This is one of the few songs with lyrics that I wrote in the very beginning of my compositional journey. I don’t recall ever thinking about starting to write lyrics. In my memory it just seemed natural I guess.

In those days The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Mommas and the Papas – all strong influencers of my music – had already broken up. So, the notion of lyrics was just a natural part of my notion of what composing was but I simply hadn’t paid it much attention in the early days, as I was much more interested in the music.

Interestingly, at least to me, is that I started composing on the piano in 1962 or so, when I was about nine years old, and The Beatles had just started to become known here in the USA. So, my development as a composer was largely tied to their rise and demise.

As related previously in this text, my mom was in the kitchen and heard my step-dad playing a new composition on the used upright piano he had bought to express his music. She liked it a lot and came out to compliment him on it and it was me playing something I’d composed.

Now I imagine I’d been playing around on the keys for a while, since one doesn’t just sit down for the first time and compose something. At least I suppose not. But actually composing something just happened. I was simply tooling around, learning how notes sounded together, found a combination I liked, added to that, and that’s what I was doing when my mom came out. I never even had a conscious thought at the time about trying to write music. I was just following some interesting sounds to see where they might lead, they way one might hike down a path to see what’s over the next hill, or the way Home Simpson might drop something important that he was doing to chase after a dog with a fluffy tail.

But once I realized I had composed something and my mom liked it, I started doing it all the time, also because it made me just like my step-dad, like most kids do with their parents when they are young.

Beyond that though, the first time I tried my hand at lyrics in order to write an actual complete song was when my mom and dad were putting together an idea for a feature length animated cartoon they hoped to sell through a friend who had a contact to Disney. It was called, The Adventures of the Mighty Toad Patrol.

This was based on our actual Boy Scout Patrol from Troop 8 in Burbank, California. My step-dad was the scoutmaster and I was the patrol leader of the Toad Patrol. The Toad Patrol got its name from our very first campout, which was held in a park in Burbank (we weren’t ready for the wild yet) and the place was literally crawling, and sometime hopping, with toads.

My parents wrote a script for the movie, my step-dad wrote the music (my mom co-wrote the lyrics) and my dad developed all the characters in a variety of original detailed drawings. They decided to do an audio recording of the entire script on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder they had and also included me so I wouldn’t feel left out and we could have this whole experience as a family.

I remember that I decided to write a song for the movie myself, and if I recall correctly, I didn’t tell them about it until I had finished it – music and lyrics, just like my dad!

I played it for them and they actually liked it. Looking back, it was pretty simple, but they wrote it into the script as a scene around the campfire when the Patrol Leader (me) sings a song (that captured the woodland spirit) to the other members of the patrol.

I still have that tape around here somewhere, and I’ll share it when I find it.

Getting back to THIS song – wow, long way around – I was used to the concept of writing lyrics, but just hadn’t done it much. When I did, I found it as easy as music, and just as much fun, and flowing just as nice as you please.

Here, then, are the lyrics for What I’m Not, my song about about trying to discover “Who am I?” like most of us in high school.

Lyrics

My mind cries all alone within my body,
but still the tears don’t show.
And I just want to tell you that I’m slowly,
losing touch with all I know.

So foot in front of foot I make my way,
across the crowded vibes of thought.
Trying to separate conflicting images,
That tell me what I’m not.

Music written and recorded in the early 1970s