I don’t write songs. I’ve written a few but they were just lyrics and I think they were kind of corny. But I love the notion of songwriting, and the balance of molding this small 3-5 minute piece of work for days and days, or sometimes just minutes. I’ve noticed that many songwriters tend to describe the sensation of when they write their greatest hits in a very similar way to each other. They all seem to coalesce around the idea that the song was just in the air that day, and by a certain set of circumstances they were able to harness it and pluck it from the sky. It’s as if genius is not something that people possess, but rather it is something that possess people for fleeting moments and gives them superhuman abilities, like an energy we can only call upon at the exact right moment. No wonder the greatest composers of the 16th-19th centuries were so religious. I contrast this with many of the other achievements we seek in our lives - being promoted, building a company, raising a child, nurturing deep friendships. Those feel more like sculpting rather than songwriting. We chip away at a piece of stone over years and years with the vague idea of what the final form will ultimately be. I wonder if there is room for genius there too, or if success there is made instead by the rhythm of waking up every day and performing the act of carving the stone.