Jennifer, a would-be singer/songwriter, wrote a song.
“How ordinary,” she said.
She sang the completed song while accompanying herself on the guitar.
“Yes, very ordinary,” she confirmed.
She went back to her ordinary life for a week or two. Then, she had the urge to write a new song. An idea came to her, or maybe a feeling, and some lyrics, and a bit a tune, all the usual beginnings of a song. It took her a day or two, but she wrote it. Then she played it.
“How ordinary,” she said. “I appear to have no real talent.”
She went back to her ordinary life for a month or two. One day the urge to write a song inhabited her again. Without yet having written it, she seemed to hear it. It seemed so lovely and poignant a song, a special song, really. She worked on it for a week and there it was, completed. And so very different from what she had hoped it would be—so much less.
“How ordinary,” she said. “I won’t do that again.”
She went back to her ordinary life for a year or two. One day, the feeling welled up in her to write a song. But this time, the feeling only made her nauseous. She took some wine and the feeling passed.
One evening, she found herself visiting with a girlfriend at a busy bar. She began humming a tune. Her friend said, “I like that! Is that something you wrote?”
“No. It’s just passing through me.”
“Capture it!” her friend exclaimed. “That would be lovely.”
“I doubt it,” Jennifer replied. “I’m sure it would just be ordinary.”
They drank a bit. The bar had gotten noisier. Her friend had to raise her voice. She asked Jennifer if she knew a certain famous singer.
“Of course,” Jennifer replied.
“Nine out of ten of her songs are ordinary,” her friend continued. “And I still love her.”
“Even the ordinary ones?”
“Not as much as the great ones.”
Something shifted in Jennifer. She wasn’t sure if a load had been taken off her shoulders or if she had been punched in the stomach.
“I have to go,” she said to her friend.
“To write that song?”
“To throw up,” Jennifer said.
She went directly home and got down the song that had been passing through her. She called it “Ordinary,” which, as you know, became one of the biggest country-western hits of all time.