Jul. 16, 2010

This is the “b-side” to my last post which may have seemed a little “type A”. The truth is, we all need a little “type a” in our life - but only a little. Any more than a little makes an artist a criminal.

So, you’ve become a disciplined artist (is this an oxymoron?).  You write/paint/create at the same time everyday. You are in a good spot and suddenly…

It’s been a month. You’ve done your work, yet after four weeks all you have to show is a song that slightly resembles Barney’s “I love you”. You are depressed and anxious. Depressed because the only one who might be interested in hearing your song wears a very large purple costume. Anxious because he (she?) might sue your pants off. This is known as “writer’s block”.

This afternoon I read a chapter from Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” called “Writer’s block” that blew me away. She gives a new perspective:

“I no longer think of it as block. I think that is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.
The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty”.

Isn’t this true? A “block” makes it sound (and makes you feel) like you have lost the gift. You painted, or wrote stories or songs once, but no longer. It’s like the creative villain LeBron James is now blocking every attempt you make and a whole stadium full of people are laughing at you. You feel like they won’t stop laughing either because - the “magic” is gone. No. The truth is that you are trying to get water from a well that is dry and the harder you try, the thirstier you get. I don’t think you can force the creativity when you are empty. That’s kind of like trying to force your kids to make up and “mean it”. So what is one to do?

Lamott’s answer may surprise you. She say’s - accept it.

“if you accept the reality that you have been given - that you are not in a productive creative period - you free yourself to begin filling up again”.

A bit of clarity might be needed here. First, she is not saying stop writing. She encourages her students to force themselves to write three hundred words “just to keep their fingers from becoming too arthritic”. The discipline is still important. Secondly, she is not saying backpack across Europe for six months and go “find yourself”. It seems to me that she is saying to go and find what it is that gives you life in the everyday. At one point when she was going through a dry season she recalls,

“I spent a little time at my desk every day…I went for walks and to lots of matinees, and I read. I spent as much time as I could outdoors while I waited for my unconscious to open a door and beckon”.

I’ll never forget the first time I met our friends Nate and Lori. Marisa, myself and Soleil (our only child at the time) flew to Minneapolis to spend a few days with them and work on some music. We didn’t have much money. That’s not true. We didn’t have any money, but we knew that this was the first step to getting things rolling on my CD. Some friends of ours gave us some “buddy passes” so we could fly for free. We broke open our piggy banks and got a rental car and hotel room. Actually, as I’m typing I recall our piggy bank looking an awful lot like a visa card. Well anyway, I wanted to get as much done as possible in the short time that we were there.

The first night that we arrived we hung out with our new friends at Caribou coffee for a little bit. It was one of those weird “I’ve spoken with you a hundred times but we’ve never actually seen each other” meetings. Luckily, to know Nate and Lori is to love them so it wasn’t too weird. The next morning we went to their house. I had my notebook and computer, and was ready to work. After we talked for a while Nate said, “sing me one of your songs”. He had heard all of my songs before, but I thought I would appease him. I sat at the piano and played and sang one of my songs for him. He smiled and said, “That was nice. Play it again”. I was thinking “are you serious?”, but I decided to just play it again instead of vocalize my thoughts. After I played the song a second time he said, “Play me another one of your songs”. This went on for a while as our wives talked and kids played in the adjoining room. We did some other things too. We went outside and burned some leaves for example. We had lunch and then went to his barn. I thought for sure we’d start hammering some work there. We talked a lot, and occasionally played a little music. I kept trying to subtly drop the hint that I wanted to work, even though I wasn’t totally sure what “work” was suppose to look like. After one of my subtle hints he smiled and said “I suppose you want to get to work since you paid for those plane tickets, huh?”, laughing ever so slightly during the whole sentence the way a person laughs when they know a secret that you don’t. I think the secret that he knew was something that Anne Lamott knew too,

“Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck”.

The secret that he didn’t know was that I didn’t pay for the plane tickets , just the hotel and rental car. Anyway, gradually I became slightly less anal retentive. At one point back at the house he asked me to sing “Deliverer” again. As I sang it he had this idea to shift some sections around (He’s famous for this). I sang it in the new form he suggested and we looked at each other like we had just struck gold. It was an incredible moment. We had a few cool musical moments like that, but I spent a lot of time enjoying Nate and Lori’s hospitality and really getting to know them on a deeper level. Nate is a brilliant singer/songwriter/producer, etc. But he is also a person that seems to know how to live life and not just walk through it with his eyes closed. I went to Minneapolis feeling stressed. I left feeling full, and a crazy thing happened - I went home and wrote four songs. (Apparently I need to hang out with Nate more).

When I can’t fly to Minneapolis here are a few things that help me fill back up:
-Reading
-Sitting around a camp fire with some close friends for several hours
-Going to a good concert
-Watching a moving movie
-Going for a walk or run
-Listening to James Taylor’s “One Man Band” during the fall
-Listening to Rob Mathes “Orchestral Songs” CD any time of the year

When you are “empty”, what do you do to fill back up?