I write a lot of songs. And ostensibly, I write them alone, all by myself, a solo singer songwriter, not needing anyone else. Except, it isn’t true. Not even vaguely. When I look back over the last ten years (which covers pretty much all the songs I’ve written) there’s almost never been a time when I’ve not had someone escorting me on my way and helping me focus to get my work done. Here’s a timeline: *2000: I write my first song and maybe three others four songs over the …

       Lots of writers dawdle around when then write. Imagining what the next line might be or worse, what their Aunt Gerdie might say if she were ever to read that next line. This is the equivalent of trying to get from New York City to the crab nebula by car then stopping just across the Jersey line at the Vince Lambardi Service Area. You’ll never get there.     
      The proper way to do things is put all the critical voices in your head in cryogenic stasis for the next ten minutes or so, and set your hand warp speed writing whatever comes out of you hand until you finish filling both sides of the page. Once you’ve arrived at the end of the journey without quite realizing it is a great time to look back at the ‘exhaust fumes,’ your words, and see what you’ve got that might be worth revisiting. That’s where the good stuff is.

Often in our writing we strive for perfection, for completion, and yet perfection is boring. It is the oddities and imperfections that we remember in the end.

Stanislavsky says as much in this quote I found in David Mamet's "3 Uses of the Knife."

      "There are plays that you leave, and you say to yourself, “By God, I just, I never, gosh, I want to, now I understand! What a masterpiece! Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” and by the time you get home, you can’t remember what the play was about. "

       "And there are plays—and books and songs and poems and dances—that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.

Lists of Song Ideas:

1. I used to keep lists
2. with all the things
3. I thought would be
4. great to write about.
5. Then one day
6. I’d get out the list
7. and look at all the great ideas
8. I at one point
9. wanted to write into life
10. Then, often
11. a half hour later
12. I was still flitting about
13. and indecisive about what to write
14. so I decided it must not
15. be a good day to write.
16. I don’t keep lists anymore.
17. Everything I could write about
18. is right in front of me
19. or in my memories and associations
20. I just need to choose and dive in
21. I could start with bike
22. or grass
23. or toddler
24. and just let my mind move my hand
25 until the page is full

Perfection is a bit like the Road Runner in Warner Bros. Cartoons and we're often like the Wile E. Coyote trying to catch it. We contruct eloborate plans and devices only to have perfection stick its tongue out at us and get away again. Like Wile E Coyote your energy would be better spent if you stopped chasing after perfection and started using your creativity to work towards building something solid and real. You’ll stop falling off so many cliffs that way.

       You say you don’t know what you what you want to write about or don’t have anything to say? Put that down on the page and just start writing about it. What does it feel like? How long has it been going on? Does it make you frustrated, sad, angry? Does it remind you of anything? Does it make you think you’ll end up a loser like that guy from your college poetry class? You know the one I mean. It’s important to just start writing. To get into the …

Sometimes ideas are just waiting for us at the periphery of our minds. They are there, but they are also a little shy. You have to coax them out. Sometimes I feel like my consciousness is a bit like a light cast down on a stage. There are things that I am aware of that are fully in the light. There’s a bunch of stuff I’m not aware of in the dark. And then there’s the stuff at the edges. Maybe I can see a shadow but I’m not quite sure what it is. So I move the light a little bit …

       So you’ve been working something to perfection and it’s driving you crazy. It’s been three weeks and you just can’t get that last detail right.        What would you do if it were due for a class or to your boss in a day? At the end of today? In an hour? Last week?        Creative endeavors can be hard because they are personal and often have no deadlines. We care about them deeply and …

       The internets don't seem to love me... or at least one corner of them doesn't. When I started this month off I was posting video for all my songs to Youtube. (It got a little overwhelming workload-wise so I stopped for now) I went back to check out my views and comments a few days later and noticed my song "We will rise up" had 2 comments!! I went to see what people had to say. The page loaded and emblazened in the comment box was the message. "You …

     Ellis and I talked a couple of days ago and she said she was writing a song for her Granny today. Did I want to write a song for her Granny too? Or perhaps for my Granny? Of course I did, though I had no idea what I would say, or how I would say it (nothing unusual for me, frankly). I was a little bit apprehensive too. I didn’t know either of my grandmothers terribly well. They both lived on the west coast and I didn’t see them often. My Dad’s mother died when I …

