Going For A Song: Early Days 11

My first song melody, was a mysterious happening that no-one saw, and I too, at the age of ten, did not see its significance for me. It was an augury of what would come many years later...something that bubbled up from a place deep inside of me,
like a fleeting burst of vapour from a volcano, that then goes back to sleep. Although there may have been a hunger in me to
own a guitar from early on, my first melody did not start me thinking I would be a song-writer some day. There was too much material poverty around then, for anyone to think of something as "frivolous" as that. Also, then and to this day in many quarters, there was a mystique about writing songs... famous people like Rodgers and Hammerstein did that, and it was not really available for "ordinary folk" to mess with. And so...my first tune happened, and then my young life resumed, with my not dwelling on it, as I did my studies, and kept on with my love of sports and other preoccupations that filled my young mind. It was sixteen years after the making of my first tune, with my exposure to the folk scene in Canada, that I wrote my first set of lyrics that went with a melody...my first complete song, about black and white children playing joyfully together, not yet having learnt to hate each other. What prompted me to finally tackle the making of songs?. It had to do with wanting fresh material to sing, but I think that very quickly singing "cover" songs, or folk songs not written by myself, ceased to be a challenge for me. I wanted to engage in something that would exercise my "inner muscle"...I wanted to activate the creative potential that had been lurking in me for a long time. I have this form of "restlessness" to thank for the large body of songs, poems, pictures, and prose pieces I have created. Each time the choice came up, to be on the safe side, and learn another "cover" song, rather than try to create one, I bit the bullet, and focussed on writing one, instead. That approach is
central to someone becoming a "maker of songs", rather than becoming a singer of "cover" tunes...for life. This is how, in
engaging in a conscious or unconscious process of elimination, I finally found that "my job on Earth" was to create songs, and whatever else I could...and let the chips fall where they may................[This concludes the series: "Going For A Song:
Early Days"].........................Quester.