Description

SONG TITLE
I SAY NEVER

CATEGORY
Defiance

PRIMARY EMOTION
Determination

ALSO FITS
Self-Belief
Perseverance
Creativity
Individuality
Resilience
Frustration
Independence

 

WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT

I SAY NEVER is about what happens when you spend your life trying things other people don’t understand.
I’ve always been somebody who likes creating, experimenting, designing, building and figuring things out. It might be electricity. It might be welding. It might be designing equipment for myself. It might be working on some big toy or simply fiddling around with an idea because something in my head tells me there might be another way of doing it.
The problem is, when you live like that, other people usually see the result before they understand the process.
They see something unfinished.
I see where another idea started.
They see me moving from one project to another and think I couldn’t finish the first one.
Sometimes the truth is much simpler. Another idea got there first.
That has happened throughout my life. My ideas can get ahead of me. I’ll be working on one thing and suddenly something else enters my head. Now I want to explore that. Does that mean everything I’ve tried has worked? Hell no. Some things worked. Some didn’t. Some never got finished.
But I enjoyed trying.
That matters to me.
I’ve also spent much of my life hearing negativity about those ideas. Sometimes it came from people close to me, including family. Maybe they couldn’t see what I was seeing. Maybe they thought they were being realistic. Maybe they saw my unfinished projects and figured they had all the evidence they needed.
Whatever their reasons were, after hearing enough versions of “you can’t,” “you won’t,” and “you’ll never,” eventually I found my own answer.
I SAY NEVER.

THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG

There’s a woman in this song named Lucy.
Lucy isn’t one particular person.
I made up the name because I wanted the negativity to have a voice. You can picture Lucy as a girlfriend if you want. She can stand there watching another one of my ideas come together, shaking her head and wondering what the hell I’m doing now.
But Lucy is bigger than one character.
She represents all those voices I’ve heard over the years from people who didn’t understand why I kept trying things.
“Another bright idea.”
“You’ll never see it through.”
“This ain’t for you.”
“You’ll never finish what you started.”
“All your dreams will never come true.”
I’ve heard that attitude most of my life in one form or another.
What people sometimes misunderstand is that creating something isn’t always about reaching a perfect finished product. Sometimes I want to know whether something can work. Sometimes I want to improve something. Sometimes I simply want to see what happens when I try.
And yes, sometimes I move on before I finish.
I know that about myself.
My mind gets ahead of me.
Give me one idea and there’s a good chance it will produce another one. Then that idea creates another question. Before long, the original project may be sitting there while my brain has already moved three projects down the road.
Someone else can look at that and see failure.
I don’t.
That difference became one of the most important ideas in this song:
“You see what I never finished
I see where the next idea began”
That is probably one of the simplest explanations of how my mind has worked throughout my life.

WHY I WROTE THIS SONG

I wrote I SAY NEVER because negativity can do something strange to a person.
If you hear enough of it, you can start questioning yourself even when you know better.
That is why this song isn’t written as though I’m some bulletproof guy who doesn’t care what anybody thinks. I do care sometimes.
It hurts when people bring you down.
It especially hurts when the people doing it are people you hoped would understand you.
There is a difference between someone saying, “That might not work, but let’s figure it out,” and someone constantly telling you why you shouldn’t bother trying.
One creates conversation.
The other slowly kills curiosity.
I refuse to let that happen to me.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO ME

I’ve spent a lifetime doing things because I wanted to know whether I could.
I’ve experimented with different ideas. I’ve built things. I’ve designed things. I’ve worked with equipment, electricity, metal and whatever else caught my curiosity.
Now I create music.
Different tools. Same mind.
Not everything works.
That has never been the point.
One of the most important lines in this song is:
“It’s not about winning or losing
It’s about what I enjoy”
That is me.
If the only reason I ever attempted something was because I knew beforehand that I would succeed, I would have missed half the enjoyment of trying.
Failure doesn’t embarrass me.
Never trying would bother me a hell of a lot more.

WHY THIS SONG FITS MOITA

I SAY NEVER belongs inside MOITA because MOITA itself comes from the same mentality.
Try something.
Build something.
Question something.
Change something.
Learn something.
Keep going.
There will always be somebody who thinks an idea is ridiculous until somebody makes it work. There will also be ideas that really are ridiculous and never work at all.
You don’t always know which one you have until you try.
MOITA was never supposed to be about pretending I have all the answers. It is about showing the thinking, experiences, mistakes, questions and creativity behind the music.
I SAY NEVER exposes another piece of that thinking.
It also explains why the word “never” means something different depending on who is saying it.
Someone tells me:
“You’ll never finish.”
My answer is:
I’ll never stop trying.
Same word.
Completely different meaning.

READ THIS FIRST

Don’t read Lucy as one specific woman.
Lucy is a character.
She gives a face and a voice to something almost everybody has experienced: the person who can tell you twenty reasons something won’t work before you’ve even had the chance to try it.
Maybe you have a Lucy.
Maybe you’ve been Lucy without realizing it.
And maybe somebody in your life has an idea you don’t understand.
You don’t have to pretend every idea is brilliant. You don’t have to tell somebody they’re going to succeed when you genuinely don’t know.
Sometimes all you have to say is:
“Give it a try.”
Because you never know where somebody’s unfinished idea might lead them next.

