The song opens with
sixteen bars of guitar
before anyone sings.
To you it feels like
a breath in.
You have heard it
four hundred times.
You know what is coming,
so the waiting is full.
Every bar is leaning
toward a chorus
that already exists in your head.
The listener has none of that.
They have sixteen bars
of a stranger's guitar,
a phone in their pocket,
and a friend beside them
halfway through a sentence.
This is what repetition
does to a writer.
It fills the gaps
with what you already know,
and then it hides
that it is doing it.
The long intro.
The second verse
that says the first verse again.
The solo that is lovely
and about eight bars
past lovely.
The ending that fades
for longer than
anyone would wait for a bus.
You cannot hear any of it,
and your ear is not the problem.
You are the one person
who can never again hear
this song for the first time.
So stop asking your ear
a question it cannot answer.
Watch somebody else's attention.
Play it to a person
who has not heard it,
and do not look at their face
while it starts.
Look at their hands.
Note the exact second
they reach for the phone,
or the drink,
or start talking.
That is the length
your intro actually is.
Do it with three people.
If they drift at the same place,
the song is telling you
where it goes slack.
Time the first line of the vocal
with a stopwatch,
and write the number
next to the title.
Then cut something,
even if it hurts,
and play it to somebody new.
You will not miss the bars you removed.
Neither will they.
They will simply
still be there
when the voice comes in.
Your version is not the long one.
It is the one you can no longer hear.
The shorter one
is the song a stranger
gets to meet.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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