ASCAP

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

It was free. I joined. It’s official.

I’m not sure how I feel about this step, this development, this whatever, but it was recommended, so I joined. Easily could have been BMI, Broadcast Music, Inc.

Didn’t much matter to me. One is as good as the other, but when I was searching through their websites, I noticed Chris Stapleton was in ASCAP. Good enough for me.

Just so you know, anyone can join. ASCAP and BMI are not exclusive clubs.

ASCAP (800,000 members) and BMI (1.4 million members) are Performance Rights Organizations. When you create/publish/perform your song/tune, it’s considered intellectual property. These two PRO’s help protect the owner of that property—you!

There are other PRO’s, like SESAC, but these two are the primary ones and have been for decades.

I already said I wasn’t sure how I feel about joining. Writing has not been my career. Teaching students to be competent writers, yes. But the act of writing itself has been and obviously still is merely a hobby for me, probably therapy, too. It keeps me sane.

I write a little bit of everything, some to publish, most not. Newspaper columns. Editorials. Stage plays. Screenplays. Quite a few short stories. And lots and lots of poems and songs.

I remember writing my first song in 5th grade. “You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” Yep, my 5th grade girlfriend dumped me for another, and I wrote a song expressing my sorrow.

Laughable, right? Funny.

I don’t today have the lyrics to that song; they were lost along the way. But I can still hear the melody and a few words in my head.

I’ll never lose another song because I now keep them stored digitally on Google Docs. I also keep hard copies in a binder.

I suppose I shouldn’t say I’ll “never” lose another song because a song, or any other creative idea, can be lost in multiple ways. And, short or lengthy, it is most vulnerable in that time frame between when it is conceived in your brain and when it materializes, in one form or another, on a page.

I still lose ideas like this sometimes if I don’t make myself write something down immediately. The crazy part is that no matter how many times I do this, I tell myself it won’t happen again, only to let it do just that.

For me the most likely time for this to happen is in that twilight state your mind enters just before drifting off to sleep.

This “state of mind” is a calm, peaceful one you really don’t want to leave, so you tell yourself, “as soon as I wake up in the morning I’m going to write that down.”

But sure enough, you open your eyes the next morning, and all is lost except for the vague memory that you were supposed to write something down.

It’s maddening—just as a writer would be maddened if he or she created a novel, or a play, or a SONG and someone stole it. Whether to reverie or to a thief, it’s still undeniably and irrevocably lost!

Out of the 200 or so songs I’ve written, less than ten are perhaps worth stealing.

With this new Notes of Blue venture, I’ll be putting some of those two-hundred out there (already shared two in this blog, about to be three). That makes me both nervous and excited. More apprehensive than anything, though, because I don’t know where all this is leading.

It could all lead to failure, but that doesn’t scare me. My good friend Ron Whitehead wrote in his 2007 poem/anthem “I Will Not Bow Down”…

“I Pledge Allegiance to Failure
to failing as no other dare fail…”

As they say, Ron hit the nail on the head! It’s been said by many that more is learned from failure than success, and I firmly believe it.

Success is scarier to me because then what? If you fail, you know what. It’s back to the drawing board; it’s back to starting over; it’s back to a process you’ve already been through.

But success? Where do you go from there? What’s the next step? Can you do it again? Can you keep up the good work? Pressure!

So there’s enough to worry about without the fear of losing your creative work to a thief. That’s why I joined ASCAP.

So here’s to sailing off into the great unknown! I hope you’ll stay with me on this journey. A big shout out to all who have taken the time to be encouraging or curious about this adventure. I can think of no better way to give thanks than with a song.

I wrote this one back in 2018. As I read it again and hear it in my head again, I can’t help but wonder—was this for that 5th grade girl? Did she come back to the boy? What do you think?