 

FULL LYRICS

I SAY NEVER

Every inch of my life
I’m going and doing
Every part of my world
Is falling to the unknown
Every time I try
It seems to fail at the seams
Every time it gets harder
To stick to the routine

The ghosting of it all
Leaves me all alone
The days are slow
But the minutes don’t stop
My ventures into unseen things
Sometimes move slow
My thoughts let me know
I’m still smart

Sometimes it hurts
When people bring you down
The disappointment
Is bigger than the fall
It breaks my heart
When they don’t understand who I am
But how will anything change
If someone like me doesn’t try every day

Lucy laughs
Another bright idea
Another thing you’ll never see through
You’re such a fool
This is beyond you
You’re wasting your time
Every time you try
Further down the pole you go

Lucy says
I told you once
I told you twice
This ain’t for you

You’ll never finish what you started
All your dreams
Will never come true
You see what I never finished
I see where the next idea began
You see another thing abandoned
I see another part of who I am

I do what I do
It’s not about you
It’s about me
It’s not about winning or losing
It’s about what I enjoy

For me to let go
I SAY NEVER
For me to give up
I SAY NEVER
NEVER

NEVER

NEVER

NEVER

I found a well
As dry as sand in the desert
But that’s not about me
I know every open wound
Can be bloody and messy
But that’s not about me
I’ve seen the stars
And those endless dreams
I just hope someday
They can see me
I walk on eggshells
From the negativity
They can’t think outside the box
But that’s not about me

It’s hard to lead the pack
When you’re the prey

The ghosting of it all
Leaves me all alone
The days are slow
But the minutes don’t stop
My ventures into unseen things
Sometimes move slow
My thoughts let me know
I’m still smart

They say
You’ll never finish
They say
You’ll never make it
They say
Let it go

I say
That’s not about me
For me to let go

I SAY NEVER
For me to give up

I SAY NEVER
You can tell me never
Until the day I die
I’ll take your never
And make it mine
I SAY NEVER
NEVER

 

LYRIC JOURNEY
PART 1

EVERY INCH OF MY LIFE

“Every inch of my life
I’m going and doing
Every part of my world
Is falling to the unknown”
I SAY NEVER doesn’t begin with somebody standing proudly at the finish line.
It begins in motion.
That matters because this song is about somebody whose mind rarely stays in one place for very long. I’ve spent much of my life doing things, building things, taking things apart, experimenting, designing, changing direction and wondering whether something could be done differently.
Sometimes I knew exactly where I was going.
Other times, not a clue.
That is the “unknown” in these opening lines.
There is excitement in not knowing what comes next, but there can also be frustration. An idea may look simple in my head and become a completely different animal once I start working on it.
“Every time I try
It seems to fail at the seams
Every time it gets harder
To stick to the routine”
That isn’t me saying everything I attempted failed.
It is describing what failure can feel like when several things aren’t going the way you expected.
One problem appears.
Then another.
Pretty soon the seams start opening.
That is also where routine becomes difficult for somebody whose mind keeps producing another possibility. I can be working in one direction and suddenly think of something completely different.
The routine says:
Stay here.
My mind says:
Yeah, but what about this?
That battle has followed me through much of my life.
THE GHOSTING OF IT ALL
“The ghosting of it all
Leaves me all alone”
I like the word “ghosting” here because the ideas, criticism, unfinished projects and thoughts can all hang around even after the actual moment has passed.
Something doesn’t necessarily disappear just because I stopped working on it.
The thought can remain.
The criticism can remain.
The question can remain.
Sometimes an unfinished idea can sit quietly for years and suddenly become useful somewhere completely different.
“The days are slow
But the minutes don’t stop”
That is one of those little contradictions that feels true to me.
A day can drag like hell when something isn’t working.
Yet somehow the minutes are still disappearing.
Time never stops because I’m frustrated.
It doesn’t care whether I’ve solved the problem.
It keeps moving.
MY VENTURES INTO UNSEEN THINGS
“My ventures into unseen things
Sometimes move slow”
The unseen is where creativity begins.
Before something exists physically, somebody has to picture it.
Before a song exists, there is an idea.
Before a piece of equipment is modified, somebody has to think there might be another way.
Before you build something, you have to be able to imagine something that isn’t sitting in front of you yet.
That doesn’t make the idea good.
It doesn’t mean it will work.
It only means you’re willing to explore it.
That willingness has been part of me for as long as I can remember.
“Sometimes move slow” is also important.
Ideas can arrive instantly.
Making them work usually doesn’t.
Those are two completely different things.
MY THOUGHTS LET ME KNOW
“My thoughts let me know
I’m still smart”
That line can sound cocky if somebody pulls it out of the song by itself.
Inside the song, I don’t hear it that way at all.
It comes after uncertainty.
It comes after things failing at the seams.
It comes after feeling alone.
It is almost me checking in with myself.
I can still think.
I can still figure things out.
I still have ideas.
I haven’t lost that part of myself simply because something didn’t work.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as the song moves forward because soon the criticism isn’t coming from the project anymore.
It’s coming from people.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT IS BIGGER THAN THE FALL
“Sometimes it hurts
When people bring you down
The disappointment
Is bigger than the fall”
The fall is something going wrong.
I can handle that.
I’ve worked with enough things throughout my life to know that sometimes something simply doesn’t work.
You make the wrong measurement.
You design something incorrectly.
You misunderstand the problem.
You try again.
The disappointment I’m talking about here is different.
It comes from people.
Especially when the negativity comes from somebody you hoped would at least give you the chance to find out.
“It breaks my heart
When they don’t understand who I am”
That takes the song beyond inventions, equipment or unfinished projects.
Now we’re talking about identity.
I’m not asking everybody to love every idea I have.
Some of my ideas probably deserve to be thrown in the garbage.
What hurts is when somebody doesn’t understand why I need to explore them in the first place.
Creating and experimenting aren’t little side activities that somebody can simply remove from me.
They are part of how I think.
BUT HOW WILL ANYTHING CHANGE?
“But how will anything change
If someone like me doesn’t try every day”
This is where I start answering the negativity.
Not with success.
With effort.
I don’t know whether the next idea will work.
That’s the whole point.
If I already knew the result, it wouldn’t be much of an experiment.
Somebody has to be willing to ask the question.
Somebody has to try the thing that might not work.
That doesn’t make every experiment important.
It doesn’t make every person an inventor.
It simply means change requires somebody to be curious enough to attempt something different.
And then Lucy walks into the song.
She laughs.
“Another bright idea.”
Now all that general negativity finally has a face.
And she’s got plenty to say.

