The Shy Singer/Songwriter

~dance in the elevator

shysinger — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:05:29 +0000

“When did you start studying voice,” one of my students asked me this week. She’s feeling anxious about an upcoming birthday (we seem to be especially aware of any number ending in “0”).

I took my first lesson in 1990. But I wonder about saying, “I started ____.” Because that implies at some point you’ll say, “I ended ____.” Some things do end, of course, like university, or college, a job, or relationship. But creative things don’t end unless we stop doing them.

Still, I know how much I’ve grieved the passage of time and the little I’ve had to show for some of it. That’s one reason why I try to work hard on my dreams now.

Yesterday is yesterday, and, therefore, as far as we know, gone. For all our wishes and grief, there is no way we can relive it, except in our memories and dreams. Our regrets may be many but, like Scrooge in Dicken’s ‘Christmas Carol’, we can resolve to go forward with a different attitude. The past can motivate us to use our time better in the future.

I only have to spend a day in the company of my lively and active 87-year-old mother to know that lamenting my age now is a waste of energy. It is what it is. I can lie about it, but I can’t change the number of years I’ve lived. What I can change is my attitude about it. And I’ll tell you one thing for certain: the spirit inside you doesn’t age.

So I resolve to start every day. I strive to grow beyond my programming. I compare my unhappiness with those who are homeless, or sick, or those who live in war torn countries. I am grateful for the gifts that I have been given. No matter how ‘old’ or ‘young’ I am, I can walk my path, live my dreams as best I can, picking myself up and dusting myself off whenever I fall.

We can’t change the past, our mistakes, the good and the bad. Our lives are a series of startings, and IMHO the important thing is to start and keep starting, no matter how old we are, or what happened in the past. Courage is not an absence of fear, it is walking seunknown or struggling to overcome our issues and reprogram ourselves. It is possible for human beings to grow and change. The challenge is to do the work.

Let’s all resolve to make 2010 the year that we begin, and keep beginning. So that we feel we have not given our time to external things without supporting the creative spirit within. Find time to play, and to create, and to laugh, and to reach out to those around us with a smile or a helping hand. To vision our lives effectively and to keep working on our dreams, even if it is only in moments stolen from our other responsibilities. Sing in the shower, doodle on our to-do lists, dance in the elevator, drum on our desks, read poetry on the bus. It’s never too late.

~ practicing process

shysinger — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:00:28 +0000

One of the reasons I write this blog is to share my process. I think it’s important that I share the ups and downs, the imperfect and the better than imperfect, the struggle, the slow baby steps towards achievement. In my opinion, success is built on a foundation of practice. Not perfection, not necessary production, but practice.

It seems to me there are some vital aspects of achieving change in our lives.

One: to assess where we are – good and bad. The “morning pages” suggested by Julia Cameron have this function. A daily practice of writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness whatever’s-in-my-brain leads to something. It gets the crap, the worry, the guck, the messy stuff out of our brain and down on the page. And it connects us to the creative flow. It does so, because it is something we do.

Over time, as we write what we feel, think, worry, we start to see patterns. I did something about my financial situation after writing about money worries every single day for three months. I set up a budget and I got a consolidation loan. I got tired of singing the same song and changed it!

And, I was surprised, after several weeks of morning pages, to realize that, for the first time in my life, I was hearing my own inner voice. It had been squashed and ignored for so long (because what everyone else wants, needs and thinks is waayyyyy more important, right?) it was very very quiet and I had to strain to hear it. How can I go on to #2 below if I can’t hear my own voice or assess my own feelings about what I’d like to do with the time that I’ve been gifted with?

Two: to visualize where we would like to go. This can be fairly general – “I’d like to have more creativity in my life,” “I’d like to be in better physical shape.” Or it can be specific – “I’d like to make that trip to Italy I’ve always dreamed of,” “I’d like to get back to playing the guitar,” “I’d like to take a photography course,” “I’d like to be more confident as a speaker.” The list is endless. Morning pages (and doing the tasks in ‘The Artist’s Way’) allow us to spill out our dreams and visions and fears. Because we’re in the flow every morning, before we go out to face the world, we touch base with the most important person in our lives, our best friend – ourselves.

