Like a Substack "Album"

Tonight Haven handed me a toy guitar and asked me to teach her how to play. The guitar was badly out of tune, and even if it wasn’t, I don’t know how to play.
I accepted the challenge however, and for the next hour I strummed willy-nilly on the thing while I sang a weird nostalgic mix of Fleetwood Mac, Jewel and Cher.

Julian—who can actually sing—sat nearby smiling at me. As I set the guitar down I told him how I’ve been thinking lately I wish I could really sing.
He tells me, you can really sing, but he knows what I mean. I can sing like people who are supposed to walk around the house alone and sing. Or drive in the car alone and sing. It’s the “alone” part that makes it work. Hitting the right notes doesn’t mean it sounds good lol.

“I want to sing sing,” I tell him, “so I can be a songwriter.”

It’s not the sound of my voice that I care about, it’s that I want another good medium for words; that’s all.

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When I was in high school I had a boyfriend who broke up with me when he joined a fraternity. I was stuck in our little hometown and he had gone off to college to be dumb and wild, and he broke my heart on the sidewalk in front of my parents’ house.

I wasn’t good at finding my words back then, so I stood completely still while he told me goodbye and left me standing barefoot in a t-shirt and jeans, holding his fraternity sweatshirt.

The moment his car pulled away I went inside and cried against all the walls in the house, cried on the couch, cried over the dining room table, cried on the floor.

When I was all cried out, I sat down and did something I’d never done before; I wrote a song.

My older, cooler brother (Tom) was in a band at the time, so I sent my song to him and he ended up putting music to it. One Saturday afternoon, when I was unbelievably sad and lonely, I went to Tom’s and we recorded the song together—my very own voice, my very own words.

The exact number of people I meant to hear that song was one.
I saw my ex-boyfriend on a winter weekend when he came home to visit and I awkwardly tossed the burned cd into his car seat before he left. When he finally listened to it he said:

“That was the craziest thing. I always wanted to know what you were thinking and feeling; you never told me. When I heard that song I understood everything perfectly.”

We did end up getting back together a couple years and I did end up writing one more song about how sad he made me. The lead singer of my brother’s band put it to music and I heard the guys sing the acoustic version once or twice while they were messing around out at the park, but mostly it was a secret—a secret snapshot of something I felt very deeply, put perfectly into words.
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Fast forward a year or so, and I was finishing out my senior in high school. One day I walked into the library for Study Hall and I heard not one, but both of my songs playing.
The school librarian was playing one of the songs behind her desk. My brother (five years older than me) had been one of her favorite students of all time, and she somehow got the song from him.

My friend Shawn* (fake name) was playing my other song on one of the spare computers in the corner.
“I got this from your brother,” he told me, leaning over the table I sat at. “I’ve been playing it all day. How were you able to write a song that said exactly how I felt?”
His girlfriend had recently broken up with him and he was really goin’ through it.

He gave me a fist bump and went back to the corner, and I was left alone at my table pretending I was doing homework when all I was really doing was watch people in the library learn the lyrics to my very own songs.
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And that was it. That was the end of it.
The only two songs I ever wrote in my life.

But I remember how it felt to have someone hear the words I wrote and say, “That is exactly how I feel. You said what I couldn’t.”

It was one of those core moments, where sparkles shoot through you and your fingertips tingle—cuz you just stumbled on something you were made to do.

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I’ve never tried to write a song since high school, but I did find words. I use my words all the time now. This Substack is a part of that.

I don’t have any plans to take up guitar soon or release an album lol. But I’m so interested in that medium.

For example, I, like the rest of the world, had no choice but to notice that Taylor Swift announced she was coming out with a new album. I’m no Swifty, but I admire the craft. I daydream sometimes about what it must feel like to come up with a concept, craft words into songs, give them cover art and visuals and lyrics, and release it as one cohesive project to the world.

It’s too close to writing a book for it to not be tempting to someone wired like me.
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As I look over my Substack Content Board lately, there’s so much there that it’s getting stopped up and saved in drafts instead of sent out.

I got the idea—with all this album talk—that I could treat my Substacks like albums or singles for a little while. Substack Albums. I’m not going to actually write songs I swear. But I happen to be married to a graphic designer, and I thought it would be fun to release “cover art” for some of these moments I’ve been dying to write about.
When writers go through big transitions or phases of healing, it can get overwhelming to put the process into words. And yes, we absolutely have to put it all in words.
I thought this might be a sweet way to document some simple snapshots of life right now without the overwhelm of needing to say everything.

It may be as simple as the storm we had the other night, or the morning I was making pancakes for the kids and singing praise music in the sun—or it could be a sliver of this church shift, this hurt, this healing; could be a moment with God, a friend, or my husband.

I think what I’m saying is this is your disclaimer that I’m about to release about 20 Substack “Albums,” and yes, there will be “cover art” for every single one of them.

In fact I just named this one. It’s called “Substack Disclaimer.”
Hope you enjoyed. 😘 Watch for my next single to drop lol.