 

SECTION ONE
LYRIC JOURNEY
PART 3

THE DRY WELL

“I found a well
As dry as sand in the desert
But that’s not about me”
After the confrontation with Lucy, the song changes direction.
Now I’m looking at the things I encounter rather than the people judging me.
A well is supposed to give you something.
Water.
Life.
Something useful.
But this one is dry.
That can happen with ideas too. You can spend time digging into something only to discover there’s nothing there.
That doesn’t automatically mean the time was wasted.
It means I found a dry well.
The most important part is what follows:
“But that’s not about me.”
The well is dry.
I’m not.
I don’t have to turn one dead end into a definition of myself.
THE OPEN WORLD
“I know every open world
Can be bloody and messy
But that’s not about me”
There’s nothing clean about trying things.
People usually see the finished version.
They don’t always see what came before it.
The wrong measurements.
The pieces that didn’t fit.
The ideas that sounded great until I actually tried them.
The frustration.
The mess.
The money or time that might have gone into something that never became what I imagined.
That is part of the open world I’m talking about.
There are possibilities everywhere, but possibilities don’t come with guarantees.
Again I separate the experience from myself.
“That’s not about me.”
Something around me can become messy without me allowing the mess to decide who I am.
I’VE SEEN THE STARS
“I’ve seen the stars
And those endless dreams
I just hope someday
They can see me”
This is one of the quieter admissions in the song.
For all the defiance, I still want to be understood.
That’s human.
There’s a difference between saying I don’t need somebody’s permission and pretending I don’t care whether anybody ever understands me.
I do care.
When I have an idea, I can often see something in my mind before there is anything physical for somebody else to look at.
That can be difficult to explain.
I’m looking toward the stars.
Somebody else might be looking at the unfinished thing sitting in front of them.
“I just hope someday
They can see me”
Not only the project.
Me.
The person behind all those ideas.
The person who keeps trying.
The person whose mind sometimes moves faster than his hands can keep up with.
That line exposes something underneath the harder side of I SAY NEVER.
Defiance doesn’t mean I don’t want understanding.
It means I won’t stop being myself while I wait for it.
WALKING ON EGGSHELLS
“I walk on eggshells
From the negativity”
Negativity doesn’t always have to be loud to affect somebody.
After you hear enough of it, you begin expecting it.
You have another idea and before you even explain it, part of you is already preparing for the reaction.
What now?
How much is this going to cost?
You’ll never finish it.
Here we go again.
Eventually, you can become careful about what you share.
That is the eggshell.
You’re protecting the idea before it has even had a chance to breathe.
“they can’t think outside the box
But that’s not about me”
This is where the frustration comes back.
If somebody can’t see what I’m seeing, I can’t force them to.
And maybe sometimes I’m the one who is wrong.
That possibility always has to exist too.
But somebody else’s inability to understand an idea isn’t enough reason for me to stop exploring it.
That belongs to them.
Not me.
HARD TO LEAD THE PACK
“It’s hard to lead the pack
When you’re the prey”
This line carries a lot in very few words.
A leader is supposed to be moving forward.
Prey is supposed to be looking behind itself.
Put those two together and you get a strange position.
I’m trying to move ahead while also feeling like I’m defending myself from the people behind me.
That takes energy.
Energy that could have gone into the idea itself.
There is another side to the line too.
If you choose to go first, you’re exposed.
The person following an established road can point to everybody who already travelled it.
The person trying something different doesn’t always have that luxury.
Sometimes you’re out front with nothing but your own judgment telling you where to step next.
THE GHOST RETURNS
“The ghosting of it all
Leaves me all alone
The days are slow
But the minutes don’t stop”
These lines return from earlier in the song, but they don’t feel exactly the same anymore.
We know more now.
We’ve met Lucy.
We’ve heard the criticism.
We’ve seen how I answer it.
So when the ghosting returns, it carries the weight of everything that came between.
That is one reason repetition can matter in a song.
The words stay the same.
The listener doesn’t.
“My ventures into unseen things
Sometimes move slow
My thoughts let me know
I’m still smart”
And there it is again.
The reminder.
Despite the criticism.
Despite the unfinished things.
Despite the dry wells.
Despite the mess.
Despite walking on eggshells.
I can still trust my ability to think.
That doesn’t mean believing every thought I have is brilliant.
It means refusing to confuse being wrong sometimes with being incapable.
Now the song is ready for its final confrontation.
Except Lucy doesn’t need to come back.
By this point, she has become something much bigger.
She has become:
“They.”

