all you create and all you destroy

As human beings, we are creators of nothing. We are organizers. Whether we achieve this by invention, or education, or politics, we all seek to organize the best way we can. Everything is traced back to God-given matter, it is what we do with it, how we choose to organize the pieces we touch, that makes us unique.

We use words that make it sound like we have really created something, but our language has allowed us to be rather generous when it comes to personal credit. "You created a mess" for example. I didn't create a mess- I didn't create the shirt that's on the floor, or the sock that's hanging from the closet door, none of the actual things that make up a mess. But I suppose it's neccessary to have terms like these to shorten our explanations for why we let what is ours out of our control.

When I write a song, I'm not creating any new words or chords. I'm piecing together what already exists in a new way. And I call this collection of words and music a song. It's my way of organizing a bit of the chaos around me- that's what I've been given. And this new organization of the old is why you can hear a song you've never heard before and have it sound familiar, hit something inside. These common elements are certainly not exclusive to music- the old, the already in existance is why we share universal questions and feelings, and often solutions to basic problems- the family unit being essential to literal survival, for instance. So whether it's writing a novel or solving a math problem, all we're really doing is rearranging our bit of chaos into something of order, something that one can understand, satisfying our instinctive need to organize.