The first performances started today. Twenty year old woman from the Punjab stayed after class to tell me after hearing the first four students perform, she realizes she has no talent and doesn’t know what to do about that. I told her she should quit. Just kidding. I told her I bet the four who impressed her might be just as doubtful about their talent but more importantly the point is just do the work of studying lyrics and creating your own. I asked if she had any examples from the exercise we did in class where we analyzed the opening lyric of Neil Young’s Love is A Rose and considered how he mashed an emotion with a noun and then extends the idea of what that noun does. She had three examples. I can’t quote them but they were powerful and hit the mark. I told her it was perfect. I sense she won’t quit.