thekenshow's blog

A friend of mine is introducing a new creation of his, a rack that uses the warm, moving air of a forced-air home furnace to dry winter boots. A couple weeks ago, he showed off his creation at a local market. He had an actual model plus a cutaway simulator that sat on a bit of floor with an actual vent in it, on top of a tiny fan. After discussing the virtues of various sizes and shapes for about 10 minutes with a potential customer, the person said they preferred the smaller model with the built-in fan (i.e., the simulator). Stupid question? Before you pass judgement, consider what Bruce Mau advises in manifesto entry #15:

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

The biggest creative obstacle is what we're certain of. Try asking questions as if you weren't certain, as if what seems fixed was actually pliable and open. What if you wrote a song made up entirely of choruses? What if you wrote a song in a language you don't speak? What if you composed a tune to rhythm of your dishwasher? I bet you'd find yourself exploring all kinds of fascinating new musical crevices and hilltops. How stupid is that?

Zen master Genpo Roshi said, "Don't ask if you're stuck, ask where you're stuck". Life is so much more interesting when you notice that, no matter where you are, you're stuck. You may be beautifully stuck, ecstatically stuck, despondently stuck or even transformatively stuck. It doesn't really matter. Ask yourself "Where am I stuck?" at least once a day and you'll be in line with directive #14 of the manifesto:

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

I'll bet you're terrified to write (or even play) a song that sounds like anything on this list. If so, your cool is showing and that's where you're stuck. Write what needs writing and let someone else worry about whether it's hip.

I registered my business on the 13th, and my last day of work was a Friday the 13th. That was 17 years ago and it's been an amazing ride, so I'm a big fan of the number 13 (OK, that's a bit Sesame Street). Can The Manifesto deliver for this fine numeral? Of course:

13. Slow down
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

On an obvious level, you could stuff that trusty 4/4 mantra in a box and tackle a new time signature. I wrote a song to a cheesy Casio Latin beat once and even though I wound up playing it as a solo guitar tune, it had a totally fresh feel for me.

Time is a funny thing. We experience it in many different ways and that shows up in our language – we say time crawls, flies, stands still and even disappears (I won't get into how it reverses). What we observe depends a lot on our sense of time. We tend to notice what's moving at roughly same pace. We don't notice, for example, that mountains are moving (geological time) or that light travels (Eins-time). There's plenty in between these extremes that we constantly overlook. What would you write about if you suddenly noticed?

I doubt Bruce had today's market in mind when he penned the twelfth entry in his manifesto. Still, he makes a good case against success:

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

I've written about failure before, but movement and migration bring some spice to the song failure soup. The next time you're casting about endlessly for that one divine note, chord or rhyme, pick the first one at hand and carry on as if it were perfect. What?! What kind of art is that? Think of it this way:

• It may turn out to be perfect in retrospect.
• It gets the song out of your head and into the world, where it's much, much more likely to resolve itself.
• You're not sculpting in bronze. Trust me, you can change it later.
• Perfection is overrated and out of your control (sorry).

Would you describe creativity as a free-flowing, unbounded romp or a process of thoughtful exploration and refinement? Number 11 on the Mau-ist hit list points to a third possibility:

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

On rare occasions an artist will toss out a perfect gem in one sitting, as though taking dictation from some unseen composer. The rest of the time our universe is governed by the divergent rules of harvesting ideas and crafting applications. Not that songs are written in a tidy, two-step process – these modes bounce off each other, arguing, dancing, overlapping one moment and then flying apart the next.

The trick is figuring out whether to be fluid or rigorous, but only the song – and possibly her hairdresser – knows for sure. On good days you'll be clear enough for the song to guide you. If that's not happening, try playing first with one mode, then the other. Pick the one that energizes you. If that doesn't work out, there's always the Answer Me Buddha.

Today we strike out into double-digit territory with #10 of the Mau-nifesto. The question at hand: who's in charge? The answer is you (and you and you and...):

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

It's tempting to believe you'll have everything you need to be A Songwriter...one day. That you're just a workshop, nine vocal lessons and a lunar cycle of scales away from blessed readiness. That you're not quite prepared to pilot today's foray over chorus & verse, but by crackie you'll be there soon!

Setting up an idealized future version yourself as The Capable Songwriter, however, takes today's model out of the creative picture. Letting anyone lead includes you, now. There will always be new musical skills to learn, crafts to hone and technologies to explore. That's a bonus, not an obstacle. Truth be told, if you were perfectly equipped to create any song, any time – from cantatas to calentanos, muwashahat to madrigals – you'd probably turn to glass blowing.

Creativity happens, anyone can lead - it's a perfect 10.

Where to begin? A familiar question, no doubt. Whether you're the kind of person who has hundreds of ideas stalking her day and night, or the sort occasionally accosted by tantalizing visions, the manifesto offers a bit of Cage advice:

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

Follow this advice any time you find creative urges trapped inside thoughts like, "I'd really like to [insert unmanifested idea here] but I don't know where to start." For example:

• Writing a song about tweed jackets (or whiskey, Darfur, baboons, etc.)
• Recording that brilliant Latvian-Irish fusion dance tune
• Forging a meaningful bridge for a song about rivers
• Publishing a ballad about the disappearance of old-growth forest
• Choosing the right songs for an indie eight-track concept album
• Learning to play the ocarina solo from Wild Thing on an iPhone

Beware the trap of not applying this advice because you're not sure where to start. See how sneaky this is? Begin beginning now. Anywhere!

The number 8 is considered auspicious by many Chinese because it sounds like their term for "prosper" and "fortune". A phone number composed entirely of eights sold for $270,723 US in Chengdu, China. Bruce Mau – I know, it's been a while, but I'm determined to polish off his manifesto in 2008 – approaches #8 as follows:

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

How this Relates to Songwriting

It's easy to feel stuck when you're short on song ideas or wondering how to proceed with a half-finished tune. Feeling stuck is only a hop, skip and a thump from actually being stuck (funny how the mind works, eh?), so when you notice this feeling it's a good time to apply #8 sauce. Be sure to choose unfamiliar terrain to roam and pack plenty of curiousity.

When you find yourself bogged down in the manufacturing side of creativity, turn to #7 in Mau's manifesto and rethink the Stu-stu-dio:

7. Study
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

How this Relates to Songwriting

Whether it's practicing scales or tweaking the low-pass filter on that vocal for the 23rd time, it's tempting to push ahead for the sake of getting it done. That might be the right thing to do in some circumstances, but it shuts down any chance of learning, of delving more thoroughly into your craft. Instead, study your environment – and yourself. You'll ease the press of time on your psyche (making you oh-so-much more pleasant to be around ;-) and invite the muse of discovery to boot.

No matter what Debbie Harry says, accidents do happen in a perfect world. The sixth point in the Incomplete Manifesto is concerned with how we relate to them:

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

In the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the following sequence of meeting the world is recommended as a way of uncovering and sustaining a clear mind:

• Recognize
• Contact
• Release

It's terrific advice for developing equanimity but leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to writing songs. All that's needed to set matters right is a soupçon of 6:

• Recognize
• Contact
• Capture
• Release

Capturing our accidents doesn't happen by accident, it takes intention and practice. But once you get the hang of it, those four simple steps are a potent means of engaging the world while stoking the creative fire.