Voice memos at 3am

My voice memos folder is a portrait of who I am at three in the morning, and I would not trade it for anything. Whispered melodies. Half mumbled chord names. Long pauses. The occasional yawn that ends up better in tune than the line that follows.

Most of those memos are useless. A few of them are the seeds of every song I have actually finished. The trick is that the half asleep version of me does not edit. She just hums whatever she heard in a dream and goes back to bed.

In the morning I sift through them with a coffee. Most go straight to the bin. The ones that survive are usually the ones I would never have written awake.