New Trail Coaching, Scott Malyszka

Journaling For Time Travelers

Aug 032012

We all get stuck in artistic quicksand from time to time. That bored, uninspired, pessimistic fog can creep in and mess with the imagination. What do you do when you find yourself saying things like this?

I feel blue and uninspired about what to work on next, but I don’t know why.
I have no motivation.
I don’t have any good ideas left.
the project I just finished was a huge success, and I got lots of positive feedback on it–so now I feel gloomy and discouraged about the future for some illogical reason.
My last project was a flop. I don’t feel like going through that again, but I want to work on something.

There are lots of things you could do to get yourself motivated and inspired. You might take some walks. Maybe talking about your struggles with a friend helps you get unstuck. For a lot of people, journaling is one of the best exercises to clear some debris and undergrowth from the creative path.

Journaling? Really?

Maybe the idea of journaling sounds frivolous or boring to you. You might say, “Look, I’m not the type of person to write a hundred pages about how being a third-born sibling set me back fifteen years in my emotional development. And I’m not about to write out some plan for what I will do every day for the next five years. The last thing I want is some homework assignment to take up what little time and energy I have left.”

OK, none of us wants a boring burdensome introspection project, fair enough. But I actually have something simpler in mind. For me, journaling is writing down your reflections about yourself and your experiences over some time in order to maintain a broader perspective on yourself. It’s just using the act of writing to orient yourself so your moods and problems don’t completely cloud over your view of things. I’m suggesting that you simply spend time regularly reflecting and writing about yourself.

If you’re feeling stuck or uninspired right now, then start writing down your thoughts about that. Use the pen or keyboard to bring some order and logic to the problem. No deep self-psychoanalysis necessary, just getting your mind a little more focused on what you want to do about your quicksand.

Here are some practical steps for getting started with journaling:

Next time you’re at the drug store pick up one of those 100-page composition books that kids use in school. The smaller ones with fewer pages are great so you don’t feel like you have lots of blank paper that you need to fill up.
Pick a specific time and place to journal every day for a few days. Mornings are often a good choice, because that is when your mind is rested and not yet cluttered with the irritations and stresses of the day.
Just write. You can ask yourself questions. You can talk to yourself. You can just write silly rhymes and weird musings that pop into your mind, if that is helpful or meaningful. No one else needs to read this, so just write what you need to write.
Go into it with no expectations. The journaling might be a waste of time, or it might change your life. Everyone’s experience will be a little different. Try not to expect anything–just see what happens.

You don’t need to make journaling an intense, life-long commitment. I personally don’t like to journal much, but I do find it helpful from time to time. There’s no “should” here–just try it if you think it might be useful, and forget it if it doesn’t do much for you.

Time Traveling

Try one of these prompts to get your words flowing:

Travel to the past: Think of someone from your past that is one of your heroes. What advice would this hero give you for today?

Travel to the future: Imagine a conversation with your future self–maybe yourself five or ten years from now. What wisdom and encouragement would you get from conversing with your future self?

Give it a try for a few days. Jot down a few paragraphs every morning for the next week or so, letting your past heroes or future self offer some advice and perspective.

And, while we’re talking about time travel, allow me to recommend my favorite time-travel novel, Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater. This little novel is no longer in print as a stand-alone, so you might need to look for a used copy to buy. Or, you can buy it as part of Pinkwater’s Four Fantastic Novels collection. Or, you can listen to the free audio book at pinkwater.com.

Sermons, Stories, Songs, and Friends

Jun 262012

When I was a spiritual person in my younger days, I loved a good sermon. Now you ask various church people what makes a good sermon, and you’ll have trouble getting a lot of agreement. Some people want to hear comfortable, familiar platitudes, and some like loud shouting and stomping around. Others expect the preacher to give a deep academic exposition of a text or topic. I knew one strange guy who would say, “If I don’t feel guilty and ashamed after a sermon, then that preacher isn’t doing his job.” Whoa, yikes!

I always felt that a good sermon simply meant telling a good story. When a person could stand in front of an audience and paint stories in their imaginations, well that’s what I liked. And when I had the task of delivering a sermon, I tried to put together twenty minutes of good stories. I modeled my sermons on Garrison Keeler and John Steinbeck rather than Billy Graham or Jimmy Swaggart, the most popular preachers back then.

After many years as a church person I came to the cynical conclusion that most people go to church to see their friends and to be entertained by the sermon and the music. I’m not a spiritual person now, but I do have a great appreciation for friends, stories, and music. I’m always finding intriguing new melodies from fiddle tunes and old songs, and writing my own songs is my way of making up stories today. I’ve had the privilege of performing and recording in recent years with some good friends such as Bud Burwell, Marcy Cochran, Loralyn Coles, Tom Bodine, Harny, Al Bernier, and Brother Lou.

