From Alan:
When I first e mailed Lindy Kerby all I had was a poem, which I knew would need to be re worked, and a vague idea for a melody. I didn’t have any music written. It took 2 months, a lot of editing, a lot of sending revised versions attached to an e mail and learning how to do it right, but the end result is this song. I am so glad I stayed working on it, there is nothing quite like a song coming together where there had been no song before. If you are now working on a song, keep working, it is all worth it.
I struggle writing accompaniments, and I started an accompaniment for what I hoped would be a happy, bouncy yet thoughtful song. I tried to write an accompaniment with a “simple, bouncy, showtime feel to it” That didn’t happen. What i ended up with was a better match for the song. It ended up sounding like something you might play when your piano teacher assigns you something to help you learn to count eighth, quarter, and half notes. In fact, it reminds me of the song “School days school days dear old golden rule days”
This is one of those poems that was just calling out to be rewritten into a song, after all it says”Now that I’ve written a song about my school day…”
It is one of a growing number of poems that make up what I have written so far for my written life history, which when complete, will be in the form of poems and songs.I wanted the overall message to be that we all have things about us that make it so we don’t feel we fit the world around us very well. Through it all, be a good person, do good with life. I believe we all have songs within us. It might be a literal song like this one, or more likely, the good that one person is uniquely able to accomplish with their life. Every time someone reads or hears this song, I hope it causes people to ask, am I singing the song I came here to sing?