(Created), Lost and Found

I was floating around the Twitterverse the other day, as I am wont to do, when I came across a link to the first single of a new album. The artist is Regina Spektor, who I’ve listened to in the past but haven’t heard in awhile. I LOVE this song, "All the Rowboats". It’s beautiful, and surprisingly dramatic for a song about a museum. (Has anything ever appealed more to my nerdy, academic heart? Mmm....no.)

Later, while puttering around on Youtube (please note I was supposed to be writing during all of this), I searched for the song in order to listen to it again.

I found this clip of Ms. Spektor playing and singing it live about a year ago. In her introduction she says that she was searching online for a song and came across a video a fan had uploaded of “All the Rowboats”. She’d forgotten about it. The debut single for her first album in three years, and she’d written, performed, and forgotten about it.

What surprised me was that I knew exactly what she was talking about. So much thought goes into the production of something new, whether it’s a song, a poem or a story. So much effort and energy, hours spent searching for the right word, the perfect intersection or harmony. And then…a shinier idea rears its needy head, or a deadline approaches, or there’s an issue with family, or you move and those precious notes get packed tenderly into a box that’s then crammed into the back of a closet three states away.

We move on. We move on and these stories and characters, those choruses and bridges, they’re left behind. Never heard or read by another, these things cease to exist.

Until their time comes again.

I’m working on a new story. New in that it’s only a year and a half old. I’ve set the cast, the starting and ending points, and certain twists in between. I’ve forgotten it nine times since I created it, but I remembered it ten. And now, it is time.

Have you ever obsessed over something, whether of your own creation or another’s, only to lose it for a spell? Have you ever stumbled upon something only to feel like you've come home?