Three: to begin the action(s) that will take us there. This is the crucial step. One of the reasons I like recommending morning pages is that it is action. It is a ‘do’. It’s too easy to read self-help books and talk to therapists and talk to friends. Change only happens through work, through struggle. We begin, not knowing how long it will take, or if it will work, or even where we will end up. But we begin, and we continue to begin, every single day. All those beginnings, in time, lead us. We find out more, we experience, our daily process is part of the quality of our lives. We do. We are in motion.

Four: to be conscious of what we say to ourselves along the way. We need to recognize that much of what our internal editor tells us is a feedback loop created by a part of us that thrives on negativity, stress, anger and frustration. This entity within us has a vested interest in us not changing, therefore, no matter what we do, it says bad things. “You’re too old,” “they’re just being nice,” “that was crap,” “who do you think you’re kidding,” “you may have done it once, but you’ll never do it again.” If we are not aware of what we say to ourselves, we run the risk of shutting down, turning off, stopping. The act of morning pages, and the act of taking up the threads of things we desire to do, these acts help us defeat the voice within.

Five: find joy in the little things along the way. Be awake and really taste that first cup of coffee. Be awake and smell the tang of the sea in the air when you walk to work. Notice the colours of the trees. If, on our way to work, we are in our ‘heads’, thinking about the day ahead, worrying about something that might happen, remembering what happened yesterday… then we are not in the present moment. But our body reacts to those thoughts as though they are happening – and we get stressed out. Returning to the ‘now’ is as simple as stopping to take a deep breath, and really being aware of that breath in and out. This is also something we can practice over the course of the day.

Morning pages, conscious breathing, conscious attention, visioning our lives and then taking steps towards that vision, these are how we practice process.

“As we are creative beings, our lives become our works of art.” ~ Julia Cameron

~ embracing slow growth

shysinger — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:09:21 +0000

I’ve always been the slow and steady type. It takes me a long time to get things into my head, and an even longer time to make positive changes in my life. It seems to me that’s the way it has to be. Change happens, over time, as we take action towards our goals. If it happens too fast, it might not stick because we don’t have the foundational experience to support it. If it happens too fast, it might traumatize us because we haven’t built the strength to manage it. Personally, I think it’s better to practice 15 minutes a day consistently, than practice 3 hours once a week. It’s the daily application that moves us forward.

I have the philosophy that as I practice today, I might not see or feel any changes. The fact that I practiced today might not help me next week. But the fact that I practiced today, added with all the other todays I practiced, will make a huge difference 6 months from now.

A perfect example of this is my composing and production skills. Honestly, I knew next to nothing about producing in November 2006. I was sitting at a music conference with some people I had met on a songwriting forum, and I realized that I was talking to people who actually made money with their music. You wouldn’t know their names, but you’ve probably heard their music on shows like America’s Next Top Model, Ugly Betty, CSI, talk shows, etc. I decided, since I wanted to make money with my music too, that I needed to do what they were doing.

Up to then, I had been writing some instrumentals, but had very little in the way of tools or equipment to make them sound good. I wrote my instrumentals as midi with my keyboard or as notation in Band in a Box, and then used free Virtual Instrument (VI’s) plug-ins I downloaded off the internet to create the sounds. I wrote all kinds of stuff this way, but it didn’t have any hope of going anywhere.

After I got home from that conference, I bought my first orchestral program – East West Silver. It was one small section of the orchestra, and all I could afford. It was my Christmas present to myself. The problem was… the computer I had couldn’t run it.

