At 78 years old, I have discovered something rather remarkable about myself: the little boy who grew up in rural Louisiana, imagining that trees, buildings, and ordinary objects possessed brains, hearts, and memories, never really grew up.

He is still very much alive inside me. And these days, he helps me write songs.

I have no formal education in music composition. I don’t consider myself an accomplished musician. Yet I have written more than 600 songs across an extraordinarily diverse collection of musical genres, frequently combining styles and instruments that conventional wisdom might suggest have no business being together.

I sometimes wonder whether I was born with the reincarnated spirit of some eccentric 15th-century composer, trapped inside the body of a Louisiana country boy who spent 55 years working in the energy industry.

Of course, I have no evidence of that. But it might explain why I can hear an entire musical production in my imagination without possessing the technical ability to perform it myself.

The more interesting question is how that imagination works.

And two of my songs, Dakota in Mourning and Fallen Leaves on My Grave, offer a revealing glimpse into that process.

The Boy Who Gave Trees a Brain
Growing up in Louisiana, I had a peculiar habit of imagining that objects around me possessed their own consciousness.

My stuffed animals weren’t simply toys. My baseball glove wasn’t merely a piece of leather. And those magnificent pecan trees, some more than a hundred years old, weren’t just trees.

I wondered what they had witnessed.

Had those trees watched children grow into adults, become parents, grow old, and eventually disappear? Did they remember the people who once rested beneath their branches? Could they feel sadness when someone they had watched for decades never returned?

What if a tree had a brain?

What if it possessed a heart?

And what if it could tell us everything it had witnessed during its long existence?

Those questions fascinated me as a child.

Most children eventually abandon such imaginative adventures. They grow older, become practical, and learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible.

I learned that distinction, too.

I simply never accepted that the impossible had to be excluded from storytelling.

Seventy-something years later, that childhood curiosity remains one of the most productive tools in my songwriting toolbox.

Dakota in Mourning: When a Building Learns to Cry
Consider my song Dakota in Mourning, inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in New York City on December 8, 1980.

Millions of people remember Lennon. Countless songs and tributes have honored his extraordinary life and the circumstances surrounding his death.

But I approached the story from an entirely different perspective.

What if the Dakota itself could remember?

What if that magnificent old building had developed an emotional attachment to the famous musician who called it home?

What if it loved John Lennon?

And what if it witnessed his murder, felt his loss, and mourned him for decades afterward?

Suddenly, the Dakota was no longer simply a historical landmark.

It became a character.

In my imagination, the building was female. She possessed a brain, a heart, memories, and emotions. She could observe the world around her, but she had been born without a voice.

She witnessed the terrible events of that December night. She remembered the anguish, the mourners, and the unimaginable sadness that followed.

Yet she could never tell anyone how she felt.

Her tears were invisible.

The world mourned John Lennon, never knowing that the building itself was mourning him, too.

That became the emotional foundation of Dakota in Mourning.

The historical tragedy was real. The Dakota’s consciousness was entirely my invention.

But the grief I imagined her experiencing was unmistakably human.

I gave a building something it could never possess in reality, then allowed it to experience something every human being understands: the pain of losing someone you love.

That is the peculiar territory in which my imagination often operates.

Fallen Leaves on My Grave: When the Dead Still Love
Now consider another composition, Fallen Leaves on My Grave.

The setting is a cemetery on a late autumn afternoon. Beautiful yellow, orange, and red leaves drift from half-bare trees, covering the ground and settling upon a husband’s grave.

His widow arrives carrying fresh flowers.

She has visited his grave every week since his death, honoring an unbroken promise and grieving the man she loved.

That’s a familiar human story.

But once again, my imagination refuses to accept the conventional boundaries.

What if the deceased husband could see her?

What if his spirit remained aware of her visits, could sense her sadness, and could speak to her even though she could never hear him?

What would he say?

Would he mourn his own death? Would he beg her never to forget him?

Or would he be more concerned about her happiness than his own absence?

I chose the latter.

In the song, the husband watches his wife approach his grave. He sees her tears glistening in the fading sunlight. He notices the autumn leaves covering his resting place.

Then the sun begins to set.

And something interesting happens.

He becomes worried about her safety.

The approaching darkness concerns him. He urges her not to linger in the cemetery and asks her to return home.

Think about that for a moment.

The man is dead, yet his instinct to protect his wife remains alive.

That small detail matters enormously to me. It transforms a supernatural premise into something emotionally believable.

Later, in the bridge, he encourages his widow to remember their happy years together, release her grief, and find another love.

He doesn’t want her remaining imprisoned by his death.

He wants her to live.

Finally, he promises that when her own earthly journey ends, he will be waiting at Heaven’s gate to welcome her into his arms again.

The song begins with falling leaves and the permanence of death.

It ends with the promise of reunion.

