Whip it, whip it good

Back at Greenville! Being back at home was like turning a slug into the energizer bunny... But the thing about the energizer bunny is he only plays the drums, and only one little tiny thing like in a marching band. To me that doesn't take as much skill as other stuff. For example, what if that bunny played the organ... that thing would have the hands fingers and feet going. So I have returned from my therapeutic visit home, and it's got my head moving fast pace again, and my hands ready to work, and my music making disease has got me on a high.

Tonight Whitney and I were absolute freaks coming back from worship practice at midnight. Basically we talked tonight together about how making music is unlike anything else we know. It is unbelievable sometimes. It's completely cliche to say it's like a drug... everyone says that. For me, it can be compared to something like that... it fools with my head. I'm serious. It makes me kind of enjoy hard times and times when I'm a mess because I like the songs I write and feel like, "Whew! That crap was so so worth it." Just because I thrive in inspiration. What is wrong with me?! 

Inspiration is like a hidden jewel in every piece of everyday. Sometimes I catch it, and sometimes I don't. And then there comes the challenge to describe the mundane in a way that defies exactly that... how can I say something that has been said too many times, that messes with the people who hear it into thinking they've never known what I'm about to sing to them? How can I shock someone with something they've always known? What can I do to bring out an audience member's  old memories and make them a part of what I'm singing even though it's actually about something entirely different? how can I enter someone with my words, and cause them to feel that they are in fact, their own? How can I make people think I'm singing about them, when I'm singing about myself? 

My music is my cry to be understood. It's a connection. Yes, it is my own. It is like my own child that I can cradle. It's something that will make me crazy with joy if I show no one at all. But here's my problem... I LOVE to share it. I love the moment when someone gets it. Like it's a falling rain, and instead of using an umbrella for shade, they are immersed and receive the rain that my hands have conceived.  And then... they are wet with it. They've been rained on. They possess the watery evidence. Point made. Point gained. Kudo!

Maybe it's the achiever in me that seeks to write one song better than the last. But I've made a principle I heard from Dave Clark a principle of my own. When I went to Dallas for a GMA weekend in 2007, Dave Clark (wrote a bunch of random songs like "Strange Way to Save the World" and stuff) told us his belief of how we should use the gift of songwriting. He said he heard someone ask a ball player how he got so many home runs one season, and his reply was, "I don't know... I just always swing hard." And so Dave said for every inspiration, for every song, swing hard. Write it the best way you possibly can. Don't give up and let it be just like something else. Make it good. Swing hard.

And something else he said... using a metaphor of a ball game, we, as writers, are up to bat. We're training to always swing hard. To hit it. To knock the ball out of the field. But we're the ones with the bat. And who is the one throwing the ball? If the ball itself is inspiration, who is the pitcher? And his answer was it's God. God pitches. He throws us a ball. And allows us to be the ones to hit it. 

Those things I heard Dave say were things I've adapted into my heart and into my art. Oh my gosh, it is so incredible to put it that way! How can we manage to swing slow, or to get a strike when God has pitched with intention that we hit it?! How can we not hit it hard?! 

And in our moments we're so joyful and excited in our inspiration, I believe we are reflections of our Creator. We get inspired. And we create. But what astounds me, is we actually need inspiration. We require something to provoke us to create. But God... what was there apart from Him? He needs nothing. Inspiration itself requires him. We are inspired based on our perceptions and our knowledge. But what of that has not come from God in the first place, and what of that is even able to exist apart from God? None of it. God is thee master of creation. The master of creating. He required nothing, and in His own awesomeness, from nothing, made everything. 

I can't even describe the thoughts I've been pondering just tonight. This perfect crisp and warm night. Tomorrow will be much more demanding and tiring, but for now, I've content and joyful. 

So I guess tomorrow is just another day to be ready with my bat, ready for when He throws me a ball intending me to hit it, and hit it good.