I got a graphic design project, working with my sister, to design a textbook for a local college. I was pretty pissed, actually, to find myself working on it on Christmas Day because of issues with the client getting information and documentation to us. However, that contract, when it paid in January, was just enough to buy the custom-built audio computer that I needed.

After that, every couple of months, as I saved up the money, I added to my sound library. And during that time, I played and played and played and wrote and wrote and wrote. Many of my compositions, even with the new sounds, were still rejected for various reasons. I kept working at it and kept trying, and kept practicing. My hard drive is littered with tracks created and mixed during the next two years. I did produce some acceptable tracks and signed four to a music library – my first deal. I kept writing. I used my membership in TAXI as a measuring stick. If TAXI forwarded a track, I knew I’d done something right. Finally, in late 2008, all that hard work started to pay off, and I signed 10 tracks to another music library. In 2009, I started to sign more tracks still. In September 2009, I was pleased to be accepted by a prominent music library as a composer.

Still I consider this to be only the beginning of my five-year plan to sign enough music to be making a significant amount of money from it. Everything I sign now has the potential of bringing in income down the road.

More than that, though, is the fact that the daily work on music, the daily listening back critically to my own and others work, the daily working with tools, reading about composition and using sample libraries, etc etc… all this adds up to a level of experience that is the foundation for the future. These three years of effort, sometimes feeling like I’d never get it, have begun to pay off. I have much more to learn, more tools to get, more skill to attain. Thankfully. Keeps life interesting!

2005: Coffee Grind
http://www.vikkiflawith.com/audio/Coffee_Grind-7Sep06_hifi.m3u

2009: Data Stream (excerpt)
http://www.vikkiflawith.com/audio/Data_Stream_hifi.m3u

~creatively managing creative time

shysinger — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:16:52 +0000

I was privileged to teach a class at a recent music conference. The class was called, “You Can Give the Industry What It Wants and Still Be Creative”. It was taught by a team of 4 people: Suz Doyle talked about finding inspiration when you are blocked; Chuck Schlacter talked about how he researches opportunities and client requests, and illustrated how he sketches out the plan for a piece of music on a daily basis; John Mazzei talked about what it’s like to work with film directors as a composer, and the challenge of supporting the creative vision of the director while remaining true to one’s own muse.

I choose to talk about creatively managing creative time.

I was on a coaching call a while ago with Debra Russell and Nancy Moran, and Nancy talked about delegating tasks. Not just bookkeeping or web management… but the personal things you need to do around the house, or the errands you run. Her logic was, if you are self-employed, then everything you do is part of running your business. What a sense of relief I got when she said that! I’d been struggling with the house, shopping, laundry, and felt guilty about not being able to keep up with it all. It was huge weight off my shoulders to realize it was ‘ok’ to delegate some of that out. So here’s what I came up with.

1-Make a list of daily, weekly and monthly tasks. That’s everything you need to do. Pay bills, shop for groceries, go to the gym, etc.

2-Set up a calendar. I have mine set up as a table in Word. Preferably you want something where you can see the month at a glance.

3-Now schedule your tasks. Try to be efficient. For example, if you are downtown on Friday afternoons, then you schedule all your downtown errands on Friday afternoon, that’s when you get your photocopies, pick up toner from the office supply store, mail your packages, do your banking. If you set aside time on Saturday morning to clean house, maybe that’s also a good time to do laundry. You can throw a load in and then go clean the kitchen. If, like me, doing laundry means a trip to the Laundromat… well, I have enough towels and clothes to go one month before I need to do laundry. And when I do laundry, I put everything in the washer and then go to the grocery store and/or drug store, do any banking. Sometimes I’ll even call my mom from my cell while I’m sitting in the Laundromat. I can cross ‘call Mom’ off my list

I mentioned in the class that I order my groceries on-line. There is a local company (Spud.ca) that deliver organics. I order those supplies on Mondays and they are delivered Thursdays. I then go to the store once a week (usually Wednesday morning) and get anything I need that they don’t deliver. I order on-line for the convenience, but also because I know that if I get swamped or overwhelmed, the first thing that goes is shopping. That is not good for my health. So ordering on-line is not only time management, it’s health management, to get a box of beautiful fresh veggies and fruit every week, encouraging me to eat sensibly.

