You are Gonna Pull Something If You Don't Stretch

I've been asked a bunch about songwriting. It is a craft I dearly love. I plan on writing a book about it at some point but for now I'm too busy writing songs to write a book.

But as I get started today I am reminded of one element of song writing that many songwriters mistakenly skip. 

And that's the warm up. 

Maybe, I'll just warm up and show ya what I mean.

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I have a stack of songs I need to finish. 

Today I am in the right state of mind to make headway. State of mind makes head way. Head way for my mind. What's a head weigh? 8 lbs if it is more fuller than mine. If it's a mine, I've apparently been mind shafted. Can ya dig it? 

But the point is, I feel like writing/righting. And when I'm in this zone , 

I can't just run into running , you see? 

"..one doesn't fly into flying" said Neitzche. 

I like to start with a little linguistic yoga. I like to unscrew the top of my noggin and let the words fall out like cooked noodles. Al dente. 

It's the stretch before the marathon. You know? The marathon of carefully placed thoughts that stretch for 26 smiles and a little more. So this is the stretch before the stretch, that eventually leads to the home stretch. (I know that's stretching it, but I don't wanna pull anything)

So today before any attempt I have at serious artistic thought, I have to get my brain out of gear. So I will kill 2 birds with one stone (NOTE: no animals were harmed in the writing/righting of this blog) and stretch here on my blog. 

You will be my sounding board

Sounding board.

Sounding Bored? 

No. Not all. Writing without rules excites me. I'm only getting started.

Seems like I am getting to the point. 

I can't get to the point when there isn't one. (question: doesn't every sentence that reaches a period get to the point? Well obviously that one didn't, but this one did. After a pause for the comma.)

In this happy place where nothing is wrong, it's simple to begin.

No topic is taboo.

If you want,

Use Bipartisan Political Puppetry, ala Sesame Street residents to make the country's candidates for Presidense 

seem to mock us with an intent that is too bent to make sense ....of.

Oh no I need to wear gloves

So my 9th grade English Tsar/CSI TV star will not see my fingerprints all over the last dense sentence which ended with a preposition. Those are horrible thing to end sentences with. 

I did it again. This time on purpose. Don't tell. 

See? We are pissing off teachers, that means we are using our reachers.

Stretch. this is the stretch remember?

The goal here isn't to reach a destination. Actually it isn't even to move toward it. 

We are simply warming up. This is free form motion of the faculties.

Facul-tease. Stop that. 

Ok. I'm feeling good about the flowetry and prose that arose from me. It was fun but have we begun? I guess, supposedly.

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(After I have loosened up by just writing free form silliness and word play like I have above for a while I turn to a slightly more structured writing. This writing should be timed. I'd say somewhere between 5-10 minutes. The purpose of this writing is to be descriptive as possible about a specific singular object. The idea is to tell an engrossing story about the selected object. This story should be succinct and not terribly long,  being as you are only allowing yourself 5-10 minutes to create it. And a great idea is to focus on the senses. Really think about sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. This is objective, creative writing. The act of doing it will greatly benefit the creative process once we reach that phase.)

Let's try it.

Here we go.

Object: Old Muffler in my neighbor's yard

7 min of Writing:

       The pale blue moon light reflects from the fog and almost lights the path to it. Although vegetation has done its best to disguise with years of growth, this is a path I'll never forget. I'm closing in. The last 10 feet. I feel slowly forward. My bare feet grip the damp ground that feels like cotton candy but smells metallic. I inch closer until the moon paints the dim silhouette of the muffler. I can still hear echoes of spark plugs from the car's prime pulsing. I imagine the engine when it was new, throbbing and growling on a night like this. Now the last of the echoes are still trying to reach the cool night air and be heard after all these years. My hands slide along the jagged wreck. This long forgotten coarse piece of chrysler guiding my course. X marks the spot. I get on all fours and begin to dig my hands into the soil beneath the twisted shrapnel. I move forward and feel the roughness scrape my neck to remind me not to raise up. I push my fingers deeper into the ground, pulling out scoop by scoop until I finally reach it. It was still there after.....

The timer went off. My 7 minutes are up. 

The story about the muffler sucks. It's isn't great. I obviously wrote too slowly and thought about it too much because I didn't get to the end. But that isn't the point. The point of this is to exercise writing freely.

And that.......I have done.

So now I am ready to actually take on the righting/writing of a song. 

There are no guarantees that I will create something stellar today, but having done exercises like the one above for years I can tell you that they help. 

It is much easier to write something creative and of quality when your mind has been allowed to warm up.

This may have been a random post and I may have to elaborate on it later, but it has helped me get my mind ready to write. So thank you for being my sounding board. You have helped me get ready to create. 

And hopefully...... maybe .....by seeing the silly, loosening up exercises I use, your creative writing may benefit as well.

Try it. 

Even if you don't want to write a song or poem, it's kind of fun to free form write just as a stress reliever.

So for your own sanity......write. 

Worst case scenario you will feel better. Best case scenario you will feel better AND you will create something you are proud of. 