SECTION ONE

LYRIC JOURNEY
PART 4

LUCY BECOMES EVERYBODY

“They say
You’ll never finish
They say
You’ll never make it
They say
Let it go”
Lucy is gone from the name, but not from the song.
This is where the reason I created her becomes completely clear.
She was never meant to represent one specific person. She was a character I could use to give all that negativity a voice.
Now I don’t need the character anymore.
Lucy becomes “they.”
Family.
Friends.
Partners.
Anybody who looked at what I was doing and saw another reason I should stop.
Anybody who saw an unfinished project and decided they already knew how the next one would end.
The words are short because by this point there is nothing new in the criticism.
I’ve heard it already.
You’ll never finish.
You’ll never make it.
Let it go.
The voices can change.
The message stays pretty much the same.
THAT’S NOT ABOUT ME
“I say
That’s not about me”
This line connects the ending back to the dry well and the messy world.
Earlier I said:
“But that’s not about me.”
Now I use that same thought against the negativity.
You can have your opinion.
You can believe I’m wasting my time.
You can look at what I didn’t finish.
You can predict what I’ll never accomplish.
But your prediction is still yours.
I don’t have to turn it into mine.
That doesn’t mean I ignore reality.
If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
If I make a mistake, I made a mistake.
If somebody gives me good advice, I’d be stupid not to consider it.
But there is a difference between accepting reality and accepting somebody else’s limit.
That’s not about me.
FOR ME TO LET GO
“For me to let go
I SAY NEVER
For me to give up
I SAY NEVER”
The chorus returns, but it carries more weight now.
The first time, it was my answer to Lucy.
This time, it is my answer to everybody.
More importantly, it is my answer to myself.
That might be the hardest version of negativity to beat.
Once enough people tell you something, you can start repeating it in your own head.
Maybe they’re right.
Maybe I should stop.
Maybe this is stupid.
Maybe I can’t do it.
That is when somebody else’s “never” becomes dangerous.
It has moved inside.
The chorus pushes it back out.
I SAY NEVER.
Not because I know I’m going to win.
Not because every idea deserves to survive.
Not because I’m incapable of admitting when I’m wrong.
I say never because giving up my curiosity would mean giving up something that has been part of me for most of my life.
UNTIL THE DAY I DIE
“You can tell me never
Until the day I die”
That line accepts something.
The negativity might never disappear.
There may always be somebody who doesn’t understand.
There may always be somebody who thinks the next idea is ridiculous.
There may always be somebody who looks backward at what I didn’t finish instead of forward at what I’m trying now.
I can spend my life trying to change every one of those people.
Or I can keep creating.
At some point, you have to decide where your energy belongs.
I’LL TAKE YOUR NEVER
“I’ll take your never
And make it mine”
This is where the entire song turns over.
The word “never” has travelled through the song.
At first it belongs to Lucy.
“You’ll never see it through.”
Then:
“You’ll never finish what you started.”
“All your dreams will never come true.”
Later it belongs to everybody:
“You’ll never finish.”
“You’ll never make it.”
But now I take it.
The word stays exactly the same.
The meaning changes completely.
Your never means:
You can’t.
My never means:
I won’t stop because you told me I can’t.
That is the defiance in this song.
Not blind stubbornness.
Not pretending failure doesn’t exist.
Not telling everybody else to go to hell just because they disagree with me.
It is refusing to let somebody else’s doubt become the final authority over my curiosity.
I SAY NEVER
“I SAY NEVER
NEVER”
There really isn’t anything else the song needs to say after that.
I don’t finish by showing Lucy that I became rich.
I don’t unveil some incredible invention and make everybody who doubted me look stupid.
I don’t need that ending.
Because that was never the victory.
The victory is that after the failures, the unfinished projects, the criticism, the dry wells, the messy roads and all the people who didn’t understand, I’m still curious.
I still have ideas.
I still want to build things.
I still want to create.
And there will probably always be something unfinished somewhere because another idea got there first.
Some people will look at that and see a weakness.
Sometimes they might even be right.
But it is also part of the mind that eventually led me here.
To songwriting.
To MOITA.
To building something completely different from the things I was building before.
Different materials.
Same curiosity.
So when somebody tells me what I will never do, I don’t have to fight with them anymore.
They can keep their prediction.
I already know what my never means.
I SAY NEVER.

 