Because I work at home, I’m able to manage cooking by preparing veggies for the steamer, and plugging it in before my last session starts, or using the crock pot. I tend to eat pretty much the same things most of the time. I make a meal plan for the week – this is not only good for time management but it’s a good budget measure as well. I always try to cook enough for two meals so I only have to warm things up.

Included in your schedule of ‘tasks’ should also be some daily personal time, just to be… to walk, to dream, to meditate, to be still. And also include, on a weekly basis, time to go over your schedule for the following week, plan your budget, balance your chequebook, make your grocery list & plan your meals. I allow 2 hours for this on Saturday morning.

4-The next step is to make a list of projects you want to work on. This could be musical collaborations, writing for opportunities, working on your album, etc. I have separate project sheets for library composing, co-writing, my album, and listings I plan to submit to. I have a project binder and in each section I put notes & emails for the different projects I’m working on.

5-Now look at your schedule, and plan when you will be in your ‘studio’. On weekends I plan 4-6 hours per day, during the week I plan 3 to 5 hours per day depending on what I have on. Allow time for social events…. Dinner and a movie – one night a week. Overall I schedule about 20 hours studio time as a minimum. Because I work for myself I’m in charge of my schedule. If you work full-time and you have a family, then your obligations are going to be different, and your available time for writing is going to be reduced. That’s life. We make choices and we need to see them through.

When you walk into your studio at the scheduled time, then you look at your list of projects and ask, ‘what is the best use of my time right now’, or ‘what is the most urgent thing to work on,’ or ‘what would I like to play with today’. Guard this time, don’t let other things eat into it. Use your weekly planning time to assess how well you are figuring out how to deal with your needs, and adjust accordingly.

It only makes sense to me that we should set reasonable goals, figure out what we need to get or to know, and then set out to save for that software, or set aside time to learn/practice, and use available resources (like songwriting forums) to get feedback on what we are doing, or even to share our process and ask for advice. We assess progress by looking back and asking… did I move forward over the past few months? Am I writing better, more consistently, did I finish what I set out to do?

I recommend these books:
“Getting Things Done” by David Allen
“The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron

The handout I distributed at the class is available here:

http://www.islandnet.com/~vflawith/Creative_Time_Handout

——————-
Just as an example, then… my overall schedule might look like this:

Sunday-
1 hr – clean hse/organize
(walk)
4-6 hrs – studio

Monday-
3 hrs – work
(lunch, walk)
4 hrs – work
(dinner)
2 hrs – studio
order on-line groc

Tuesday-
3 hrs – work morning
1 hr – rehearse with trio
(lunch, walk)
4 hrs work
(dinner)
2 hrs studio

Wednesday-
2 hrs – studio
shopping/banking/laundry/walk
(lunch)
4 hrs – work
(dinner)
2 hrs – studio

Thursday-
3 hrs – work morning
1 hr – studio
(lunch, walk, groc delivered)
4 hrs work
(dinner)
2 hrs studio

Friday-
3 hrs – work morning
1 hr – rehearse with trio
weekly appt
run errands
dinner/movie

Saturday-
2 hrs – scheduling/planning
(lunch, walk)
4-6 hrs – studio
——————-

~ ready, set, go

shysinger — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:09:38 +0000

Ah well what to report, what to report. Big Brothers came and took away a big bag of clothes and a box of shoes. The junk van came and took away old beat-up furniture, old junk, old carpet, et al. Feels good.

Been working hard to get prepared for the music conference I go to every November. Burned some CDs with examples of my composing in case I get close to a music library representative… and a few CDs with worktapes of songs to get feedback on.

