How long does it take to write a song? Apparently forever. I was just reading over an old blog post* I wrote more than a year ago about a song I was writing at the time. I'd written a chorus but the verses went a bit haywire so I shelved it. Then recently I started again and so now more than a year later I think it's finished. More than a year for 16 lines of lyrics, 12 chords, two verses and a chorus.

Something so precious
Hurts to even think about it
Something so delicate
You're scared to say it's name
It's your private little shame you carry with you
Like a dead mouse in your pocket

You leave me gifts
Like the dead song birds my cat leaves at my window
You leave them under my pillow

'It could decorate my life'
'It won't satisfy you'
'Oh but I'll wear it like an earring,
Frida Kahlo's delight. Oh so fine'
'It's just a trinket on a line'

*Here's the original blog post from a year ago:

I was writing a song (working title: 'a conversation between two fish watching a spinner go by'...I'll come up with something catchier eventually) and I think I may have inadvertently written something that makes absolutely no sense, probably not that uncommon for singer songwriters. I thought that I'd heard a myth once that pirates wore earrings so that if they died at sea they could pay the god of the sea to allow them into heaven. I assumed the sea god was neptune but I could be a few thousand years off on that one. I've been googling it for a while now and it turns out I must've made that up out of thin air because apparently pirates wore earrings to a)improve their hearing(!?) b) ward off seasickness (!?!) c) pay for their funeral should they die at sea. So here's a nonsensical verse for

'A Conversation Between Two Fish Watching a Spinner Go By':

"It could decorate my life"

"Would that satisfy you? You'd wear it like an earring"

"Oh I'd be Neptune's delight"

"Close to divine, all for a trinket on a line"