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Creativity Handbook

Creativity Handbook: JLP’s Journal for a Creative Life. Find your Creative Personality Type, Daily Inspiration, Storytelling, Filmmaking and More

If I wrote you a song

Carriage in Central Park, Diana+It was a few weeks ago when I was trying to wriggle out of the work unfolding before me, and I was having a really hard, fragile-feeling day.  I went into Manhattan for a story slam, and realized once I got there that I was there on the wrong day.  It was Tuesday, and the show wasn't until Thursday.  On the subway ride back home, I watched the sun set behind the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.  The sky was glowing with color and light, and the water below the bridge was a mirror next to the flame.

I was listening to one of Jonatha Brooke's songs on my iPod, and thinking how magic it would be if she was there right that minute.  If she could take one look at me and write the song I needed to hear.  What would that song be, I wondered. And I came home and jotted down these lines.  Then I forgot about them until this morning when I was thinking about a friend. 

If I wrote you a song, it might be something like this.  Because maybe at the end of the day, we are asking the same kinds of questions, trying to work out a truce with the same kinds of fears. I think we all have less frightening lives that woo us from time to time (the coffee shop barista apron beckons me more than you can know).  But I've never regretted being brave.  If you've been thankful, even once, for another person's courage, use that memory to help you believe that someone will be thankful and loving you on the other end of yours.

Love Me This Big (or Song I Wrote for Myself on a Shitty Day)

Can you look in my eyes
and see all that I carry
set it to a sweet tune
so it won't sound so scary
Will you write a lyric about dreaming
and another one about fears
Something that will make sense of
this laughter and these tears

Will you love me this big
will you love me this small
hold my power and passion
and my fear that I will fall
Do you see me on the mountaintop
and crying in my bed
Will you love me this big
will you love me this small

If you say what I need to hear
but put it in a rhyme
it will sneak up on me
when I'm having a good time
Tell me to come out of hiding
because it's not all about me
others are counting on me to speak
so they can also be free

Will you love me this big
will you love me this small
hold my power and passion
and my fear that I will fall
Do you see me on the mountaintop
and crying in my bed
Will you love me this big
will you love me this small

courage, dreamingJen Lee