your own skin

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. Mark Twain

What does it mean to “be comfortable in your own skin”? Some people define it as being comfortable with who you are. It’s also being comfortable expressing who you are and allowing others to “take it or leave it”. No apologies, WYSWUG.

How can someone write about things that are “older than time” and definitely “older insights” than their chronological age would imply. Recently, I heard an album that had me searching for the song writer. Who wrote this? Who captured psychological principles, stages of life, personal differences, romantic losses, and at a basic core-what people want. Don’t we all want someone to make the days move easy?   Don’t we all want a little bit of everything? Don’t we all want to just “be” who we are and totally at ease with ourselves? Can we be anyone that we are not without our skin crawling?

Listen to  ” A Little Bit of Everything”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PLbbI2nuvE

Why do people choose to end their lives? Was it one thing? No, it’s never one thing that pushes someone to the edge or keeps them from going across. It’s never one thing that we fall in love with in another person nor one thing that we can’t live without.

“If I Wanted Somebody”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ruI54SJzes

If we wanted someone to understand us, would we have so much more to say? Do you feel such comfort in your own skin that you don’t need to say a word? Or do you want to tell me who you are frankly and without a frisson of fear? What does it mean to be you? Where do you speak from?

Interview with Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes on writing:

I want people to hear songs about a relationship with a hometown or a woman.  I really wanted to communicate that.  It’s hard, but that’s all the more rewarding.

It starts with an idea or a title, which is backwards for a lot of people. For example, I was watching this movie W, which wasn’t that good.  There’s a moment where Josh Brolin says, “You’re just fishing for the moon in the water.”  It’s an old idiom, but I had never heard it before. I thought it was great.  So I held on to “moon in the water” for three months as a title.  I had nothing else.

When it came time to write the music, I wanted the song to keep coming back to that title at the end of every phrase, like everything funnels back to it.I like to find something we can examine from different angles, whether it’s a phrase or a point or a character, and I like to give it different considerations and new perspectives.  Lyrically, that’s what I like to do with each song.  I have the chords and music suit whatever helps me get the first lines out, and that dictates the rest.

http://www.writersonprocess.com/2011/06/taylor-goldsmith-dawes.html

Are you comfortable with who you are today and who you might become tomorrow?

Do you approve of yourself? Do you fit nicely in your own skin?

 What does it feel like?

It should feel “just right” and may feel even better as time goes on!!