And once again, my imagination has given a voice to someone who cannot possibly speak.

Two Songs, One Imagination
At first glance, Dakota in Mourning and Fallen Leaves on My Grave seem like entirely different compositions.

One concerns a famous building and a historical tragedy.

The other concerns an ordinary widow visiting her husband’s grave.

But their creative foundations are remarkably similar.

In Dakota in Mourning, I give an inanimate building the ability to think, remember, love, and grieve.

In Fallen Leaves on My Grave, I give a deceased husband the ability to observe, feel, worry, and communicate.

Neither narrator can make the living world hear its voice.

Yet both have deeply emotional stories to tell.

And the listener receives a remarkable privilege: hearing thoughts and feelings that the characters within the songs cannot hear.

The audience becomes the confidant of the impossible.

That is one of my favorite storytelling techniques.

I don’t necessarily begin by asking what story has already been told.

I ask what story might exist if I temporarily suspended the ordinary rules of reality.

What if a building could mourn?

What if a dead husband could comfort his widow?

What if the natural world had memories?

And most importantly, what emotional truth might those impossible situations reveal?

The Story Comes First. Then Comes the Music.
My creative process doesn’t necessarily begin with a guitar, a piano, a melody, or a chord progression.

Frequently, it begins with a scene playing out inside my head.

I see the characters. I imagine their circumstances. I consider what they are thinking, what they are feeling, what they might say, and what they would never dare say aloud.

I may spend considerable time developing the psychological and emotional dimensions of a story before writing the first line.

Who is the narrator?

What does the narrator know?

What does the audience know that the other characters do not?

What emotional journey should the listener experience?

Where should the story turn?

And what final thought should remain in the listener’s mind after the music stops?

Only after those questions begin taking shape do I concentrate on transforming the story into lyrics.

I am not simply looking for words that rhyme.

I’m trying to compress an imagined world into a musical experience lasting perhaps four or five minutes.

That requires deciding what to reveal, what to withhold, what to repeat, and what to leave to the listener’s imagination.

Sometimes the most powerful line is not the most elaborate.

Sometimes four ordinary words can carry more emotion than an entire paragraph.

And sometimes the strongest moment in a song is the moment when the music becomes almost silent.

The Musician I Never Became
Here is where my creative process becomes somewhat unconventional.

I have no formal training as a composer, arranger, or orchestral conductor.

I cannot sit down with a symphony orchestra and explain my musical intentions through a beautifully prepared score.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want to hear.

Quite the opposite.

After 78 years of listening to, studying, and mentally dissecting music across more than 40 genres, I have developed strong instincts about musical arrangements.

When I imagine a song, I often have a remarkably specific idea of its sound.

I know whether the vocalist should be a rich male baritone, a delicate female soprano, a gritty blues singer, or a powerful operatic voice.

I know whether the opening should feature a lonely piano, a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, a Hammond organ, a string quartet, or an entire orchestra.

I can imagine the emotional effect of pedal steel, a mournful flute, a trembling violin, a brass section, or a barely audible snare drum.

I think about tempo, phrasing, vocal projection, instrumental texture, stereo space, and the relationship between the singer and the accompaniment.

I consider whether the chorus should explode with energy or remain restrained.

Should the instrumental solo last eight measures or sixteen? Should it feature a piano, guitar, strings, or an unexpected combination? Should the song end abruptly, resolve with a dramatic crescendo, or fade into near silence?

These aren’t afterthoughts.

They are fundamental elements of how I imagine the completed composition.

I may not possess the technical vocabulary of a trained composer, but I possess a strong internal sense of what I want the audience to experience.

And I am extraordinarily stubborn about pursuing it.

Why the Wrong Guitar Can Ruin a Funeral
My experience producing Fallen Leaves on My Grave illustrates this point.

I wanted a haunting, sorrowful folk composition built around a fingerpicked 12-string Spanish guitar, piano, flute, and restrained percussion.

I also wanted a rich male operatic baritone delivering powerful emotions without overpowering the arrangement.

The problem?

The Spanish guitar kept becoming too energetic.

Its distinctive character was exactly what I wanted, but some generated performances introduced too much rhythmic excitement and instrumental activity.

That might be wonderful in another composition.

But not in a song about a grieving widow standing beside her husband’s grave.

I wanted emotional power, not musical aggression.

I wanted the guitar to breathe.

I wanted the singer’s sorrow to dominate the performance.

And I wanted the listener to feel the weight of the story without being instructed to feel it by an increasingly loud arrangement.

That distinction is critically important.

Musical intensity and emotional intensity are not the same thing.

Sometimes a whisper can be more devastating than a scream.

The challenge is persuading the music to serve the story rather than compete with it.

Hundreds of Attempts to Capture One Vision
Modern AI music-generation technology has provided me with an extraordinary opportunity.