SECTION TWO
THE STORY

ANOTHER BRIGHT IDEA

I’ve heard versions of that sentence most of my life.
Sometimes it was probably said as a joke. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes you could hear the doubt before I even explained what I was trying to do.
Here we go again.
Joe has another idea.
The funny thing is, they weren’t entirely wrong about that part.
I usually did have another idea.
I’ve always liked figuring things out. Electricity interested me. Welding interested me. Machinery interested me. Designing equipment interested me. If I was working with something and thought there might be a better way of doing it, my mind naturally went there.
What if I changed this?
What if I moved that?
What if I built my own?
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes it didn’t.
Sometimes I never got far enough to find out.
That last part is important because it became part of the criticism I heard.
HE NEVER FINISHES ANYTHING
I can understand how somebody looking from the outside could come to that conclusion.
They see a project sitting unfinished.
Then they see me working on something completely different.
A little while later, there might be something else.
To them, the evidence is sitting right there.
He started it.
He didn’t finish it.
Now he’s doing something else.
What they don’t see is what happened between those two projects.
An idea produced another idea.
Something I discovered while working on one problem made me think about another problem. Something I built taught me something. Something that failed taught me something too.
My mind had already moved.
I’m not saying that is always the best way to do things. There are probably projects I should have finished before jumping onto something else. I know that about myself.
But there is a big difference between knowing one of your weaknesses and allowing somebody else to use it as proof that you shouldn’t create anything.
That is where I draw the line.
YOU SEE WHAT I NEVER FINISHED
One of my favourite ideas in this song came out of that exact difference in perspective:
“You see what I never finished
I see where the next idea began”
Those two lines are almost the entire story.
Two people can look at exactly the same unfinished project and see two completely different things.
One sees failure.
The other sees development.
Neither person necessarily has to be lying.
They are simply measuring different things.
If your only measurement is the finished product, then an unfinished project failed.
If your measurement includes what you learned, what you discovered and what the experiment caused you to think about next, the answer can be very different.
That doesn’t mean every unfinished project is secretly a success. Sometimes unfinished means unfinished.
I’m not going to bullshit myself either.
But I refuse to believe that the only useful experiment is the one that ends exactly where I originally expected it to.
Sometimes the detour is the interesting part.
WHO IS LUCY?
Lucy is made up.
She isn’t one woman from my life, and I didn’t write the character to secretly attack somebody while hiding her real name.
I needed a voice.
Negativity is easy to talk about in general terms, but general negativity doesn’t make much of a character.
Lucy does.
I can put her beside me.
I can hear her laugh.
“Another bright idea.”
I can hear the sarcasm in it.
“This ain’t for you.”
“You’ll never finish what you started.”
“All your dreams will never come true.”
Now the negativity has somebody speaking for it.
If a listener wants to imagine Lucy as the girlfriend who has watched this guy drag another project into the garage and is thinking, What the hell is he doing now?, that works perfectly.
But Lucy is bigger than the girlfriend.
Lucy represents everybody who has ever stood on the other side of one of my ideas and decided what I could or couldn’t do before I had the chance to find out for myself.
WHEN THE PEOPLE CLOSEST TO YOU DON’T SEE IT
A lot of the negativity I experienced came from people close to me, including family.
That can hit differently.
Some stranger thinking your idea is stupid is one thing. You can walk away and probably never see that person again.
When it comes from people whose opinions matter to you, you carry it longer.
I can’t tell you exactly why people reacted that way.
Maybe some genuinely thought they were protecting me from wasting my time.
Maybe they simply couldn’t see what I could see.
Maybe they looked at the things I hadn’t finished and assumed the next idea would end exactly the same way.
There could have been a hundred reasons.
I’m not going to invent their motives just to make my side of the story stronger.
I only know what it felt like from my side.
After enough negativity, you start walking on eggshells around your own ideas.
You almost hesitate to tell people what you’re doing because you already know what the reaction might be.
That feeling ended up directly in the song:
“I walk on eggshells
From the negativity”
That isn’t somebody pretending criticism doesn’t hurt.
It does.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT IS BIGGER THAN THE FALL
There is a line earlier in the song that says:
“The disappointment
Is bigger than the fall”
For me, that gets closer to the emotional centre of I SAY NEVER than somebody might expect.
If one of my ideas fails, I can deal with that.
I tried it.
It didn’t work.
Fine.
Maybe I learned something and maybe I didn’t.
The bigger disappointment is realizing that somebody you thought might encourage you was waiting to explain why you shouldn’t have tried in the first place.
That can hurt more than the failure.
The machine doesn’t care if I fail.
A piece of steel doesn’t laugh at me.
Electricity doesn’t tell me I’m wasting my time.
An idea either works, doesn’t work, or sends me somewhere else.
People make it personal.
That is where the defiance in this song comes from.
NOT ABOUT WINNING
There is another part of my personality behind this song that I wanted to leave intact.
I don’t have to win every time.
That would make experimentation miserable.
Imagine only doing things you already knew you could accomplish.
Where is the fun in that?
There has to be room to screw up.
There has to be room to build something that turns out completely wrong.
There has to be room to stand there looking at your own creation and think, Well, that didn’t fucking work.
Then you either fix it, learn from it or move on.
That is why these lines matter:
“I do what I do
It’s not about you
It’s about me
It’s not about winning or losing
It’s about what I enjoy”
That is not an excuse for failure.
It is an explanation of motivation.
I enjoy creating.
I enjoy thinking.
I enjoy seeing whether something is possible.
The finished object is part of the reward.
It isn’t always the entire reward.
THE SAME MIND, DIFFERENT TOOLS
When I look at it now, I don’t see a huge separation between the things I used to create physically and what I’m doing with music.
The materials changed.
The curiosity didn’t.
Before, I might look at machinery, metal, electricity or a piece of equipment and wonder whether I could make something work differently.
With songwriting, I can do the same thing with an idea.
I can take a phrase apart.
Turn a meaning around.
Create a character like Lucy.
Take a word like “never” and make the same word fight itself.
That last one is probably my favourite part of this song.
They say:
“You’ll never finish.”
I say:
I’ll never give up.
They say:
“You’ll never make it.”
I say:
I’ll never let you decide that for me.
They use never as a wall.
I use never as a refusal.
I’LL TAKE YOUR NEVER AND MAKE IT MINE
By the end of the song, I’m not trying to convince Lucy anymore.
That matters.
I don’t win her over.
She doesn’t suddenly apologize and tell me she always believed in me.
I don’t need that ending.
The answer is already there:
“You can tell me never
Until the day I die
I’ll take your never
And make it mine”
That is where the song finally turns the word around completely.
You can hand me your negativity.
You can tell me what you think I’ll never accomplish.
You can point at everything I started and never finished.
Some of your criticism might even contain a little truth.
But you still don’t get to decide what I try next.
That decision stays with me.
I SAY NEVER.