I spend time sometimes thinking about where that shared territory might be between spiritual people and unbelievers. It’s hard to see it with so many words spoken publicly out of fear, frustration, and old-fashioned meanness. But I think stories and songs can help people understand each other.

Not that I’m trying to do anything grand with my songs. I’m just writing stories that I like, and I figure that if I like them, then other people will probably like them too. If the song is going to mean something to someone, well I can’t order it to do that. I can’t say, “Look here, song, you better get out there and help people get along with each other and forget their troubles.” Nope, the songs have to just do what they are going to do.

Jason Blume Gets Inside A Songwriter’s Creativity

May 242012

Jason Blume is a successful songwriter with huge hits in pop and country in the 1990s and 2000s. I recently picked up his book, Inside Songwriting: Getting To The Heart Of Creativity, and I found it a quality read. Whether you’re into songwriting from the “artistic” perspective or trying to make it in the music business, Blume shares some great ideas and anecdotes here. He emphasizes creativity, craft, and professional poise, explaining that being a successful songwriter is more than finding the secret shortcut or learning the magic formulas. The book gets a bit repetitive with the anecdotes, but overall it offers some great practical advice.

Homework

Blume gives some good homework exercises to break down your assumptions and dogmas. One exercise is to listen to CHR (contemporary hits radio), current country hits, or other formats of new hits on the radio. Most songwriters I know don’t listen to this stuff because a) you’re working in a non-commercial style, or b) you’re old enough to have “retro” or “classic” tastes. blume instructs you to listen to see how the current hits are constructed. Is there a key change from verse to chorus, or into the bridge? What is the range and contour of the melody? What interesting rhythms, rhymes, and phrasings can you find? How do the lyrics connect the writer with the audience? As Blume points out, the radio is a huge, free course in new songwriting ideas.

I tried this out on a new country station for an hour, and I noticed some real interesting stuff. I was surprised that there was almost no fiddle present. I expected fiddle to be there because it was pretty big in the Garth Brooks ’90s country, which is the most recent country period that I’m familiar with. I also heard , a lot of lyrics that were more sensitive and reflective, but not in a whiny or crying-at-the-bar kind. And I heard a lot of fun ’70s rock influence. Yeah, I also heard a lot of disposable stuff that made me shake my head and say, “Ugh!”

Here’s another exercise from this book: Take one of your recent “finished” compositions and rewrite it with five new melodies. I decided to try this on a song that I have finished and felt was totally solid work by me. I thought, “It’s just an exercise, but this song has already been through a dozen melodic revisions and doesn’t need to change.” I picked up my guitar and started singing the first new melody that came to mind, something a little more driving and contemporary-sounding. And poof, that melody was actually an improvement over the “finished” one. All in a few seconds.

That instant new melody–just add water–was a surprise, and usually you won’t get that quick of a result when you try five new melodies. But blume teaches us something important here. When you think you’re done, try putting out another 500% on that song. It might not change at all, but you need to have a ridiculous level of diligence and effort if you want to finish songs at a higher quality.

Excuses

Blume tells us songwriters to get rid of our excuses, you’re not too talented or not talented enough or too old or too young. He spends a little time breaking down the biggest excuse of them all: “The odds are a million to one. Why should I think that I’m so special?”

His answer is this: Each person is special and unique. No one can write the way you can. You just have to do the ridiculous huge amount of hard work to be the best you that you can be. Maybe it’s all been done before, but no one can do it the way you can.

Communication

You ever find yourself saying to someone, “I know in my head what I want to say, but I’m having trouble putting it into words”? I do this a lot sometimes, which means that my brain, my mouth, the other person’s ear, and the other person’s brain are all working at different speeds. I have to slow down my brain or my mouth to get all these parts understanding each other clearly.

Blume’s book talks about how communication works in songwriting. You write a great song, something that feels so urgent, intense, fun, or deep for you. But when you play it for others, they seem to say, “What does the broken clock mean? And why was there a dog barking on the mountain?” Time to think about synchronizing your feelings, your song, and your audience’s feelings.

Blume points out the big difference between what you feel from your song and what others feel when they hear it. That’s why your upbeat love song might need to be done as a slow heartbreaking ballad. Subjective versus objective. Try getting into other people’s heads a bit to get that communication flowing a little more clearly.

Success

Blume writes that there is no magic shortcut or secret to successful songwriting–just hard work and always trying to get better. You can’t get enough feedback. You can’t rewrite enough and improve enough.

You’ll have friends and peers who scoff at the idea of honing your skills. My deal is this – Learning techniques doesn’t mean you follow formulas slavishly. A technique is just another tool in your toolbox, so use it when it is needed.

Most of us have very specific, well-developed daydreams about what our success would look like. So what would successful songwriting work look like? Lunch with awesome musicians, glamorous parties with glamorous people or what? This book focuses on the songs themselves as career success. A successful songwriter would be a busy person, working hard at music, having frequent collab sessions with other writers, working out details with singers, getting feedback from publishers. Late nights, rushing to meet deadlines. And of course taking lots of verbal and written rejection.

