To Sing A Song: Why I Wish I Could Sing

"See the months they don't matter it's the days I can't take
When the hours move to minutes and I'm seconds away."
- Taking Back Sunday, The New American Classic

People like to quote lyrics. We rarely ever get them right, and almost never use them in the way the songwriter meant them to be used. But we use them anyway. They sing, and sometimes we sing along and try to make the words our own.

"And I don’t want the world to see me,
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am."
- Goo Goo Dolls, Iris

Lyrics are just words, but there's something about being able to put a word to a beat in your head that makes them so much more. People have a hard time memorizing poetry. The words rhyme but your mind provides a beat. With lyrics the beat is already there, you just let your mind put the two together.

"Vindicated
I am selfish
I am wrong
I am right
I swear I'm right
Swear I knew it all along
And I am flawed
But I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself."
- Dashboard Confessional, Vindicated

They know. Songwriters that is. They know what we're thinking about because they are just like us. They can take that, and turn it into the most beautiful song you'll ever hear. See they know things, and more importantly they know how to use them. I don't. No matter how hard I try I can't do what they do with the things I know. I can write here. Get it all out there, but anyone who got out of fifth grade can do the same. Maybe I have a way with words, maybe what I write can make you understand how I feel, but I can't make you feel like I feel. A song can, this can't.

"But there's still tomorrow
Forget the sorrow
And I can be on the last train home
Watch it pass the day
As it fades away
No more time to care
No more time, today"
- Lost Prophets, Last Train Home

There are songs to tell you that life isn't easy, songs to tell you how great it could be. Songs to tell you all sort of things. That's what gets to most people. They think these songs talk to them.
And maybe they do. That's now how it is for me. Not how it is at all. These songs don't say things to me, they say things for me... because I can't say them myself.

"I've got the time,
I got the hours,
I got the days,
I got the weeks.
I keep saying to myself I've got the words but I can't speak."
- Modest Mouse, Black Cadillacs