"The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you"

Memory blurs at the edges of creation, especially when the act itself is so immersive that chronology and causality dissolve. The recollection fades while the music remains, as if the sound has more substance than the one who made it. “Lingering strains hung in the rafters” conjures a studio turned sanctuary, wooden beams holding the echo like incense. The room itself becomes a witness. What persists is not the steps that led to the melody, but the haunting presence of the melody after it has been released.

The urge “to shout back” treats the music as an interlocutor, even an apparition. Art is not merely produced; it arrives, speaks, argues. By addressing the tune, the composer admits a relationship rather than an ownership. The pivotal turn, “Maybe I didn’t write you, but I found you”, refuses the myth of solitary invention. It suggests discovery, like a prospector striking a vein or a naturalist bringing a specimen into view. The melody felt preexistent, as though it had been waiting, half-formed in the air, the tradition, the instrument, the player’s hands.

Such humility suits a jazz sensibility, where tunes emerge from improvisation, communal vocabulary, and something like collective memory. To find a song is to tune one’s ear to what already resonates in countless phrases, gestures, and lived experiences. It also acknowledges the uncanny autonomy of art: once a piece is born, it behaves as if independent. It hangs, lingers, echoes, answering the creator with its own life.

There is a spiritual undertone here. The rafters recall a church; the lingering strains, a benediction. The artist becomes a conduit rather than a sovereign. Craft matters, but inspiration often feels like visitation. When the session ends and memory thins, what abides is the thing found: a melody lodged in the room, the body, and the culture, claiming its place while eluding the neat story of how it came to be.