Here’s another one of those addenda I might have tacked on to the previous post, but I decided to click “New Post” instead…
This whole business of mixing things up and trying new possibilities, twice lately I’ve read or watched something that extolled the benefits of that approach.
The first was the book by Ed Bell entitled The Art of Songwriting: How to Create, Think and Live Like a Songwriter. Emphasis here on “Live.” What’s so valuable about this book (and I think he states at the outset that this was his aim in writing it) is that it isn’t just a how-to manual with recommended chord patterns and rhyme schemes. There’s some of that in it, and that’s helpful, but the book is also about cultivating a whole songwriter’s mindset: you want to go through life, you want to go through each day, in a way that fuels creativity. And among other things, that means breaking out of your routines and comfort zones and trying new things. Here’s how he puts it…
“…if you want to write about meaningful and interesting things, you have to try to understand them first. And if you want to try to understand them, you have to pick up the life experience (and life experiences) that are going to help you do that.
“The best way to do that is to keep opening yourself up to as many new experiences as you can. Do things you’ve never done before. Take bigger risks than you’ve ever taken before. Get to know the kind of people you would never normally hang out with. See what people who aren’t like you can teach you. Work harder than you ever have to understand the world from other people’s points of view. Best of all, start doing all of these things and start calling it research” (TAOS, page 17).
Love that.
And then this was reinforced for me lately when I watched a Netflix documentary entitled “The Creative Brain.” I don’t have access to the text so as to quote it, but somewhere in there they made the same point. Try new things, and that has the effect of fueling creativity.
So I guess I’m not crazy. Other people are saying this too!