Focus On The Revolution

Focus on the Revolution.

I've been absent from the blog for a little bit. This was not intentional. But a neccesary byproduct of life.

I've been revolutionizing some things. And revolution takes time. Revolution takes....focus.

Since my last blog I've written two songs, started collaborating with two (way above my pay grade) songwriters, started working out and eating right again, booked a 3 month Australian tour, booked two weeks of session work/writing time at a studio in LA, started a new side business and highly edited my business model for my main business/"real job" music career.

Whew.

But I also did one more thing. I realized I had a focus problem. I don't mean that I found out I have ADHD, or that I lacked focus. Far from it. I have always been one of the most focused people I know. I realized I was misusing my focus.

Part of my new "lifestyle change" if you will, is that in addition to actual exercise I'm going to walk a little every morning as a kind of meditation and mental focus time. I love being outside. But I rarely just walk. I usually like doing something more aggressive or active. Usually if I simply walk I eventually get bored and then jog or run part of my journeys. Therefore I devised a plan. I will bring a ball with me everyday and bounce it. This will keep my pace slow and therefore allow my mind to be what is exercised (My physical exercise is going to be done at a different time slot). The walk is for meditation purposes.

Since this was day one , I had to find a ball. Well I'm a guy plus I am a former athlete. I didn't figure finding a ball in my house would be an issue. I went to grab a ball.

No ball.

Ummm....surely there's a tennis ball around here somewhere. Nope. Basketball? Dang. I am embarrassed that I do not have a ball in my house. Well I eventually came across an old hacky sack. It isn't a ball but I figured it would be a suitable replacement (for today anyway). I'd just have to toss it hand to hand instead of dribble it.

So I set out on my walk, hacky sack in hand. I tossed it from right hand to left. Then left to right. Repeated. Well after a couple throws my mind drifted to all of the career/life things I listed above. The throwing of the hacky sack was subconscious.

Well until I thought , "Wow, I'm throwing a hacky sack without focusing on it". That thought struck a chord with me.

I could have easily been staring at the hacky sack each throw, contemplating exactly how to let it roll off my fingers, exactly how much force to put behind the toss and exactly where to position my other hand to catch it. But I didn't. My mind was a million miles away from that hacky sack yet the task of catching was still accomplished.

This thought excited me.

How far could I take this?

I mean I had been mentally elsewhere, but I had still been keeping my eyes on the hacky sack as it flew through the air. My mental focus had definitely been elsewhere but my visual focus had stayed on the hacky sack.
Could I pay even less attention to the task and accomplish it?

For the rest of the 2.5 mile walk I intentionally focused my gaze nowhere near the hacky sack. I purposefully fixed my eyes on a point far down the road (my metaphoric and simultaneously real destination).

I tossed the hacky sack and still caught it. Again after a few tosses I let my mind drift back to all my new exciting affairs.

I kept catching the hacky sack.

Amazing.

I will admit that I dropped the hacky sack once in a while but with no more regularity than when I was keeping my eyes on it.

This experiment in peripheral vision and subconscious movement had some profound effect on me.

As I walked along I realized that my over active focus on music and business had been wasted (well partially wasted). I realized that just having focus isn't enough. Focus needs focusing too (if that makes sense).

Just like my attention to the hacky sack, many things that I had been devoting huge chunks of time and focus to were able to be accomplished with little or no focus. My over active focus is a good thing ......if and only if it is aimed.

So I've had a revolution in life approach. Some would just call it prioritizing. But it is slightly different than that (at least in my mind).

In addition to prioritizing (keeping my eyes down the road , focused on the "destination" and the most important things) I'm also not going to spend much time or focus, if any, on things that are on autopilot (I will treat them like I treat the catching of the hacky sack. Paying a little extra focus when an error occurs. Otherwise let it run on autopilot).

I believe there are tons of things in my life that have been time suckers and attention suckers. If those things require attention and time to work, THEN I have to decide if they are worth saving. If they can work on their own, I'm going to set them in motion and let em run. As I said, if a problem arises surely I'll have to spend a little time and effort fixing issues. But the time and effort will be minimal and more importantly it will be temporary.

I feel like I let lots of tasks consume a low level of my attention all the time. Not anymore.

The important things will now have more of my attention. The smaller (autopilot) tasks will fend for themselves. I'll tend those when needed.

I've only just begun this approach but I can tell you it feels great. It feels right. And I recommend you try it.


As a matter of fact try my experiment.

Get a ball or a hacky sack. Take a 20-30 min walk tomorrow morning. Start tossing the ball hand to hand. Initially you will need to focus on that action. But slowly move your focus to a spot down the road. Think about the things you plan to accomplish today or your grocery list or just let your mind wander. But let the tossing back and forth slide into your subconscious.

If you drop it , so what. Pick it up and start again.

When you return home, think about your figurative "spot down the road" that deserves more of your time and focus. Then find 3 tasks that you worry or toil over that could really be put on autopilot.

Then repeat tomorrow.

Hopefully it's as rewarding for you as it has been for me.