It has sat there on the shelf for allmost ten years. Since before I played guitar, long before Texas. It has haunted me, jeering at me in my creative hours, begging to be finished, begging to be made whole so that it can be the masterpiece it was meant to be.

"It" is a song I started years back. A song based on a fantasy of a chance meeting with an old folksinger (a la Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan). Onlly in my song, the old folk singer has given in to the ravages of alcoholism and age, and the chance meeting takes place in a New orleans flophouse (yes, this was LONG before Katrina). But I've sat here with what I consider to be a brilliant beginning, that sets up the encounter but doesn't deliver, something that begs to be finished, begs to be closed but hasn't been, not because of a lack of a creative effort but because I didn't know where to GO with this.

Last night it occured to me exactly where I should go. And since I have the basic tune in order, all that remains is to go there...and to keep the flow of the song intact.

I don't know if it was putting together my "first" song that unblocked it (I spent much of yesterday arranging the chorus), but something unblocked the plug that had been caked over and rusted shut...a plug I thought could never be released. It's a liberating feeling, and who knows? Maybe this will release some more. I've got literally dozens of songs "on the shelf", most of them nowhere NEAR as good as this one, but begging to be made whole as well. My game plan is to get together enough to put a basic demo together...not that I plan to make a career out of it, mind you (ain't much market for a 30-some odd year old beginning folksinger!), but some of these songs are marketable even if I'm not, and it would be thrilling to be able to pass these songs out to friends and family.