It allows someone without conventional musical performance skills to experiment with complex musical arrangements and hear possibilities that once existed only in his imagination.

But the technology doesn’t eliminate the need for judgment.

In fact, it makes judgment even more important.

My typical song may involve approximately 175 to 250 generated compositions before I select the version I consider worthy of release.

My most demanding projects have required more than 400.

I listen carefully to introductions, vocal performances, instrumental solos, harmonies, transitions, emotional development, and endings.

A beautiful performance can be eliminated because of one inappropriate instrument.

A technically impressive version can be rejected because it doesn’t convey the intended emotion.

A magnificent chorus may not compensate for a weak opening.

And a composition that sounds wonderful for three minutes can lose its appeal because of a poorly executed ending.

I don’t select the version that simply sounds good.

I search for the version that comes closest to the performance I have been hearing in my imagination.

Sometimes that happens quickly.

Sometimes it takes hundreds of attempts.

And sometimes I discover something unexpected that changes my original musical vision for the better.

I have learned to recognize those moments, too.

Blazing My Own Trail
One of the freedoms I enjoy as a songwriter is that I don’t feel obligated to follow conventional formulas.

I spent much of my professional life analyzing complicated problems, questioning assumptions, and searching for solutions that others might overlook.

That habit followed me into songwriting.

If I believe a xylophone belongs in a musical arrangement that combines EDM, hip-hop, and surf pop, I’ll experiment with it.

If I want symphonic strings accompanying a country ballad, I’ll try it.

If I think a powerful operatic baritone belongs in a minimalist folk song, I’ll pursue that combination until I discover whether it works.

I don’t believe musical genres should be treated as fenced properties with signs reading NO TRESPASSING.

They are creative resources.

And sometimes the most interesting results emerge when seemingly incompatible musical elements discover they have something beautiful to say together.

That doesn’t mean every experiment succeeds.

Far from it.

But I would rather explore an unusual possibility and discover that it fails than reject it simply because nobody taught me it was acceptable.

My lack of formal musical education may create limitations, but it has also spared me from feeling obligated to obey rules I was never taught.

I listen. I experiment. I evaluate.

And I trust my ears.

Seventy-Eight Years of Learning to Listen
Although I began producing songs late in life, my musical education didn’t begin when I discovered AI.

It began in childhood.

Over the decades, I listened to classical music, country, rock and roll, blues, soul, gospel, jazz, folk, pop, and countless other styles.

I listened not merely for entertainment but increasingly for the elements that made particular performances memorable.

Why did one vocalist move me more than another?

Why did a certain instrumental entrance change the entire emotional character of a song?

Why could a simple melody remain unforgettable for decades?

Why did some songs make me want to dance while others could bring tears to my eyes?

I didn’t always know the technical explanations.

But I was accumulating impressions, preferences, and musical relationships that would eventually become useful.

Today, when I develop a new composition, those decades of listening inform my decisions.

I may not know precisely how a professional arranger would describe every musical element.

But I generally know whether the result sounds right.

And when it doesn’t, I keep searching.

The Little Boy and the Old Man
Perhaps the most fascinating part of this journey is the partnership between two versions of myself.

The little boy supplies the imagination.

He sees memories inside trees, tears inside buildings, and love surviving beyond the grave.

He doesn’t worry about whether those things are possible.

He simply asks what might happen if they were.

The 78-year-old man brings something different.

He brings decades of observing people, understanding relationships, experiencing success and failure, witnessing joy and sorrow, and learning how human beings respond to the world around them.

He brings the discipline of a businessman, the curiosity of a scientist, and the persistence of someone who spent more than half a century solving difficult problems.

He also brings a lifetime of listening to music.

Together, they make an unusual songwriting team.

The little boy imagines the impossible. The old man makes it emotionally believable.

And somewhere between those two perspectives, a song begins to take shape.

I still consider myself an amateur in many aspects of music.

There are countless things I don’t know, and I continue learning with every composition.

But I no longer believe that musical creativity belongs exclusively to those who have mastered an instrument or earned a degree in composition.

There are many ways to create music.

Mine begins with imagination, develops through storytelling, and reaches completion through persistent experimentation and critical listening.

I don’t know how many more songs I’ll write.

But I do know that the ideas haven’t stopped coming.

And as long as that little boy in Louisiana keeps asking “What if?”, I suspect the old man will keep finding stories worth telling.

I set out to create a musical legacy for my children. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that I was also preserving the imagination of the little boy I used to be.

And perhaps that is the most meaningful legacy of all.

Craig Whitley is an independent songwriter and producer whose catalog spans more than 600 original songs across a wide range of musical genres. After a 55-year career in the energy industry, he began an extraordinary late-life creative journey, combining imaginative storytelling, decades of musical listening, and AI-assisted music production.