Dry

I write songs and stories. I’ve written a lot of them over the years. But, occasionally, I get what is commonly called “writer’s block.” The ideas just don’t materialize, and it can be a long time between. If I wrote these things for a living this could be unnerving. But I don’t really let it bother me too much.

But I still wonder why it happens. What causes the creative juices to dry up? What causes them to flow? You think you know sometimes, but it’s really hard to say.

I recently had a long stretch of no songs. Six or seven months. Don’t know why. Wasn’t sure what to do about it. Would I ever write another one? But there were no ideas, no sounds ringing in my head, no nothing. Then, last week, I had a vague idea. I could hear something going on. Think of it like this: you hear a song off in the distance, not clearly, but you think you might recognize it, so you try to move closer to it to figure out what it is. That’s what it’s like, except it’s in your head. And this is where learning the craft of song writing helps. If you have some tools, some skill with chord progressions and melodic structure, you can use those things to trace a path and get where you need to go.

I put a few things down on the recorder. They were very clunky and forced. Horrible really. And then I gave up because it just wasn’t working. I went to work on some other things. Checking emails. Making some calls. Reading the Bible and another book I’ve been reading about leadership. Working on some ideas for teaching. And then, boom, I had a song, almost complete, words and music. I had to trim it a bit and hammer it out a bit, but it came together really fast and seems to work. We played it last Sunday and it clicked pretty well.

Now, I know I must have set my brain in the right direction by hammering on some things ahead of time. But this shift from no ideas at all, to writing things that aren’t working, and then having something that does seem to work just rising up like a bubble out of the water: it’s something I can’t explain. It’s like gears falling into place. It makes me think of one of those games where you set it up and the marble rolls through the thing, around the curves and such, and how you have to set it up right or the marble doesn’t make it all the way to the end. So you keep at it until you finally have a flow that works.

It’s kind of weird and inscrutable, but wonderful. It happens to me, I experience it, but I find it really hard to articulate. As you have just seen.

Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Me and Mr. Poe

And so, in the darkest of dark nights, I stood at the precipice, leaning over the abyss, like Sisyphus at the base of his hill, mightily inverted, knowing this expanse must be mastered, but to what purpose? Another expanse arises. Always arises. And yet, in the dim twilight of my discontented musings, I knew that onward was the only way. Onward, on the way to the next onward, and the next. And, as she fluttered her ebony wings of misfortune, the bride of the darkest ruminate clouds, overshadowing my soul, she called out to me in silent prayers, like angels of anguish over the battlefield vanquished. She called to prayers the lonely moments of my wandering heart, and I heard in those dulcet tones the expanse, calling me again. Onward. Only onward.

***

Honestly, I’m sorry, sort of, a little, but I’ve been reading a bit of Poe, you see, and it just erupted onto the page. I’ve got this large, two volume set with everything he wrote, and I dip into it on occasion. And this is one of those occasions.

Have you ever read any Poe? Have you seen the Roger Corman “Poe” movies that have almost nothing to do with the writings they are based on? Some of the movies are pretty good. But Poe they aint.

Poe, by the way, was not just a writer of little horror pieces. He wrote a lot of things: fantasy, romance, myth and humor. He liked writing suspense and mystery too. He was a fairly well respected critic and editor, though he had a hard time putting food on the table with his writing.

So did van Gogh. And Mozart. And Schubert.

Oh, what Bedlam is art?


Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Influence

When I was working on my undergraduate degree at Eastern Michigan University, I had a writing class with a lit prof who was from Trinidad named Brenda Flanagan. She was an artistic type, a bit scattered, unpredictable, which goes with the territory, but she was also good at inspiring students to write something creative and real.

By “real” I don’t necessarily mean a heartrending saga of hopeless heroism. That’s what most people seem to think of these days when you say “real.” To be taken seriously you must be some kind of tortured soul. Which is fine, but it’s also very limiting. There is so much more to “real” than that. The word “authentic” is better. Joy, curiosity, laughter, simplicity, and so on and so forth. It’s all real, as long as it’s . . . authentic.

When we would present stories in class, Dr. Flanagan would listen, and she would comment in the margins of her copy, with simple words like “yes,” or “”what?” or “I don’t believe it.” The point was that it was either connecting with her or it wasn’t. It was seeming “real” to her or it wasn’t.

The thing I remember most about this prof was her love for the sound of words. She heard the spoken word, I think, like some of us hear music. And that was inspirational to me. I had already had a taste of this mind-set with the writings of Ray Bradbury, when I was younger, as well as Toni Morrison and E.L. Doctorow. Dr. Flanagan introduced me to Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. It was like discovering treasure. She showed me that “real” is about the totality of a person coming out in what they write. It’s about the characters not being true to the author, but being true to themselves.

The reason she has come to mind is because, a while back, I stumbled onto some videos of her on youtube. She was doing some cultural exchange trips for the state department in former Soviet controlled countries, reading some of her poetry and I suppose doing workshops on African American lit. It was cool to see her doing her thing. After that, I went on Amazon and found a copy of her first book. When I knew her, it had been published in England, but not the States. I found a copy printed by the University of Michigan and I’m reading it now.

It has lots of flave-ah. The words roll around in your head. Smooth like.

And it has all made me think about how someone who is passionate can influence others in so many ways. It all adds up, these people who care enough to talk things through and make us think outside the box.

I’ve known people who kept spouting off about how they were going to change the world, but they were not doing much to change the life of one single person for the better. Helping one person seemed to be beneath them in some way. At least according to their own way of thinking.

I’d trade a dozen of those arrogant, so called “world changers” for one or two humble and influential life changers any day.

Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2011