Tag: creative

creativity within constraint

Blank pages.
Blinking cursors.
I look at one every day, multiple times a day, whether it’s an entry for this blog, or a word document, an empty spreadsheet, an email I’m crafting.

I don’t regularly get hung up on these things, because with each of these blank pages and blinking cursors exist with both potential and purpose – I open an email window because I have information to share with a singular person. I open a blog post because I have information to share openly with numerous people. I open a word document because I have thoughts I wish to not share with anyone… yet.

But sometimes I open a word document and get into some sort of staring contest with it. The daunting curse of the blank page gets the better of many writers, including myself on occasion. I’m no different. Someone might call this ‘writer’s block‘ and allow it to rule their artistic output for weeks, months, or even years unnecessarily. Unnecessarily, because writer’s block doesn’t actually exist.

My feelings on that matter are that the term ‘writer’s block’ would be much less effective if we called it what it really is: Fear of writing something shitty. So write something shitty, and toss it during the editting stage.

What happens when you free-form word-associate, do ‘morning pages’ (for those who have read ‘The Artist’s Way’ which I have not read yet, but have some knowledge of), journal, write a shopping list… you write something that’s (probably) shitty and unedited that will (hopefully) never see the light of day.

What’s the difference? No idea… to me they’re the same.

Everything I write, I write with intention… even if it IS a grocery list, I have the intention of following through with the action required to assure that I don’t run out of coffee and toilet paper. Sometimes that intention is to turn to the next page of a coil-bound notebook, never to return. Sometimes it’s a song that will eventually be recorded, and played on college radio. Sometimes it’s a song that will get ash-canned 6 months from now.

So… ok… great.
We have an idea when we set out to write something…
Terrific.

But the limitations of an idea are still pretty vast. Likely too vast.

Like, you can write about time travel… or you can write about traveling time back to when your parents were your age, and struggle with the paradox of affecting their lives and what that might mean for you as their child, 30 years later.

That movie’s already been made, but perhaps refining an idea isn’t enough. Maybe you (or I) need to just type words about dealing with writer’s block with some sort of time limitation and see what happens after 30 minutes…(?) Is that what I’m doing right now? yes. Is that what I do every time I write a blog post? no… this is a one-off. Will I be editing this post? no, and I almost never do. Is it on the level of Cormac McCarthy? No, but that’s not the goal.

So, what is the goal?
I guess that’s up to you.

Maybe a time restriction won’t work for you.
Maybe a minimum number of words.
Maybe a minimum number of words per day.
Maybe a specific subject.
Perhaps you’ve crafted a 2-minute pop-punk song and you need to put words to it without making it sound like you were writing it specifically to be short.
Maybe you’re getting into haikus.

I really can’t tell you what to write, but if you’re looking for some exercises to get your brain in gear, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame wrote a book that came out during the pandemic called “How To Write One Song” that is fraught with writing exercises to help get you there.

Time’s up.
Thanks for reading.

when it’s no longer yours

There’s a strange thing that happens when you create something, and I don’t know that people really talk about it very openly. Maybe they don’t talk about it at all, but there are so many examples I can point to, and many of them can be triggering for creative people. I hope my perspective; however, is not triggering.

When you make something – anything – there’s a certain point at which it stops being yours, and starts being part of the fabric. Which fabric depends on what you’ve created, I suppose. I’m fortunate to have been part of many creations in my life, and over time I’ve learned that although I’ve been integral in the process, these things no longer belong to me.

The biggest and most obvious thing I’ve had a hand in creating is my daughter. She remains my daughter, and I suppose that will never not be the case, but as far as being part of the creation process of another human being goes – she is very much her own person, and is learning to self-govern by the example of the people around her; because, yes, it takes a village.

In a similar yet different way, I create music with my close friends. I write songs. I take a blank page, fill it full of words that rhyme, ideally with some poignant message about love or life, and I set it to music… and at some point after smoothing out the rough edges at loud volumes in a rehearsal space, it becomes what it’s going to be. Eventually it’ll be performed live, and/or in-studio and recorded, and released.

I may have some rights to it as has been carved out by intellectual property lawyers over the past hundred years or so, but if the magic and the timing line up, the song will take on a life of its own. In a perfect world (in which we do not currently live), someone with a higher profile than me will hear it and want to record it and release a version of it, and it will go on to reach more and more people. It will have taken on ‘a life of its own‘ the same way my daughter has a life of her own, and I the time will come when I have no real governance over what it becomes.

At what point does this happen? Probably when the record comes out, (though some pro-lifer may examine the parallels I’ve made so far and argue that it’s when pen meets paper… please understand that this is not a conversation I intend to have). After all, a painting is not a work of art until it’s finished.

And… making an album available for consumption is called “releasing.”

Regardless, my daughter will always be ‘my daughter’, and my songs will always be ‘by me’ if only as a point of reference: Davey’s daughter. Confusionaires’ songs.

The tendency with these artistic works, to further the parallels, is to be precious about it. To protect and conserve this music so nobody steals it and copies it before you get notoriety for it… and but this is where the parallels stop.

It’s important to let go of these things, and let them become what they are to be. Most of them will go nowhere, and become nothing – possibly ever, possibly just for a long time – while some of them might get picked up by the wind and travel the world. To put a finer point on it, if Bruno Mars heard one of my songs and loved it, and wanted to make a hip, modern r&b version of it, I’d be elated and honoured. However, I’d have to get comfortable with the fact that the majority of the world would know it as a Bruno Mars song because his version of it would easily travel further than mine.

A solid example of this if Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt, which was originally written and recorded by Trent Reznor under his project name ‘Nine Inch Nails.’ Though NIN has a far reaching fan base, that song has become a Johnny Cash song to more people than it is a NIN song.

Trent Reznor also knows that he can write more songs.
I can write more songs, too. And I will.

So to be precious about a string of words and notes that were arguably dropped on me and picked up by my antena from some unseen energy that has deemed me a good conduit for these messages seems selfish to me… especially since if I were to not write the words down, and not conjure up the melody and structure, that the song would keep floating, and be picked up by someone else.