*watch the video and hear the music here
What can you learn about innovation from songwriting?
Well, very often when we’re trying to create something new, we wait for motivation and inspiration to strike. And what any artist or musician will tell you is you can’t rely on that. It’s inconsistent. It isn’t always there. You don’t always feel inspired.
So what do you do when you aren’t feeling it and you want to create something new? Well, you implement a process, a routine, a regimen, some sort of hack, a cheat code, anything to get you moving. I. The secret is this, creativity is as much a discipline as it is an art form. So I was sitting down one day, I’ll give you an example of this.
I was sitting down one day and I wanted to write a song, and I had this riff that I was working with,but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. And I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired that day, but I wanted to be productive.
So I used a technique called blackout poetry. And blackout poetry is a technique popularized by an author and writer named Austin Kleon. And essentially what it is, is helping you look at things differently, taking what’s already in front of you in this case text, and letting it speak to you, highlighting or blacking out words that don’t speak to you, highlighting words that do.
And so I followed this process. This is some text out of the 📍 novel, Moby Dick.
So I looked at these words and I said, what can I do with it? And this phrase right here, light to spread inspired me. I was like, Ooh, I like that. And so I started just working with this idea of like, to 📍 spread and I added the word make, make a little space for the light to spread.
And I just kept blacking out all these other words and just like going crazy with it.
(The library did not appreciate that.)
So, uh, using this technique, I came up with this verse.
What does it mean?
I have no idea, but it was working and I told myself to keep going with it. So I started just singing those words, and by using that hack, I was able to create a foundation for what ultimately became Light to Spread the third song on my new album.
Alright, so there’s two lessons here.
Lesson number one is you cannot rely on inspiration.
You have to put in the work. You have to rely on discipline, hacks, routines, any process that gets you moving. Whether it’s trying to create songs or a new business process, you’ve got to use cheat codes in a certain sense.
And the second is sometimes the answers are right in front of us. If we’re willing to look at the world differently, let it speak to us and build on it. So I hope that’s helpful and I hope you enjoy the song. It’s called Like To Spread and it’s on my new ep. Love Again.
Cheers y’all.