Have any number of projects to work on when I get back. Three more instrumental demos to pitch, and then 21 instrumental cues to lengthen and do final mixes for. Also a number of collaborations need finishing up, and I have a few listings I’d like to write for. Also, 2010 is going to be the year of the album. I figure now I’m getting broadcast quality tracks signed by music libraries, I’m ready to produce the album I’ve been dreaming of the past couple years.

Am also playing a gig on December 11th that’s a mix of original and traditional songs of the season, we’ll have to kick up the rehearsal schedule when I return.

I’m on a ‘tips and techniques for film/tv composing’ panel at the conference, and I’m also one of a team teaching a class in how to give the music industry what it wants while still being creative. A little nervous about that, but hope I can remain calm and say something useful, lol.

T’was a nice day today, and weather reports are good for the week

~ boxed in

shysinger — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:48:49 +0000

What is it in me that looks at an empty box and deeply desires to keep it? Walk into my bathroom, and on the top shelf there are empty boxes that once contained a toaster or a mixer. Walk into my bedroom and on top of my cupboard are empty boxes that once had a VCR or a IBM tower. Get into my closet and start sorting things out, and there are boxes with boxes in them.

Is it the ghost of Christmas past? For mother and grandmother would exclaim, on receiving a beautifully wrapped parcel, that it was a shame to ruin the wrapping. So they would carefully carefully remove the coloured paper, never tearing. And then they would put the wrapping and the gift tag and the ribbon or bow in the box with the gift. Did they actually use that paper again, I wonder? Did they actually find another occasion to reuse that ribbon? Or did they, like me, find it months later when they were looking for something else… and then finally discard it?

I find myself thinking, when I receive something in a box… ‘oh… this might be good to put something in if I have to mail things… or if I have a gift to give.’ But invariably I never need them. And even if I do…. I don’t mail 100 parcels a year. Maybe just one small box. At that rate it will take me 20 years to use up the ones I’m hoarding… and I’d be sending some big boxes with very little in them.

This week I ripped up several boxes and put them in recycle. But I still have more. Even writing this I feel a great reluctance to give away that VCR box… even though the VCR is more than two years old and the warranty has expired. I need to reassure myself that boxes will be available to me if I should ever decide to move… which will likely be never as I can’t face trying to pack all this stuff up and move it anyway.

But I am proud to announce that I actually (once I moved some boxes) was able to get into my walk-in closet today. I have several boxes of stuff to go through… but Big Brothers is coming Tuesday to pick up donations… and the junk van is coming Wednesday for the stuff that can’t be recycled or given away. So I am making progress on my goal to reduce, reuse, recycle and throw away.

But… I happen to know a friend is sending me something in the mail. It should arrive this week. It will be in a box.

Uh oh.

be gone, stufffffff!

shysinger — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:18:55 +0000

I am trying to clean my bedroom – a Herculean task of mammoth porportions. If you don’t hear from me, bring a tractor over & dig me out. Seriously. But I did find the abstract I painted in August – it’s good, I like it. And I found piles of music I’d forgotten I had, in a box.

Anyway, I wonder how I managed to get all this stufffffffffff in one room and still breathe. No more, I say! The junk men are coming and taking it all away, soon!!! (Don’t worry, I recycle or give away anything remotely useful.) But first I must have a lie down. Just looking at all those boxes makes me exhausted.

sticking to your guns

shysinger — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:46:08 +0000

You know, somewhere along the line, after waffling for years, never finishing anything I started… something changed. I actually began something that didn’t end. I certainly thought about quitting – a lot. I procrastinated. I didn’t follow through sometimes. But I never stopped totally. I kept going.

I kept going to voice lessons even when nothing felt good, even when I was making no progress in spite of excellent instruction. Every time I thought about stopping – and I often thought about stopping – something in me said, even if I never sing anywhere… there’s something I need to overcome just for myself, and this is helping. Of course, I love music, and that passion helped me to stick to my guns as well.

