the notebook page that became a song
week two of eight. the page, the four lines, the one i had to kill.
May 10, 2026
picture a moleskine. not a nice one. the one i bought at an airport in 2023 because i’d left the nice one in a cab in berlin and i was too tired to be precious about it. black cover, slightly bent, the elastic band stretched out from being shoved into a coat pocket too many times. open it to roughly the middle. the page is half coffee-stained. a perfect crescent, like a moon someone gave up on. and the handwriting is mine on a bad day, which is to say it slants left and runs out of patience by the right margin.
there are four lines on this page. they are not the chorus. they are what i wrote before i’d figured out what the chorus was.
i want to show you the page, and the way it became the thing. not because the process is sacred. please. the process is mostly me reheating coffee and saying no, but what if it’s worse. i’m doing it because last week I told you i’d stop performing the making and start showing it. so.
and while we’re here: tracking started this week. monday, first session. more on that in a moment.
what the page actually says
i’m transcribing. the page itself is a photograph in my head; the literal scan would do you no favors because, as established, my handwriting is a personal failing. the four lines, verbatim, with the crossings-out, the kind of mess that makes a song possible:
there’s a line that survives almost untouched. a line about something left behind that still smells like what it was. a line about a habit that has no name for itself. and a line that’s me being clever instead of being correct. the disease i’m trying to recover from in public, badly. the one i killed because loving a line is the surest sign i’m holding on for the wrong reasons.
here’s what i mean by compost. most of these four lines are not good. the first one is borrowed-feeling, somebody else’s metaphor i’ve been carrying around like a hotel keycard from a place i no longer remember booking. the third one is the seed. the fourth one is the one i had to kill.
the notes app, exhumed
while we’re being honest, here are some entries from the notes app. i am not editing them. i am not making them sound better. they are dated, they are stupid, and they are part of the record:
march 9, 3:14am · what if the song is just the thing you keep not fixing. what if that IS the chorus. (no.)
march 11, 1:02pm · bridge idea: something left in the closet. too listy. what does it smell like?
march 12, 8:47am · stop trying to make the clever line happen. it’s a therapy word now. you cannot have it. you can RENT it.
march 14, 11:55pm · the song is about standing still so long you forget what moving felt like. stop dressing it up.
the last one is the turn. that’s the moment the page became a chorus. not because it’s a beautiful sentence. it isn’t. it has standing still in it, which is barely english. it stopped trying to win. the first three notes are me performing for an audience of one, who is also me. the fourth one is me finally writing from inside the thing instead of pitching it.
the chorus, as it stands now (and i reserve the right to ruin it before tracking is over), keeps exactly one image from that page. everything else is gone: the umbrella, the clever line i loved and killed because loving a line is the surest sign i’m holding on for the wrong reasons1.
what the week actually started
arrangement locked on friday. i wrote that in the notebook. locked, underline, half-believing it. and then spent saturday quietly questioning every decision, which is not the same as reopening them, just to be clear. the arrangement is locked. i am simply a man who is afraid of locked arrangements, which is different.
tracking started monday. my home studio, 8pm, after i’d moved the desk six inches to the left because the reflection was doing something to the mic. don’t ask me to explain this. i cannot explain this. i moved the desk and things sounded different, which is the whole of what i know. one interface, one condenser mic, the laptop open to the session file. just me.
okay. here’s the part where i’m supposed to package this into a lesson. trust the compost. show your work. kill your darlings. cross-stitch it on a pillow. i’d rather not. the truth, less marketable: most of writing a song is sitting with four bad lines for three weeks while pretending to your best friend that you’re almost done with the new one. the lesson, if there is one: you don’t get a song out of a page. you get a song out of sitting with the page long enough that you stop trying to be the one writing it. and then sometimes (tuesday in march, 11:55pm, a borrowed black overcoat slung over the desk chair like a witness) you write a sentence you didn’t know you had.
i want to know what your version of this is. i am asking sincerely, which i realize is a high-risk move on the internet. reply to this email. tell me about the four lines you’ve been carrying around. tell me about the thing you kept not fixing until you finally wrote a song around it. i read everything, i answer most things.
next sunday i’m in the middle of tracking week. i’ll tell you what that looks like from inside it, not the finished version, the during version. this is the whole deal: you get the process before you get the product.
reply if you've got a page. i’ll write back. if a friend forwarded you this: subscribe, it’s free, it’s sundays, and we’re in week two of eight.
the notebook is closed now. the tracking session is open. these are, i think, related facts.
p.s., i have, in the course of writing this entry, eaten three clementines and one piece of cheese that i am 60% sure was meant for tomorrow’s dinner. the clementine peels are on the desk. the cheese is a private matter between me and my refrigerator. the notebook is closed. the light, for the record, is still on, although last night a moth flew into it with such conviction that i briefly considered writing a song about that instead. i will not. you’re welcome.