 

SECTION FOUR
REFLECTION

WHAT DOES NEVER MEAN TO YOU?

One of the things I like most about I SAY NEVER is that the entire song can almost be reduced to one word.
Never.
It can be one of the most negative words somebody throws at you.
You’ll never do it.
You’ll never finish.
You’ll never succeed.
You’ll never change.
But turn that same word around and suddenly it becomes powerful.
I’ll never stop trying.
I’ll never give somebody else control over what I enjoy.
I’ll never stop being curious.
The word didn’t change.
The person saying it did.
WHEN ADVICE BECOMES A LIMIT
I don’t believe we should ignore everybody who disagrees with us.
That would be stupid.
Sometimes the person questioning your idea knows something you don’t. Sometimes they can see a problem you missed. Sometimes somebody telling you the truth can save you a lot of time, money and aggravation.
There is a difference between advice and discouragement.
Good advice asks you to think.
Negativity tells you not to bother.
Good advice can challenge an idea without attacking the person who had it.
That distinction matters.
If somebody tells me, “Joe, I don’t think that will work because of this,” now we have something to talk about.
If somebody tells me, “You’re a fool. This is beyond you,” what exactly am I supposed to learn from that?
Nothing.
Except maybe who not to ask next time.
THE VALUE OF THE UNFINISHED
I know I have left things unfinished.
I’m not going to turn that into some great virtue just because this is my song.
Finishing matters.
Discipline matters.
Following through matters.
Sometimes I probably should have stayed with one idea longer instead of chasing the next one.
But unfinished doesn’t automatically mean worthless.
Something can teach you before you finish it.
A mistake can teach you.
A failed experiment can teach you.
An abandoned design can become part of another design years later.
Even realizing, “This isn’t worth finishing,” can teach you something.
Maybe the real question isn’t always:
Did you finish?
Maybe sometimes it should be:
What did you discover while you were doing it?
DON’T KILL CURIOSITY
I think we should be careful about how quickly we laugh at somebody else’s ideas.
That doesn’t mean encouraging nonsense or pretending every idea is brilliant.
It means allowing people room to explore.
There is a huge difference.
A kid takes something apart because they want to know what is inside it.
Somebody builds something in their garage.
Somebody tries writing their first song.
Somebody sketches an invention that may never exist.
Somebody decides at sixty years old that they want to learn something completely new.
Why should our first instinct be to tell them why they can’t?
Maybe it goes nowhere.
So what?
Maybe it goes somewhere.
Maybe the person learns something.
Maybe the idea changes.
Maybe the original project gets thrown in the corner and another one comes out of it.
Curiosity needs room.
I’ve needed that room my entire life.
MAYBE YOU HAVE A LUCY
Most people probably have some version of Lucy somewhere in their lives.
Maybe it’s a relative.
A partner.
A friend.
A coworker.
Maybe it’s a whole group of people.
But there is another possibility worth thinking about.
Maybe sometimes Lucy is us.
Have you ever laughed at somebody’s idea before you really listened?
Have you ever decided what somebody was capable of because of something they failed at before?
Have you ever looked at an unfinished project and assumed you understood the person who left it unfinished?
I probably have.
It is easier to recognize negativity when somebody is aiming it at us than when we are aiming it at somebody else.
That is worth remembering.
AND SOMETIMES LUCY IS INSIDE YOUR OWN HEAD
There is one more Lucy that can be harder to deal with than all the others.
Your own.
After people tell you something often enough, you can start doing their work for them.
You’ll never finish this.
This is stupid.
Why bother?
Who do you think you are?
Nobody even has to say it anymore.
You say it to yourself.
That is when negativity has done its best work.
I don’t want to live that way.
I would rather try something and discover I was wrong than spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I had tried.
THE RIGHT TO TRY
I SAY NEVER isn’t a promise that I will succeed at everything.
That would be bullshit.
It isn’t even a promise that I will finish everything.
My history already tells me otherwise.
It is something much more realistic.
I reserve the right to try.
I reserve the right to have another idea.
I reserve the right to change direction.
I reserve the right to fail.
I reserve the right to learn.
And I reserve the right to enjoy creating something even when somebody else doesn’t understand why I’m doing it.
That freedom matters to me.
THE THING I HOPE YOU CARRY WITH YOU
If you take anything from this song, I hope it isn’t simply “never give up.”
Sometimes giving something up is exactly the right decision.
Some ideas aren’t worth pursuing.
Some directions are wrong.
Some things need to end so something better can begin.
What I hope you carry from I SAY NEVER is something different.
Don’t surrender your curiosity because somebody else doesn’t understand it.
Listen to good advice.
Learn from criticism that actually teaches you something.
Be willing to admit when you’re wrong.
Finish the things that deserve finishing.
But don’t hand somebody else the authority to decide what you’re allowed to explore.
And if you’re standing beside somebody who is trying something you don’t understand, you don’t have to tell them they’re brilliant.
Maybe just don’t become their Lucy.
Give them enough room to find out for themselves.
THANK YOU
Thank you for spending some time inside this song and, in a way, inside my head.
That can be a crowded place.
There always seems to be another idea coming through the door before the last one has found somewhere to sit.
I’ve learned to live with that.
Actually, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Some of those ideas will work.
Some won’t.
Some might never get finished.
But somewhere inside all that unfinished business could be the beginning of something I haven’t even thought of yet.
So if somebody asks me when I’m finally going to stop trying all this stuff, I already know my answer.
I SAY NEVER.

