Back in high school I wanted to make sure I left a mark. I wanted to make sure that once I left there’d still be a lasting impression of me somewhere on that school. It was senior year in particular that I hit the overdrive button and took creative risks. A lesser known fact is that I actually attempted to assemble a collection of long-form poems with the intent of self-publishing at some point.
Inspiration for the project drew from a life-long love affair with storytelling as well as a poetry class I was taking around that time for English. I was enamored by the prospect of lengthy poems that didn’t necessarily have a rhyme scheme but told stories in a way that reminded me of a cross-bread between short story and song.
If you stop to think about it, song lyrics are lines of poetry. Sometimes those lines rhyme and sometimes they don’t, but that doesn’t matter as long as it flows. The extended length allows for points to be fleshed out while the restrictions of turning prose in poetry enables a bit more romanticism in the lines written.
The poems written for that project were often a page or two long, all single spaced. I was quite meticulous with the red pen when it came down to editing and honing each story too. They were often about love — lost love, unrequited love, new love, and the burdens of being a teenager. All likely topics for a high school girl, right?
One poem from that set in particular really struck a chord with me down the line in college when I was looking for something new to write a song about. The poem — entitled “A Drop” — was a piece I spent a great deal of time crafting to perfection.
Though it never quite got “THERE” as a poem, it made for a nice song. The tone of the text before even being set to music had a melancholy feel to it … much like the work of Damien Rice (“9 Crime” or “Delicate“) or early Coldplay circa their albums Parachutes (“Sparks“) and Rush of Blood to the Head (“The Scientist“)… so setting the text to music only enhanced that feeling and, in my opinion, the context of story.
It’s a song about being vulnerable. It’s a about letting down defenses, being weak in a moment, and being okay with that. And why are you okay? You’ve got someone there by your side if you need. It’s a simple gesture of human kindness set to music.
