Misery Despises Company

I used to love to write music. Country, mostly. Lyrics that whined, clung, hung on the outer edges of a memory, dusty and faded. Something that sounds like you've heard it before.

But I had to be miserable to write lyrics, or at least be any good at it. Plain ol' sad doesn't cut it. Bouts of depression just aren't the same. Downright miserable has no substitute one cup of baking powder for one cup of soda.

Miserable like the artist who starves to paint, bound inexorably to his craft as if it is welded to his shoulders, moved forward only by dragging it all behind him. Ecstatic in his misery. Shivering in a garret in Paris, far from sight of the Seine.

I haven't been miserable in seventeen years. No lyrics are possible. You can't fake misery.