I was so tangled up inside with old programming. I had no trust in myself at all. But on some intuitive level, I must have understood that evolution comes from struggling to move forward against the odds.

If you ever go into my kitchen, you’ll see something on my fridge. It’s a little list of goals. And at the bottom, in big large letters, I typed “I promise myself I’ll never give up.”

Yep, slow and steady wins.

~ striving for imperfection

shysinger — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:35:38 +0000

Eh? What’s that you say? I should strive to be other than perfect? What’s the point of that?

Well… you see, we’re caught in this terrible bind.

We do need to learn something about what we are doing. As artists, we know we have to have craft, or skill, in order to produce our work effectively. We need to work hard to understand what is required, and practice doing it, so that we will become more expert at performing, or writing, or composing, or painting, etc.

And yet, at the same time, we want to express, we want to explore, we want to be organically in-the-moment feeling what we are doing.

If we focus too much on the mechanics, we run the danger of becoming mechanical, seized up, trying too hard.

If we let everything go and just perform organically, we lose something because we are not engaged in the act in the most effective way we could be – and our art suffers from our lack of craft.

So do we sacrifice craft for expression? Or do we forget feeling and work on precise execution?

Neither.

When we bring our work to our mentors to be assessed, we bring it knowing it is imperfect. We present it with humility and presence. We say, “this is the best I can do right now.” Accepting where we are is the first step to moving beyond it.

If we resist where we are (‘I can’t sing a note on key, even if you paid me’), then our whole instrument is bound up in hiding that state from everyone. We may consciously be willing to step into the light and give it a go, but our whole body rebels against it. And no wonder, because many of us have been traumatized in the past by unkind remarks and unrealistic expectations.

So we come into the studio, longing to sing, but afraid. We have been programmed to believe that we are not capable. Perhaps we were told that we had no talent, perhaps we were told never to make a loud noise, perhaps we were told by a teacher not to sing with the rest of the class. Even if it was forty years ago, that embarrassment and that hurt still lives in us. But it can be overcome, with time and patience.

We begin by allowing ourselves to be precisely where we are, warts and all. We allow ourselves to sing off key. We allow ourselves to not be able to coordinate things effectively. We allow ourselves to attempt to do what we are asked, knowing that we will indeed fail.

In order to progress, we must accept our own state of imperfection. We don’t know how to do it, that’s why we’re in the studio with a teacher. We can’t keep all the balls in the air – we’re not expected to.

We are challenged to sing, knowing that we won’t achieve everything that is being asked of us. And then we’re asked to repeat the act, keeping what happened right, and attempting to add what was missed. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can’t. But either way, the roof never caves in. If we missed something, we simply try again. If we managed to get it all… guess what, the next thing we do is sing another scale… and the whole thing starts again.

In songwriting, composing, writing, singing, acting, dancing, painting, etc…. feedback is how we learn. Effective critique gives us understanding, gives us tools, gives us support. It never criticizes. We need to accept feedback as part of the process, knowing that whatever state of ability we demonstrated in the moment is separate from our worth as a human being. We have to try to be emotionally detached from our work. And it is the responsibility of the teacher/mentor to ensure that our process is supported.

So lessons aren’t just about performing the mechanical tasks of the artform. Lessons are also about understanding our Self. How do I think? How do I view feedback? How negatively do I think about myself and my abilities? How patient am I with myself? Hmmm…

The true challenge of walking the path of discovering the artist within, is embracing your own imperfection… and shining a light on it… and saying “Look at that. So, I have more to learn. That’s okay. Keeps life interesting. Now I know what to work on for next time.”

Playfully practising

shysinger — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:39:06 +0000

I’ll be talking to a student and whatever we’re talking about is so interesting I think I should write a blog about it. But then the moment passes and a few days later I sit down to write a blog without the inspiration of that person in front of me. I did jot down a phrase during one discussion this week. “How 2 practice,” I wrote.

