There’s something magical in the moment of writing a song. This thought penetrates your mind, and anchors itself deep within you. Sometimes it falls in too far, and you lose track of it, lost in the recesses of your mind, waiting for you to dig, dig, dig and eventually, painfully drag it out and body slam it onto the pages you write on or screen you type on or app you talk to. Other times its anchor doesn’t catch, and you recall the emotion it left you with, but lose the essence of what it was. You try to retrace your steps and recreate the moment that made you FEEL this feeling, knowing that if it comes back you know you’ve captured it. On rare occasion this actually works out ok, but more often than not you’re left with a cheap knockoff that never truly comes full circle and only halfway makes sense. But then, on those perfect mornings, nights, afternoons, whichever it is that the muse likes to visit your place, the thought casts it’s anchor perfectly. That timing, those resources, the DEPTH: it’s only describable as magic. This THING appeared out of thin air! But, then again, what are words anyway? Are words made of anything? Could it be that any moment that one word is placed in front of another word and more come to follow that we are a part of a magical process? Lyricists, authors, journalists: are we magicians without knowing it?
I’m no author, and I’m certainly not a journalist (anything longer than what could take me approximately 1-2 minutes to read typically dies in production stages, blogs are a rare form for me). Songwriting is my form of magic. The way that these ideas grab me sometimes can destroy my soul. They can wreck me and break me down and bring me to the simplicity of who I am. Sometimes this reality terrifies me, and I avoid the magic in order to keep my life organized and neat. Then, out of nowhere, this idea will come swooping down on me like a hawk after a rat in an open field. I’ll be struck in the side of the head like a firework aimed at my left ear. And I’ll be wounded.
The gaping hole starts in my mind, revealing what I’m comfortable talking about and what I’m not, a million tiny little thoughts and ideas and dreams panicking all at once and ramming full force into one another and some crushing others under the stampede. Some fuse together to be more complex and difficult to maintain. Most find their shelters or build new homes or tag team the open wound in my mind that started the mechanism of chaos that I had closed off in order to be more orderly and precise in the first place. But this chaos won’t be stopped too soon. And there will still be panic and riots in the depths of my mind for days after.
Yet, others of these panicking mutants fall, fall, fall, fall down, down, down, down and land somewhere in my chest cavity. Then, the chaos rips a new wound in this real estate, opening caverns in both my mind and my heart all at once. This penetrating idea that caused the riots has attacked my heart by second-hand. Words that don’t exist yet, not by language but by speech, burn the inside of my soul, which is the last to be affected by the tragedy. The ideas sometimes get together with the dreams and they counteract each other and the thoughts reason away the burn and eventually the wounds are healed and the moment of magic is gone too soon. Sometimes my soul has callouses from too many wildfires in recent days and isn’t tickled by the burn so it doesn’t cause the response that the attacking force of the penetrating idea desired. Sometimes duty calls and I’m called away from the mass hysteria, leaving my open wounds to be stitched up by Time, who is like a doctor that never really cares about his patients, but rather just “does the job” and moves along to his next unsuspecting victim. His stitches never stay totally sealed, but never fully bust open to recreate the magic that I need.
But the greatest moment is when my mind, heart, and soul are all equally wounded, and Time is on vacation, and my world is focused in on this attack, and the greatest cure only calls for the ingredients of paper and a pen (or any modern variations of them). My wounds are open, and I am vulnerable. Sometimes one of those lost thoughts in the recesses of my mind comes out to join the pandemonium, and the wounds become wider, deeper. Sometimes the right words can’t be summoned, or don’t exist at all, and the wound doesn’t heal cleanly, and the scar is larger than most others. Most times, the damage can’t be reversed completely, and the memories that stay are deeper, sometimes they slip down with the hidden thoughts that sleep in the unexplored caverns in my head, waiting for another attack in order to add to the pain. This is the antidote being brewed. The serum, injected, mixing in the blood. Yes, these are the greatest moments, because it is in these moments that the muse is entertained, these are the moments when my vulnerability becomes my masterpiece, though my vulnerability was not my creation at all.
You see, this creation works like magic. Though I can explain the Rube Goldberg-esque chain of events that ensues, I do not know where the initial push came from. This anchored-in, parasitic, infectious cancer of an idea came from nowhere. Sometimes I can tell you what pushed it in my direction, but I still don’t know what birthed it. The birth of this thought or idea may have been from within the mind of another fallible human like me, but if everybody’s brain works in similar form as mine, I have a hard time believing that they could create such a WMD of a dream from absolutely NOTHING. No, this magic works beyond our own comprehension. This magic of creating spoken words is beyond what our minds can create, though our mouths have mastered the skill of spitting them out. And even if it’s not, how did that capability get there in the first place? Evolution? Creative design? Drawing the short straw? Is it the long straw? I don’t know. All I know is that these songs that come, they don’t come the same way that buildings are built or linens are spun or waves are shaken into existence. They don’t come like plants are nurtured or coffee is brewed or even how humans procreate. These songs don’t come from matter, they don’t borrow energy to exist, they don’t take up space. These songs come magically, they come like a thief in the night. This is a blessing and a curse. This is where my scars are birthed and how my dreams are hijacked. And it is beautiful, magical, and weird. This is my opiate of choice, my shot of dopamine, that exists without any chemicals or matter at all. And that is why it’s simply called magic.
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Kevin McClure is a songwriter, musical artist, and worship leader. His singing & songwriting has led to him touring the United States both as a performer and worship leader. Kevin lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his wife and two daughters. You can follow him on all social media platforms under @KevinTMcClure.
Kevin McClure 