hey everyone,
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine brought an unfinished song to me so that I might help him get out of his “jail” as he called it. He’d had the song for awhile and had recorded it a couple of times in demos and just couldn’t get it moving. I suggested that he swing it, if for just hearing it in a different way…(sometimes changing your groove when its not working can help tremendously, in all things) Anyway, we worked with it, changed lyrics, shifted the form and by the end we thought we had something. He left, I went to bed. The next morning, I woke up with this feeling that I should keep pushing this song. I went to the piano, messed with some chords, started voicing it differently, and suddenly I’m in the middle of this creative rush where time doesn’t exist and I look and all of a sudden its 2am and I haven’t eaten or showered and I don’t care because I’m in heaven.
The song came out beautifully (and my songwriter friend liked it too) so hooray! However, after it was all over, and that creative rush had gone away, I felt completely lost, like for a brief moment I’d had it all and then it was gone. I was at the lowest I’d been in a long time. Then, that same week another songwriter friend posted a speech that he’d enjoyed online and wouldn’t you know it was EXACTLY about this. A wonderful speech by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Eat Pray Love” I’m posting it here,
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
I loved this speech, but more so I loved that my friend (who is quite an accomplished musician himself) posted it. I was reminded in all of this that we are never alone, even in our darkest hours, when you think no one understands, there are more people than you could possibly imagine who do, and that is such a comfort.
