Songwriting

It's uncomfortably late. I have a lot of stuff to do tomorrow, stuff I really need to be asleep for. I don't have a whole lot of free time lately. That's one of the beautiful things about New York, is that you never have to sit at home. To reiterate a point from earlier, there is always something that needs to be done. Some event to attend, be it an open mic or an unpaid feature slot in one, a friend's show or your own (we discussed those earlier), or some entirely unrelated activity during which you will inevitably find yourself pitching your "music career" to strangers.
Like I said, it's really late and I'm exhausted. I am listening to a song called "I Will Never Be Untrue" by The Doors. There's only one version of this song that really counts, although Big Jim & Co. attempted it several different times and felt compelled to put each take on iTunes. The real deal is on Essential Rarities. It's this fantastically so-laid-back-it's-in-your-face blues progression. Paradoxical in nature, in that it is aggressively passive. Like that slow driver in the fast lane, who figures it's Sunday afternoon, and they don't have anywhere to be, so f**k it. You can pass when there's a break in traffic on the right.
After it ends I allow myself to listen to a recording of a song from my last show. I don't hate it quite as much as I feel like I should... It's a very fine line as a new musician... To what degree are you permitted to objectify your own material, see it as a real and valid piece of art that deserves to be put up for consideration alongside those elaborate creations of others which you hold so dear?
Am I ever allowed to enjoy the material I create as much as I enjoy that of my heroes? Do I have the right to treasure "Winter In June" as much as "Don't Cry?" Or are we under a certain obligation to be endlessly self-critical- to the point where complacency and self-satisfaction are equivalent to death?
I for one enjoy my music, and if I didn't, I wouldn't play it in public. I'd save it for the privacy of my living room when my roommates were out of town and my neighbors were out. But the things I write make me feel something, and the things I feel from my music are usually the feelings I find I have in common with other people once we actually engage in conversation. I don't think it makes me a bad person or an arrogant human being to say that I enjoy my own art. And I think that's why I continue to write.
Writing a song is not an easy thing to do... it's a very confusing process. It makes you question yourself a lot. Makes you question your validity as a person. What could I possibly have to say that would matter to anyone other than me? What have I experienced in life that hasn't been endured to the nth degree by someone else? Why should anyone listen to me at all?
And I don't have an easy answer for how it comes together. How your creative audio portfolio ends up congealing into something you can present to those around you. I suppose time is an enormous factor- most of the songs that I've written have taken about a year or so to evolve into what I would accept as their current incarnation. A song can begin its life as one thing, and evolve into something that in the end doesn't even resemble what it was upon starting out.
Call me crazy, but I feel like most of the original songs I carry around in my pocket were not directly written by yours truly. I really love most of my original songs, but... I do not feel as if I myself actually wrote them. An almost unreasonably "healthy" percentage of my original material just sort of... well, materialized in my head out of nowhere, like, while I was stocking the beer cooler at Merchant's Grocery in New Bern, North Carolina (I mean, what can I say- it was an inspirational, secluded, plentiful environment). What do I do if that doesn't happen again? Where do I go if I don't actually have the ability to sit down and deliberately craft a viable piece of music, if I was somehow supernaturally gifted with a passel of lovely sound bytes that never fully blossom into anything beyond a rough track, as some cruel, ironic cosmic prank?
Maybe we all feel this way... When you write something amazing (and believe it or not, it's ok to admit that something you've personally penned is above average), it almost puts you into shock for a second; at least that's what it does to me. Sometimes it's still so hard to accept "the Gift." To believe that you actually hold it in your hands. Sometimes I frantically grab my turquoise suede journal and hurriedly scribble in future choruses and turns of phrase that will mystify me in the morning- but that in itself is half the fun. Decoding your own convoluted rhymes from the night before, written in a rush when you so intensely felt something all of a sudden... Hoping upon hope that your personal expression of what must be a universal sentiment isn't as mediocre as you perceive your own fabric of character to be.
I've got a few things in the works. I find myself playing a lot of my same songs live lately, which means it's time to write new ones and perfect the ones I've been stalling on. I don't know if my next attempts at writing will yield me another piece that makes me as proud as some of the pieces that I already have, but i have to try. I have to know the difference between talent and fluke.

In short- Has He only given me the songs themselves, or has He actually given me the ability to write them?