That’s an interesting thought. How do you “practice” creativity? I can tell you how I do it. I practice it by doing what I’m doing right now. I’m sitting here without one idea in my head, writing. I’m starting by telling you I don’t have any ideas. My brain feels all foggy, and I feel reluctant to write. But I’m writing anyway. After a quick ‘save as’, I’m back looking at the mostly blank page. But because I’ve started, something starts to happen. It’s like the act of actually doing something… even if it’s as mundane as writing “I have nothing to say” … is a spark.

So I think about the songwriting (February is Album Writing Month (FAWM), 50 songs in 90 days), script writing (Script Frenzy) and novel writing (National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenges that I do. I think about how people react when I tell them I’m participating in this or that challenge. Usually the reaction is negative.

“Fifty songs in ninety days? What’s the point of that? Isn’t it better to hone one song than rush to write a bunch of tunes? What publisher would be interested in that?”

My reply is… when participating in challenges I’m not writing for the commercial market, per se. Some of the things I write during FAWM and 50-90 do end up getting signed. But I write, to write. To push myself. To look for ideas and get them down on the page, recorded in a worktape. I am exercising my muse. To keep it toned, in shape, ready to work.

“Write an album’s worth of songs in one month? Fourteen songs in 28 days? I’m lucky if I write one song in six months.”

My reply is… perhaps if you did a challenge like this you might find yourself writing more than that. If you wait for inspiration, if you wait to be in the mood, if you wait for an idea… you could be waiting a long time. What if you just down and write?

Okay, so maybe one of the issues is looking for ideas. Hello, let me introduce you to Google. Google is the songwriter’s friend. No ideas? Follow this process:

Open up your web browser and go to http://www.google.com

Type in something about no ideas. How about “nothing”. So I type in ‘nothing’ and I get 543 million results. There’s a few million ideas, huh? On the first page is a blog about nothing, a website about workers who believe in nothing, Wikipedia’s page on nothing, some videos, ‘the natural history of zero’, and several other things I could follow. Let’s pick one. Hmmm… workers who believe in nothing. They have nothing to do and do nothing all day. They are good for nothing. My brain starts playing with ideas. I could now go and write a quirky song about nothing.

I tell my students I think it’s more important for them to practice than to practice well. I mean, if they are able to incorporate everything we’ve talked about in a lesson, that’s great. But if not, that’s okay. Do it anyway. Because then they are keeping their commitment to themselves, and this is the most vital element of creative growth.

This is why Julia Cameron recommends writing ‘morning pages’ in “The Artist’s Way” (three pages, first thing after you get up, of stream of consciousness writing, no stopping, no editing). It’s why visual artists go to life drawing classes where they are given 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes to complete a drawing. Try drawing something in 2 minutes. Nothing frees you faster from the details. But it’s interesting how whatever you drew in that little amount of time actually works.

If I wanted to run a four minute mile but I only ran a mile once every six months, I could do myself an injury. I need to train my body and my mind in order to achieve that goal. I need to run 3 or 4 times a week at least. I might even get a coach, make sure I have the right shoes, lift weights to tone, swim to increase lung capacity and avoid stress to my legs & ankles. I should learn how to warm up and cool down.

Doesn’t it follow, then, as a creative person, that you need to practice creativity? I consider it my job to write a lot of crap on the road to writing things that make sense. I consider it my job to play at music, play with words, play with sounds. I play myself into writing a blog, into writing a track, into making words sing. My shelves are piled with notebooks filed with scribbles and journaling and morning pages. I have files full of ideas written on scraps of paper, napkins, receipts, even bus tickets. My hard drive is littered with tracks I sketched out with whatever was around. Bits of orchestral, bits of electronica, worktapes of songs, drum beats, improvisations with piano, with voice, with sounds. These are all signs an artist lives here. Disorganized, committed, successful, and, most importantly, playful.

So there you have it. Absolutely no idea what to write about, 937 words later. Go play.