The Sleepwalker's Bed: First Song

I tell people that "Numbness" was my first song.

Really it wasn't my first song. This was my first song. I wrote it at church camp when I was 12.

All I Want by Jana Fisher

I met a songwriter once who talked about grabbing songs out of the air. "All I Want" felt like it had always been a part of me.

For the next two years, I tried to recapture that moment by writing endless lyric poems on college rule notebook paper. It was never quite as magical. But at some point in that dry period I wrote lyrics I entitled "Numbness."

(I left out the part where I decided to be homeschooled for 8th grade. I got a lot of practicing and writing in — I even wrote a novel! — but my social skills atrophied. I went back to school for 9th grade but I was exceedingly awkward and quiet.)

Then one day my friend Lindsy wanted to go to youth group early to talked to the minister about getting baptized. Not knowing how to talk to strangers, I communed with the piano in the lobby. And I came up with this.

You'll wake up one day
To find yourself alone