Fostering Creativity

For the last few weeks, I've been obsessing over this article in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace. The story is packed with quotes and insight and not a little tragedy.

These two quotes have been echoing around my head a little louder than the others...

“I want to author things that both restructure worlds and make living people feel stuff.”

“It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies . . . in be[ing] willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I’m scared about how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this. And the effort to actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet.”

I mean... Really.

A couple of things about the first quote: I love the sentiment and also the expression of this sentiment... the idea that you can strive to make art big and important enough to "restructure worlds" while still maintaining its capacity to move individuals on a personal level... I love the use of the word "stuff" and more broadly the phrase "feel stuff." Wallace had as big and complex a vocabulary as anybody... and I love that he chose the word "stuff." Just so... messy and beautiful... and perfect somehow for this idea. 

A couple of things about the second quote: The more I think about it, the more I think that Wallace has managed to distill everything one needs to know about making art into this one sentence... I love the distinction he draws is between "so-so" art and "good" art... implying, I think, that one can make competent pleasing art without "being willing to sort of die" but that in order to make special art, there needs to be a different level of vulnerability and commitment. I love the line "willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow." Again, with the kind of throw-away messy wording of "sort of," "somehow."

On first blush it seems to have sinister even eerie connotations given that he hung himself... but really, this idea is completely unrelated to his tragic end... I love his awareness that it sounds kind of sappy to put it that way. Which it does. But that doesn't make it untrue.

Lastly, I love his self-analysis... and the idea that it's so much easier to say something of this magnitude than it is to actually put it into practice. I think this whole article in general and these quotes specifically have so much resonance for me right now because I'm trying to write again after finishing a project... and that's usually a somewhat tricky time for me creatively. I'm still reacting to what I've just finished but trying to break free from it and start something new... I'm usually acutely aware of what I've just finished, and what I like about it and what I want to try to do different.

And finally, and most importantly, I'm still stuck in a conceptual frame of mind rather than a directly creative... I'm not thinking "how can I move the listener" or "what am I feeling and trying to express," I'm thinking "what should I try to express" or "what would be cool to try to express." If that makes sense.

It's hard to break free from the conceptual frame of mind, because that's what making a set of songs into an album is all about... you look at the collection of songs you're recording and piece together what they're about,the common themes, etc. If you're like me and you write the songs mostly in the same period of time about a certain time in your life, it's pretty simple. Themes naturally tie the material together... But even then, there are some surprises and a lot of different shades of meaning and complex emotion...

So, the new album could have been many different permutations of the 25 songs we started with... but the cool thing is, and I've never said this about a project before, Things We Would Rather Lose turned out exactly the way it should have... really, exactly the way it had to... I can't imagine these songs about the last two years of my life being any different, from a writing standpoint as well as recording standpoint.

That doesn't mean people will like them or really that they're any good... but they couldn't have been anything different than they are... And that's pretty cool. So... right now, I'm stuck thinking about what I should write rather than just writing and sorting the conceptual piece out later... I'm sure I'll get through it... I always have before... and maybe I'll have the Wallace article to thank.

Somehow. Sort of. And stuff.

jbg