Redemption Song: the Twinkle that Brought the Music Home

I wrote over a hundred songs and I only remembered how to play one of them. That's difficult to fathom. I composed seven albums over the course of twelve years. I'd played hours long sets from memory and I almost forgot it all completely. My musical creativity was preserved in memory that I couldn't reach anymore. My fingers felt like they'd never touched guitar strings. From the echoes of extinction came a familiar sound. 

Special K music died twelve years ago and only I have its remanence in archives. Fifteen years ago, I wrote a song from the smoldering ashes of pain, loss, and failure. I was told it wasn't going to be good for me in so many words and I buried it. After that, I started gradually softening the edges and self censoring my music. Then one day, words like a dagger clipped my guitar strings and silenced my pen. The guitar went in its case after “Until it's Gone” was written. 

There's a certain irony to that fact. “Until it's Gone” had a line that said, “They say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. This wouldn't be the first time I think they [are] wrong.” After that my guitar didn't leave its case and collected dust for ten years. I held a guitar after my dad died, but I couldn't really play it anymore. 

One day, something in me begged to feel the music again. I took some time off, got my guitar restrung, and started to play. The built up callouses had left my fingers. It hurt to play for minutes, nevermind the hours I used to play. I knew I'd written all these songs, but I couldn't remember how to play any of them. Except for one. I remembered a song that's now eighteen years old, “In the Streetlight.” 

The song, like the story behind it, has been a beacon of hope, a candle in the dark, and the soul surviving sound of days gone by. For two years, “In the Streetlight” gets played every time I pick up the guitar. I've written a few new songs, which have mostly been for me. But, I'm so grateful for that one surviving song because my music had almost left me. Little by little, the songs I've opted to resurrect are returning to me. But, “In the Streetlight” never left and I know why. 

Even after eighteen years, I remember the night I wrote that song like it was yesterday because the song etched it into my heart and soul. There's a gentleness and a warmth to the memories related to the song that come to me in times of darkness. It reminds me that not all has been lost because sometimes it feels like that. I'm grateful for the reasons I was inspired to write that song so long ago because my heart has needed it at times to ride the waves of grief. My music needed it to come back to me. My healing process has utilized those memories to remember what's inside.