Hello, friend.
Welcome to the first blog of: Songs, Stories & Curious Hauntings.
I wanted to tell the story of the first song I ever wrote. Which is called “Something of a Wonder.”
Actually, that is not true.
The first song I ever wrote was about a worm, a lamb, and… well, I was six years old. I had no idea how to play an old plastic guitar, write lyrics, or compose anything resembling music. The words to that particular masterpiece are now lost somewhere in the ether of my childhood imagination, which is probably where they belong.
But the first real song I ever wrote was “Something of a Wonder.”
I was twenty-two years old and hoping a song would find me.
If you are not a writer, let me explain.
Michael Jackson famously talked about waking in the night with musical ideas or melodies, then rushing to capture them before they disappeared — or, as the story goes, before God gave the idea to Prince.
I have always loved that.
Because I think songs are already written.
They are floating around somewhere in the collective imagination, waiting to be found. All we have to do is reach up and pluck one from the tree of ideas before someone else does.
The problem is that life gets loud.
Busyness, drama, stress, responsibility — all of it clogs the signal. The little antenna inside us, the one meant to receive, is often too busy transmitting. We are constantly going, constantly filling every quiet space, constantly avoiding boredom.
But boredom is where creativity sneaks in.
That is one problem.
The other problem is this: when inspiration finally does arrive, you had better move quickly. If you do not strike when it hits, you might lose the idea entirely.
Or worse, someone else might pluck it first.
So there I was, trying to write songs with no real idea how to do it. I searched for ideas, but none came. I had snippets, sure. Little musings. Stray lines. Half-formed feelings.
But the lyrical prose I was hoping for never arrived.
Then came the dream that changed everything.
That dream is when I learned that love and human longing would be the two most important ingredients in the recipe of songwriting and storytelling. At least for me.
In the dream, soft yellow sunlight streamed through an open car window. It was a late autumn sun, the kind that gives the whole world a glow only autumn can. There was a warmth to it, golden and fleeting, like the day already knew it would not last.
She was beside me.
Her smile was genuine, lovable, and bright. Her dark hair whipped around her face as we drove through evergreens that lined the road. The air moved through the car in that perfect way it sometimes does, where everything feels cinematic and ordinary at the same time.
Then her hand found mine.
It felt like home.
And then I woke up.
I woke with the feeling that I had lost something.
Something I had never actually had.
I did not understand it then, but what I was feeling was heartache. Longing. The ache of missing someone I had not met. I am not embarrassed to say it: I was in love with the woman from the dream.
That feeling lingered in my chest for days.
Then one night, feeling particularly sad, I went out to my dad’s workshop. I wanted quiet. Solace. A little time alone with my guitar.
And then the strangest thing happened.
I unknowingly plucked a fruit from the tree!
It was an out-of-body experience, because it felt less like writing and more like watching someone else write through me.
I pulled my Santa Cruz guitar from its case, grabbed my capo, and placed it on the second fret. Then, without any provocation, started playing a chord progression I had never played before.
And the words just poured out.
I wrote “Something of a Wonder” in about fifteen minutes.
Every word, every chord, every little piece of that song came from that dream and that longing.
I wrote it for her.
My future wife.
A woman I had yet to meet.
Until now, I had only ever told one other person about that dream. He believed it was not a dream at all, but a premonition. I cannot speak to that with any certainty.
But he may have been right.
A year later, he and his wife had a baby girl, and I went to visit them at the hospital. When I walked into the room, his wife’s co-workers had come to visit and were lined up along the wall, talking and smiling.
As I entered, one of them leaned out and smiled at me.
The same smile.
The one from the dream.
After meeting her in that hospital room, I knew I was going to marry her.
Of course, before any actual nuptials took place, I mostly referred to her as “the hot friend” and inquired about her relationship status with probably far less subtlety than I imagined.
Eventually, my friends invited me over one night.
And lo and behold, the hot friend was there.
We hit it off immediately, and I fell for her almost as fast. By the end of the night, I was already daydreaming about our wedding, our future, and whether I had any business being that emotionally invested in a woman I had just met. I am, obviously, a hopeless romantic with a flair for the dramatic. I had three older sisters, so I know far more about rom-coms, chick flicks, and emotional plot twists than I care to admit, and during that evening I was playing the end of our movie. The one where we lived happily ever after.
About midway through the evening, she mentioned that she needed to leave to pick up her son and take him to her mother’s. She also mentioned, very pointedly, that she was coming back afterward. So, I offered to drive her.
She accepted.
For the first time, we got to talk alone.
After the pickup and the drop-off, we headed back to our friends’ apartment. We took the stairs slowly, talking as we climbed to the third floor. Then she stumbled, and I caught her.
She grabbed my hand.
And she did not let go.
It felt like home.
Unfortunately, it took another six months before we actually started dating, because apparently fate has terrible timing and a flair for drama.
But eventually, it got us there.
I’ll leave you with a sneak peek of what my next post will be.
It will explain how, before she became the love of my life, she pretty much ruined it — and made me want to “Leave This Town.”
P.S. She did not ruin it. I am simply a story teller, and therefore contractually obligated to be dramatic.