 

MOITA
WHERE EVERY SONG TELLS A STORY
EVERY STORY TEACHES SOMETHING

SECTION FIVE
MOITA DOCUMENTARY & LEARNING CENTRE

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE KEEP HAVING IDEAS?

I SAY NEVER begins with my own experience, but the subject reaches beyond me.
Why are some people constantly building, changing, questioning and experimenting?
Why can one person look at an object and simply use it while another person immediately wonders how it works, whether it could work differently, or whether they could build their own?
There isn’t one simple answer.
Creativity isn’t limited to painting, songwriting or what we traditionally call art. It can appear in engineering, construction, cooking, mechanics, business, science, technology and everyday problem-solving.
Sometimes creativity begins with imagination.
Sometimes it begins with irritation.
Why does this damn thing work this way?
Sometimes that question is enough.
The person who starts modifying a piece of equipment because it doesn’t quite do what they need is using creative thinking just as surely as somebody writing a song.
Different tools.
Different results.
Same basic human ability to imagine something that isn’t there yet.
CURIOSITY BEFORE INVENTION
Before invention comes curiosity.
Something makes a person ask:
Why?
How?
What if?
Can this be done differently?
Those questions are easy to underestimate because they sound so simple.
But questioning what already exists is one of the ways people discover new possibilities.
That doesn’t mean every question produces an invention. Most don’t.
It means curiosity creates the opportunity to explore.
That distinction matters because we often celebrate successful inventions after the fact while forgetting all the uncertainty that existed before success.
Once something works, everybody can see it.
Before it works, somebody has to imagine it.
THE GARAGE, WORKSHOP AND JOBSITE
Innovation doesn’t belong only in laboratories.
A tremendous amount of practical creativity happens because somebody encounters a problem while doing actual work.
A mechanic creates a workaround.
A welder fabricates something that doesn’t exist commercially.
A construction worker modifies a tool.
A farmer adapts equipment.
A carpenter builds a jig.
Some of those solutions remain useful only to the person who created them.
Others spread.
The important lesson isn’t that every homemade solution will become the next major invention.
It is that problem-solving itself is creative.
That is something I understood long before I began writing songs seriously.
When you work with your hands, you constantly encounter situations where the perfect tool isn’t sitting beside you.
Sometimes you make do.
Sometimes you make something better.
FAILURE IS INFORMATION
The word “failure” can hide several completely different outcomes.
There is failure where nothing useful comes from the attempt.
There is failure where the original idea doesn’t work but the reason teaches you something.
There is failure where one approach leads to another.
There is failure where you realize the problem itself was misunderstood.
And there are projects that simply stop because priorities change.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
In experimentation, an unsuccessful result can still provide information.
It can tell you what not to do.
It can reveal a weakness in the design.
It can force a better question.
That doesn’t mean we should romanticize failure.
Failure can cost time.
It can cost money.
It can be frustrating as hell.
In some fields, failure can also be dangerous, which is why proper training, testing, standards and safety procedures matter.
The useful lesson is not “failure is good.”
The better lesson is:
Failure can teach, if we are willing to learn from it.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN QUITTING AND CHANGING DIRECTION
I SAY NEVER deliberately complicates the usual “never give up” message.
Sometimes giving up is sensible.
An idea may be unsafe.
It may become financially unrealistic.
New information may prove that the original approach won’t work.
Another solution may be clearly better.
Changing direction isn’t automatically weakness.
Creative work often involves deciding which ideas deserve more attention and which ones should be left behind.
That becomes especially difficult when someone has many ideas competing for attention.
An unfinished project can therefore mean several things.
Maybe the person lost interest.
Maybe the idea failed.
Maybe circumstances changed.
Maybe another project became more important.
Maybe something discovered during the first project created an entirely new direction.
Looking only at the unfinished object doesn’t necessarily tell us which happened.
DIVERGENT THINKING
Researchers studying creativity sometimes distinguish between convergent and divergent thinking.
Convergent thinking narrows possibilities toward an answer.
Divergent thinking generates multiple possibilities.
Both can be useful.
If a problem requires one precise solution, narrowing choices matters.
But when a person is exploring possibilities, generating unusual connections and alternative approaches can be valuable.
This helps explain something important about creativity: producing ideas and completing projects are related skills, but they are not identical skills.
Someone may be very good at imagining possibilities and less interested in the repetitive work required to carry every possibility to completion.
Another person may excel at taking an idea, organizing it and steadily moving it toward a finished result.
Neither ability should automatically be treated as superior.
Some of the strongest creative partnerships happen when different strengths work together.
THE VALUE OF THE PERSON WHO ASKS, “HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT THIS?”
There is another side to Lucy that deserves attention.
Not everybody who questions an idea is negative.
Sometimes skepticism is extremely valuable.
The right person might notice something the creator missed.
They might ask:
Have you considered the cost?
Is this safe?
What happens if this part fails?
Is there an easier way?
Has somebody already solved this problem?
Those questions can strengthen an idea.
That is constructive criticism.
The difference is that constructive criticism engages with the idea.
Destructive criticism dismisses the person.
“You’re an idiot” teaches nothing.
“I’m worried this section could fail because…” gives somebody information they can investigate.
Creativity needs encouragement, but it also needs people willing to ask difficult questions.
The goal isn’t surrounding ourselves with people who agree with everything we say.
The goal is learning the difference between somebody challenging our thinking and somebody constantly trying to shut it down.
WHEN FAMILY DOESN’T UNDERSTAND
