When songs leave the nest

All the love
All the hate
Vanished in the night
I turned around to look and it was gone
I don't care
Anymore
'bout proving who was right
And I guess that's what they mean by moving on

Ron the Drummer forwarded me e-mail from a friend of his, the one who recently told him she'd been listening to our album a lot because it was "hopeful and uplifting." She said "Moving On," one of the tracks, had become a very important song in her life. It gave her hope that her pain would pass, and the hope helped make it so.

(You can listen to the song here if you're curious. Click "Moving On" if it doesn't come up first.)

Ron's friend wanted to thank me for writing the song. She wanted me to know that perhaps the pain that inspired "Moving On" wasn't for nothing, since the song helped another person get through her own crisis more smoothly.

Torn apart
I mourned the innocence you stole
But given time, all things must pass
Like a river
The years run through my soul
And make its craggy canyons smooth as glass

Funny thing is, I was angry when I wrote that song. I hadn't moved on from the situation that inspired it at all. "Moving On" was what I hoped I would feel someday. I'm not sure if hoping made it so, but creating the song helped. There's something very powerful about taking the raw materials of experience and interpretation and emotion and giving them form. Making them beautiful.

And now that they have form, now that the song is a song, it has a life of its own. It connects with people who don't know me at all, and they filter it through their own experiences, interpretations, emotions.

It's gratifyingly weird.