So, a question about inspiration: does it flow downhill, from big ideas? From philosophy and great literature and nature? From contemplating God and existence? Or does it grow up out of the dirt, out of the compost heap of the subconscious, from the residue of countless tiny experiences filed away deep?
Suppose I want to generate a cohesive, personally meaningful, culturally relevant body of work - an album’s worth of song lyrics, a novel, a work of art - where do I start? Do I generate the big ideas first, try to pierce the veil and glimpse the sublime, then somehow capture aspects of the experience in my work? Or do I just start turning the crank and generating ideas, periodically evaluating my output to see where it’s headed?
I (lamely) see these as analogs of top-down and bottom-up design in software engineering, and I recognize that my traditional methodology has been very much bottom-up. But I should also recognize that I’ve never produced anything that I would consider as approaching anything like “cohesive, personally meaningful, and culturally relevant;” better adjectives might be “quirky, surreal, and slipperily abstract.”
I’ll make a note to do some research on creativity to see if anyone online has further insight into this issue.
Another thought about my current lifestyle: I’m currently a full-time tinkerer. I dabble in a broad variety of creative pursuits, specializing in none of them, possibly save web development as it somehow manages to put food on the table. I’ve done what I can to try to “hibernate” projects in a manner where I can one day “thaw them out” and get rolling on them again, but without any external structure or stimulus imposed on me I inevitably grow lazy about completing anything. So my natural tendency is to try to uncover and collect new avenues for expression, rarely nurturing any single one of them enough to bring it into full bloom.
Given all of these tendencies, viewing them as value-neutral aspects of my personality, neither good nor bad, what can I do to focus on following through on projects? Think and discuss.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:12 am
You should check out a book of interviews called “Songwriters on Songwriting,” wherein the author/editor interviews just about every songwriter you’ve ever admired and asks big questions like the ones you’re asking. It’s interesting stuff. I wonder if you’ve read it already, or maybe I’ve recommended it to you before?
As far as artistic endeavors go, I think it’s probably a mistake to stick exclusively to one or the other. A lot of great songs and paintings and films start from a very small, specific place, and find worlds to explore within them. But then again you could point to an equal number of more abstract works that would seem to emerge out of much broader contemplation. I like to think that the two approaches complement each other. Without any sense of connection to broader themes, a “bottom-up” work risks losing some sort of purpose that allows people to come to it from a variety of angles. And conversely a work that is all big-picture may have nothing for the audience to latch onto, nothing to ground it.
In the rock/pop world, pretty much every lyricist I have ever respected and meditated on at a deeper level has been able to master both simultaneously. If I were to think about it I’d bet that many of my favorite films and paintings would follow a similar approach. In jazz it’s maybe not surprising that many of my favorite albums were born in that in-between time when bop was expanding beyond the restrictions of the 40’s and early 50’s, but when it still adhered somewhat to at least vague conceptions of form and melody.
But that’s all just a matter of taste.
From a practical perspective, it can be paralyzing to try to know where to start when thinking about the kind of large-scale philosophical inspiration that you’re talking about. Things feel unmanageable; art and words feel like they never convey the world that you are trying to convey. Which may also again be why artists sometimes return to the mechanics, the specifics, as a way to get going.
-Andy
October 27th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
you should write a book. not because i read what you wrote and decided that you have a knack. because it would be something, and it would probably be good. and you drink enough to be a good writer. and you have a knack.