
When I was in high school, I started playing guitar and writing songs. The typical folksy, three-chord masterpieces you’d expect from a teenage girl. In those early years, I was endlessly inspired by Bob Dylan.
I’d listen to Blood on the Tracks and dream of an adulthood rich with travel, intrigue, love and adventure. I was plagued by the restless longing of waiting for life to start and was desperate for a rambling, wandering, Dylan-esque world where I turned every drop of life into poetry.
In college, I’d write songs about nights as they unfolded. Impromptu tales of shenanigans, complete with singalong choruses designed to make my friends laugh.
Not long after, I recorded a couple albums of girl-power jams in my apartment, experimenting with layers of sound as I melted into new depths of love, sadness and longing. It was the best way I could process the cliche emotions of my mid-20s. I still love each of those songs like they were children.
Although that songwriting life slowly fell away from me, we parted … Read the rest