How the Obits Became My Muse - Issue 20: Creativity
▻http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/how-the-obits-became-my-muse
A few years ago, I began to write songs inspired by the obituary pages. While writing my third album of pop songs, I got stuck. The songs on my previous albums had mostly come painstakingly, unscientifically, one-by-one, on their own schedule. Now they weren’t coming at all, and I was sick of waiting for inspiration to strike. My inner critic had become strong, the creative force was weak. So I resolved to generate a batch of wordless melodies each morning, just to save them up. It worked. For the first time in my life, I was swimming in music. But lyrics were harder to find. I wanted real characters and stories, but nothing was providing them—not luck nor experience nor imagination. Certain songwriters I admired—Tom Waits, Paul Simon, John Prine—seemed to spin off whole novels in a few (...)