You get an idea, you can’t shake it. Hum along with it when you’re on the train. You like it for a minute, but then you hate it. It ain’t good enough, but you write it down anyway just to get it out of your head. Then you pull out your guitar, see if it might stand up. Your mouth, your thought, your hand. Put a microphone in your face, somebody hits record. Now you sign a deal with a label, paid you a big chunk of change to cut an album, so you’re feeling like the man, but they gonna hit that pile of cash, pull out a stack to pay for the studio, the guy pushing the button and the cover art and the poster and the launch party. That’s called recoupment. Cut the record, it sells in stores, shop gets half. Take out a buck for the manufacturing. Buck and a half for the distribution. A buck for marketing. Not a whole lot left for you. But even if there is, you don’t get to see a dime of it till they pay off your production costs. Probably need to sell 100,000 records to do that. 100,000 is more people than you’ll ever meet in your life.