sometimes I think the only place I can make a song is when I’m at the grocery store, listening to the sound of people while waiting in the checkout line.
I keep an eye and ear open for what people cast off: half-sentences. corner store English. if the timing’s right, I’ll catch a major blowout between a girlfriend and boyfriend over something way small but way raw and emotional.
or I’ll listen in on a tableful of friends workshopping love’s particulars at the place where I work. I don’t think of it as eavesdropping. it’s more like hearing confession. I’m this donut shop ecclesiastic listening to the human heart as it bares its brokenness.
and so I listen, and write and hear melody. and as I do I polish what I’ve found, and as I craft it into a song hopefully expose a genuine, consoling truth in the brokenness.
I look for things I don’t ordinarily notice or personally experience. often that’s the only way to encounter the truth. because a lot of what I write and sing about isn’t personal stuff. I’m talking about myself only a part of the time.
the places where I notice people, and what’s happening to them, and what they’re saying, most of it may not appear to be anything special, at first. but there’s nothing romantic anywhere unless your heart is like that.
cookie nieves 
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