picture from Vikkie's Blur Page

Although I do not wish to elevate myself above my station by including my own name among some of the greats, the connection between creativity and depression is one that can’t be ignored. This weekend has been truly awful yet yesterday something came to me while I was not expecting it. We had gone to town in order to get out of the house for a bit; I needed to do some bank stuff and Mandi wanted to pay some bills before we went and bought some music. On the way to the bank I started riffing (out loud) the bare bones of a song. The words came to me as if by magic and in the time it took to walk from the tram stop in the Old Market Square to the bank (less than ten minutes) I had the first draft of a song. After I had done what I needed to do at the bank I sat down on one of the sofas and took out my notebook to write down roughly what had come out of my mouth and was delighted to find that although it will need draft rewriting, I had written a song in ten minutes. The beauty of this song is that I don’t even have to worry about writing music because the song was based around an already existing one so the music is already written. My song takes the tune of ‘Parklife’ by Blur and is a comedy number, so under recent changes to the law regarding parody I can use the music without asking. Of course I will have to share the money it makes, but it won’t make any money because I will give the song away for free online, but at least I will be able to bore people with a partially true story about me writing a song with Damon from Blur.

As soon as I was home I was writing out the lyrics to the song based on what I had scrawled in my notebook. In my usual method of jumping the gun and getting all excited about a project I posted an announcement for a band that could play ‘Parklife’ so that we could record the song. Within a few minutes I had a band to collaborate with; although I haven’t told them what the song is about, I have told them that it is a comedy song.

The problem now is that I can’t regulate my mood during moments like this. As I wrote ideas for the song, then received from a band willing to work on the idea, my endorphins were racing around my body at an alarming speed. In my head (and I emphasise that this was only in my head) I was a genius for carrying out this task. I had written a song in an hour, on a Saturday afternoon shopping trip. What’s the best song in the world in your opinion? I bet it took longer than an hour to write.

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This week’s edition of The Sunday Alternative is here.