“You know when you start a post and intend on it being 300 words and it turns into 3000?”
That’s a thread I made on Leo yesterday after finishing the article In Search of a Better Life. I did not plan or writing 3000 words! I did not want to write 3000 words.
But sometimes you catch an idea or a thread and once you start pulling, something much bigger than you imagine starts to unravel. Sometimes you find a stone sticking out of the sand, and as you try to dig it out, you discover a pyramid to uncover.
Ah, we are getting esoteric again…
There is a story that Tom Waits, a true musical inspiration, tells where he’s driving his car home but he’s stuck in traffic. A song starts to come to him and instinctually he looks upward and says
“Excuse me, can you not see that I’m driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.”
-Tom Waits
And thus, Hallelujah was written by Leonard Cohen, I guess! 😂
When I read this quote for the first time, I was drinking a coffee and I laughed so hard I almost spit the coffee out of my mouth. I know exactly what he was talking about.
It’s almost as if songs and ideas are floating around in the air and we just catch them if we are ready for them.
I like to think of it as a radio signal. When we tune our channel to an idea, we can hear it clearly, and then we have the opportunity to try and share what we hear.
We all have our own unique qualities that can create a slightly different version of what we hear, and sometimes static obscures the original message, but I think that many artists have experienced this.
When I look at my own lyrics, it’s a very strange feeling sometimes. How in the hell did I write this:
Body curled up under covers dreaming of the song he wants to be-
-tween this world and the other,
Crawling back inside his mother
When will this world end so he can build it up again”
-“Astral Blanket” by I+Everything (me)
“Crawling back inside his mother”!?!?. I promise you that that did not come entirely from me and it did not come from me and I did not copy it from anywhere.
I was trying to channel the emotions of frustration I felt from not being able to create something as beautiful as my favorite songs, and the image of Kinkakuji by Yukio Mishimo popped into my head. In the story, which is based on true events, the protagonist is a monk who finds the beauty of the Golden Pavilion so beautiful that he cannot accept it’s existence so he decides to burn it down.
Yes, there was some outside inspirations that helped me hone in on the frequency I was going after, but the words and images that came out in my song had nothing to do with the The Golden Pavilion story, nor did they come from my own thoughts and memories.
They came from the frequency of this emotion of frustration that one cannot be or create something as beautiful as the thing one admires. I had felt that feeling very strongly in the past and wanted to release it so that it no longer weighed heavy upon my heart.
As I tuned to the frequency that allowed me to find the memory of that emotion etched into my consciousness, I became an emotional match for a story like The Golden Pavilion.
In that frequency I discovered the images with which I could express my own version of that frustration, one that was not nearly as far gone as the disturbed monk, one that wanted to heal, but felt so much existential frustration that it longed for the comfort of the womb.
This is the work of an artist.
To a certain degree I treat my posts the same way. I have an overall vision for what I want to share or say and I invite the ideas or emotions to flow through me and then I get out of the way, then I read back over everything and make sure I did a decent job at channeling. Was my radio recieving the signal clearly?
So I don’t have much control over how long my posts are. They as long as they ask me to make them. Sometimes i ask them to be short and they may listen or they may not. It depends on the topic.
Today I asked for something shorter and I think that eill be exactly what’s delivered. In fact this post is telling me it’s time to wrap up.
Let’s see what comes through me next time 😉
If you are interested in blogging here and earning some change while sharing ideas and making friends, send me a message on Instagram or Twitter (@ ipluseverything)
ブログで自分の思っていることをシェアしながら小銭を溜まったり新しい友達をできたりすることは興味あれば、InstagramやTwitter（@ipluseverything）でメッセージを送ってください。 英語のオンラインレッスンの興味ある人もどうぞ、メッセージをください^_^
Novels/music/merch/social media/patreon:
https://linktr.ee/selfhelp4trolls
Untangled Knots podcast:
Japanese Upbringing Explained (interview my Japanese student)
Confessions of the Damaged 1.1-1.3 on Amazon
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Posted Using InLeo Alpha