ben wakeman : : Journal

Blue Ridge

October 19, 2005

I'm finally getting back home in my head I think. It's certainly taken awhile. I've been drifting for some time I think without an anchor. For me this anchor has always been the creative process, specifically music in most cases. Whenever I go for too long away from writing or playing, I can feel myself changing ever so subtly into someone I don't want to be. It's just that life has to be so insanely complex and requires so much effort just to stay a float, much less be happy. Music has always helped sooth my neurotic tendencies towards melodrama and shiftlessness. Without it, I find myself in a vertigo state transfixed on the overwhelming number of choices. In short, it gives me something to do ;-)

So I decided this week to try to complete one of the many songs I have started and left hanging of late. This song, "Blue Ridge" I had intended to co-write with my friend Kristian Bush, but I think he's just too consumed with Sugarland at this point to take on anything more and I think this is a song that's really more for me. I don't know that I can even pretend to make songs for anyone else anymore. I spent many years trying to figure out how to write songs that would change the world, or at the very least make other people happy. These days I have given up this stance and surrendered to just trying to be true to myself and write songs that do it for me. I think all of us are born with a void that no amount of love and attention can truly fill, but I think some souls are born with a bigger gap that lets the cold wind in ---- for lack of a better distinction, we call these people artists.

"Blue Ridge" is one of the songs I write to serve as nothing more than some insulation, some degree of protection from the cold wind that blows. It's still not quite complete, but I like posting things in progress and having nothing to hide. Even the foul notes and bum chords are okay, because they're part of the story. I wrote a new verse on the way home last night and layed down this basic track to capture the idea after I put the boys to bed.

Blue Ridge

Download the MP3