and melodies can come out in a single night… sometimes several of them. But it’s the words now that are failing me.

Or is it me failing the word?

My recent 3:15 experiments and journal free-writes are helping to reignite the language. And, resurrecting this blog and writing about these struggles feels like the right thing to be doing right now.

Stay tuned as I figure out how to reconnect to my once very vibrant creative process…