That’s the title of the new song I just recorded. Here’s the story of writing it. As I mentioned previously, I found myself at the beginning of the month needing to write a winter holiday song from scratch (and record it by the end of the month). Although I like song assignments, I generally prefer they more specific and quirkier (e.g. write a holiday song that includes the words “menorah, Easter bunny, and candy cane”), and without such a firm deadline for an irrevocable delivery. Nevertheless, I set about writing this one, and, as usual, my subconscious delivered me a usable assignment – I awoke in the middle of the night with the line “let there be peace, peace on the planet; whether or not a savior was born.” I then needed to figure out how to write the song those lines would be in. I had a few false starts – I first started writing a story about someone at a tree-selling lot on Christmas eve, who didn’t believe, then a homeless person looking for shelter; eventually I landed at Nerissa Nields’ writing retreat and – faced with writing session after which I had to report back, simply started a story of someone taking shelter (we didn’t yet know why) in a church at what was probably a midnight mass for Christmas. Clearly, though (because of the start of the chorus) this was not going to be a standard Christmas song, so I needed to figure out where it was going. I wrote a first verse simply from the perspective of this person being in the church and not believing – the first draft was pretty angry (there was “damnation” in it), but then I thought about what she would encounter in a church on midnight and it wasn’t likely to be negative – at Christmas, people who believe are joyous, so I rewrote it from the perspective of someone who was there when others were experiencing the joy but who just wasn’t able to do it herself. It wasn’t a complete invention. Beginning in about 6th grade I, who was raised without religion, went on a search for one – I started with variations of Christianity (including Catholicism), especially during advent; the candles in the darkness spoke to me, but the actual details of the belief I just couldn’t take on, no matter how hard I tried. I also wrote a last verse in which the narrator came to accept that what she was looking for was what everyone is looking for in the darkness of winter: hope for what comes next. What I tried for – and failed to write – was a middle verse that gave the back story of the narrator; something about her alienation from religion, or how she came to be seeking shelter in the church in the first place. No matter how hard I tried to write that verse it didn’t come out the way I wanted, so when I sang my draft to the assembled writers at the retreat I sang it without that verse, and the general consensus was that another verse wasn’t needed. I also had a bridge, that had emerged even before I had any verses – it had some great lines in it and was more explicitly about how we’re all searching for the same things no matter where we find them. But a day or two after the retreat I woke up in the middle of the night and wondered whether the bridge actually belonged in the song as I’d written it. I played the song (without any explanation of what I was wondering) for a songwriter whose judgment I trust whose first reaction was “lose the bridge.” (He said it wrapped things up too neatly in a bow, when the song otherwise sounded more like it was still searching.) So I took that as confirmation of my middle-of-the-night insight. I did write a completely different (including with a different melody) “Hallelujah” bridge that also makes the song more gentle, I think; the idea that you can be celebrating the season, and looking for meaning, even if you’re not able to sign on to the specific Christmas story. And then in the recording, we did some extremely cool things with those Hallelujahs. Anyway, that’s the story of writing the song; if you want to hear an almost-final version of it, it’s here: http://www.bethdesombre.com/music-28.html I’d love to hear what you think!