Criticism becomes more complicated when it comes from people close to us.
Families often know our history.
They remember the previous project.
They remember what didn’t work.
They remember the money spent, the mess in the garage or the idea that disappeared six months later.
Their skepticism may come from that history.
That doesn’t automatically make them right.
It doesn’t automatically make them jealous either.
Human motives are rarely that simple.
Sometimes people are worried.
Sometimes they’re tired of hearing about the next project.
Sometimes they genuinely don’t understand.
Sometimes their own experiences make them more cautious.
And yes, sometimes people can simply be negative.
The useful question becomes:
Is there information inside what they’re telling me that I should consider?
If there is, use it.
If there isn’t, don’t let somebody else’s inability to see the idea become proof that the idea has no value.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISCOURAGEMENT
Repeated discouragement can affect more than one project.
Over time, people may become reluctant to share ideas at all.
They begin anticipating the reaction.
Instead of:
“I’ve got an idea.”
The internal conversation becomes:
“They’re going to laugh at this.”
That can create self-censorship before an idea has even been explored.
This is one reason psychological safety matters in creative environments.
People are more likely to contribute ideas when they believe they can speak without being humiliated for an imperfect suggestion.
That doesn’t mean every suggestion must be accepted.
It means people need enough room to think out loud.
An environment where nobody is allowed to be wrong will eventually become an environment where fewer people are willing to suggest anything new.
THE INVENTOR MYTH
We also need to be careful with the romantic image of the lone genius who suddenly produces a perfect invention.
Real creativity is often much messier.
Ideas can develop through earlier discoveries, conversations, existing technologies, repeated experiments and improvements made by many people.
The finished result may look obvious afterward.
The process usually wasn’t.
This matters because unrealistic stories about creativity can make ordinary people believe invention belongs to some special class of genius.
It doesn’t.
You don’t need to revolutionize the world to think creatively.
Improving something in your own workshop is creativity.
Finding a better way to organize a jobsite can be creativity.
Solving an annoying problem in your home can be creativity.
Writing a song in a way you haven’t tried before can be creativity.
The scale changes.
The curiosity underneath it can be very similar.
CREATIVITY NEEDS DISCIPLINE TOO
There is one lesson I can’t ignore simply because it makes the story less comfortable.
Ideas aren’t enough.
At some point, if you want an idea to become something other people can use, hear, see or experience, somebody has to finish it.
That requires a different kind of creativity.
Patience.
Testing.
Revision.
Repetition.
Problem-solving when the exciting beginning is already gone.
Sometimes the hardest part of creating isn’t having the idea.
It’s staying with it.
I can recognize that in myself.
My tendency to move toward the next idea can be a strength because it keeps me curious.
It can also become a weakness when something genuinely deserves completion.
Understanding yourself means being willing to admit both.
That is much more useful than pretending every personal habit is automatically a gift.
FROM BUILDING THINGS TO BUILDING SONGS
Songwriting might look completely different from welding, machinery or electrical work.
To me, the mental process isn’t always that different.
There is a problem in front of me.
Maybe a lyric doesn’t work.
Maybe a chorus needs something.
Maybe the title suggests one meaning and I want the song to reveal another.
I experiment.
Move something.
Remove something.
Try another direction.
Listen again.
Sometimes I leave it alone and come back later.
Sometimes another song appears while I’m still working on the first.
That same curiosity followed me into music.
MOITA itself grew from asking questions.
What can a song become after the music ends?
Can a webpage become part story, part documentary and part education?
Can hundreds of songs eventually become a library of experiences rather than simply a catalogue?
I don’t know every answer yet.
That’s exactly why I keep building it.
THE TWO SIDES OF NEVER
The word at the centre of this song deserves one final look.
Never can close a door.
You’ll never succeed.
You’ll never learn.
You’ll never change.
You’ll never finish.
But never can also protect something.
I’ll never stop learning.
I’ll never stop questioning.
I’ll never let failure become my entire identity.
I’ll never allow somebody else’s opinion to become the final decision about what I’m capable of attempting.
The danger is becoming rigid.
There are things we should let go.
There are mistakes we shouldn’t repeat forever simply to prove how determined we are.
Real perseverance requires enough intelligence to change direction when the evidence tells us to.
Maybe the strongest form of defiance isn’t refusing to change.
Maybe it’s refusing to stop thinking.
RELATED MOITA SONGS
SO MANY FACES ONE MIND
I SAY NEVER explores what happens when other people don’t understand the way I think. SO MANY FACES ONE MIND continues that conversation from another direction by looking at identity and the different sides that can exist within one person.
SUCCEED
Where I SAY NEVER deals with outside negativity and the refusal to surrender curiosity, SUCCEED continues naturally into the question of what success actually requires and how we define it for ourselves.
AGAINST ALL ODDS
This song continues the theme of moving forward when circumstances, expectations or other people suggest that the easier answer would be to stop.

CONTINUE EXPLORING

If this subject interests you, there are several worthwhile directions to continue exploring.
Look into research on creativity and divergent thinking. Explore the history of inventions that developed through repeated experimentation rather than one perfect breakthrough. Read about prototyping and why engineers test imperfect versions before reaching a finished design.
You can also explore psychological safety and how families, workplaces, classrooms and creative teams influence whether people feel comfortable sharing unfinished ideas.
Most importantly, try something yourself.
It doesn’t have to become an invention.
It doesn’t have to make money.
It doesn’t have to impress anybody.
Take something you’re curious about and learn how it works.
Build something.
Repair something.
Write something.
Change something.
Ask a stupid question.
Then ask another one.
Maybe nothing comes from it.
Maybe something does.
Either way, curiosity has already done its job.

MOITA