Jess shot me the mp3 file for her song “unprepared’ a couple days ago contradicting her song title but, what’s one to do?      We hadn’t talked about a specific theme but I loved the subject of her song. I have lots of experience with being unprepared and more over dreams where I’m unprepared. Mostly my dreams place me in a classroom without my homework, or with some test that I haven’t studied for at all. What hadI been doing for the past few …

       So Ethan wrote to me and said let's write a song about a place of worship.  Something like "House of Stone and Light" or Tom Waits' "Come on Up to the House."  I'd never thought about writing a song about a church so I figured why not?        I sat down and did my usual stuff.  Drank some tea, ate a cookie.  Did a quick word map where I started with the word curch in the middle.   I did an …

     First off, K.C. Clifford kicked ass on this.  I'd been busy drawing cute little stick figures and editing them into my song for two hours when K.C. sent me her song.  It was like hearing Zeppelin for the first time after listening to my ditty for two hours straight.   Damn!  (P.S. if my delivery sounds a little timid in the recording its because I was apparently being too loud for my roommate at 9:00 PM this evening when I was recording). …

         Bethel suggested we write something about buildings and structure which I was instantly excited about because I hadn't written anything about either of those things before.  Moreover, Chuck E. Costa has a great song called "From the Drawing Board" that uses building imagery.  I figured I could do something like his song.   Songs can be tricky though.  They don't necessarily turn out the way you think 'em up.  At …

       I’ve talked to and listened to a bunch of people who’ve had some good success in their music: Darrell Scott, Steve Seskin, Josh Ritter, Lisa Loeb. Of those folks not one said they sat down to write a “hit” song when they started writing. Steve might be the one who comes closest and he’s still just writing the songs he wants to. Darrell says he just writes what comes to him for the most part. Lisa knew Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawk when an …

The last 12 months have been really busy.  Here's a quick summary of what I've been up to in scribbly drawing form.  If you click the image you'll be taken to the full sized, zoomable image.

     I’m thinking about the first few times I wanted to write songs. I remember sitting in my room and playing a chord progression over and over and thinking how amazing it was. I mean, just gorgeous. What could I write to match that?      So I didn’t’ write anything. That’s not meant to be a judgment of my younger self. It’s where I was at the time and I believed there was some secret that could let me be great without sucking for a …

      Remember the movie “Gremlins?” A happy little Christmas story right? Well, the creative process is a lot like Christmas in that movie. It should be all happiness and presents under the tree but instead we have little monsters running around in our heads messing up everything.      When you’re sitting in front of the TV eating Ice Cream the monsters are like Gizmo. They are happy and soft, cuddly and soothing. They love you and you love …

Well, today I get to be a bit lazy and let James Geary doing the talking.   Ted.com is one of my favorite sites to check in with.  Here's what they have to say about this talk: Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make, Geary says. Here's a link to the video on ted since the player seems to be embedding oddly. …

      When I was in a high school art class our teacher had us draw a Picasso pen and ink drawing of a Igor Stravinsky with his hands clasped in his laps. She passed photocopy out and let us go to work for the afternoon. At the end of class she collected everything and put it away.      The next day we came in she passed out the same picture had us flip Stravinsky on his head, and asked us to draw the picture upside down. At the end of the class she passed out …

Ever wonder why characters often end up dead in Pixar Movies? The “Up” DVD has a short special feature where the production team talks about character death.  Or one character's death in particular. This is your fair warning spoiler alert.  If you haven’t seen the movie and want to be surprised by the ending, don’t read any further. The short is called “The many Endings of Muntz.” Muntz is the bad guy explorer in the “Up” if you don’t …

      A quote from “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougal:

“There are two goddesses in your heart, the Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get the wealth first and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.”

-Dr. Joe Vigil

A lot of times when I wake up and sit down to write I feel like I have nothing to say. I stare at the paper. I finger through old songs looking for ideas. I look for things to I can tweak or turn over which will give me a new perspective and hopefully ignite a spark. But then, a lot of times when I stop futzing and I just commit to writing, something will emerge. What I mean when I say ‘I just commit to writing’ is: 1. I give decide that anything I write is good as long as I write something. …

Want to get good at something, oh, let’s say songwriting? Here’s your best tactic straight from the mouth of Seth Godin via his blog today: “Don't have any meetings about your [thing you want to get good at]. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.” Seth is talking about a company trying to catch up in the world of web marketing or social networking. They’ve done nothing for the last 15 years while the world has moved on without them. Is that so …