To wrap it up, here’s one of my own exercises: How would you explain to someone the work of writing a great melody? If you’re like me, you stumble and stall at that question. Give your mind a try at that, and leave a comment to let folks know what you come up with.

Blind Willie McTell: A Great Read For Blues Fans

May 012012

I recently read Michael Gray’s biography of Georgia blues musician Blind Willie Mctell. The book is titled hand Me My Traveling Shoes, a line from McTell’s best-known song, “Statesboro Blues.”

Gray’s approach is to dig through primary sources of all kinds to fill in the hazy details of McTell’s life and times. Learning about African Americans in the southeast United States from the early 1900s is often a puzzle that tests the patience of a diligent researcher. Gray did his research well, resulting in a thorough and balanced history. If you are a fan of country blues or early-1900s folk music, this is a great read.

A Great Musician

Gray paints McTell as an energetic, industrious, optimistic soul. Blind from birth or from childhood (the specific details are unknown), Willie McTell was one of Atlanta’s most popular blues performers. McTell played the 12-string guitar with brilliance and skill. During the 1920s and 1930s, the 12-string was a popular instrument in Atlanta for its loud sound and the complex piano-like tone. McTell was one of the top 12-string players of his day. Today the 12-string is usually played with simplistic strums, but McTell played jumping bass lines and syncopated rhythms on it, plus a little slide work too.

McTell’s singing was sweet and high in a tenor range. He defies today’s stereotype of “blues singing” as whiskey-soaked growl and rasp. And his material also defies today’s notion that blues music is about miserable topics. No doubt there are some nasty numbers among the few dozen recorded McTell tracks available today, but most of the songs have a playful or rowdy tone to the lyrics. His “blues” are no bluer than the popular country songs and folk ballads from the same period.

McTell is known as a blues musician, and he was a specialist and innovator in the forms of Piedmont blues. But there is a strong gospel thread through his recordings too, along with some borrowing from popular songs and ragtime numbers. McTell was an entertainer, not a purist.

Turbulent Times

Gray lays out a detailed study of the historical, geographical, and cultural context of McTell’s life. McTell lived from 1903 to 1959, a period in which Georgia went from post-war reconstruction to urbanization and industrialization. McTell lived on the fault lines between country and city, between black and white, between farm and factory.

McTell’s blindness was no more a hindrance to him in his day than it would be today. He booked his own gigs over the telephone. He walked the country roads around the small towns where he grew up. He knew the streets, landmarks, and tram lines throughout Atlanta during a time when the cityscape was changing rapidly. In those days, the streets were redesigned to accommodate the arrival of automobiles, and the population of Atlanta doubled in the first two decades of the twentieth century. McTell is portrayed in this book as someone who kept in step with the changing times.

McTell was savvy and earned his living from his music. Some who don’t get a close look might expect blind musicians from a century ago to live as bumbling, penniless street performers who really didn’t know what was going on around them. On the contrary, McTell was literate, well oriented to Atlanta life, popular, and much admired.

First-Person Biographer

Another unique feature of Gray’s book is the inclusion of first-person anecdotes from the author’s research trips to Georgia. Gray is British and brings a foreigner’s objectivity to the task. He describes how he found census records, birth certificates, death certificates, and funeral home records. He also points out the many unfortunate gaps in the paper records from the early 1900s in the south.

Gray joined forces with an local couple to find the lost grave site of McTell’s second wife, Helen. He gives his impressions and opinions about the interesting and curious personalities that he interviewed. And he describes many of the helpful people behind desks at courthouses, libraries, a funeral home, and the medical institution where McTell died. At one point Gray found himself in the hateful eye of a hard-ass Georgia country cop. Being a guy with a British accent means he got more than the standard helping of humiliation and cruelty, an experience which could help an outsider appreciate what African Americans lived with every day under southern segregation.

It’s a curious thing to me. A writer in the twenty-first century has a terrible and frustrating time finding out about a popular black musician from a major city in the United States from less than a century ago. Does this show us how primitive and indifferent American society really was just a couple generations ago?

This dense book doesn’t read like Wikipedia. It’s for nerds who love the method and the research for its own sake as well as the subject matter being uncovered. Pick up Gray’s book, and you’ll get an appreciation for McTell along with a broader understanding of the times in which he lived.

More On Mistakes: Make Music that Tells A Story

Apr 162012

Stefon Harris has this great discussion on Youtube on the topic of jazz and mistakes. Check it out

Harris says that mistakes are opportunities. If you want to take the music somewhere, you can’t push and pull the others forcefully. You contribute to the motion and color and feeling by listening and responding. Forcing things to go in a certain direction will alienate your collaborators more than inspire them. As long as one accepts the other’s music, then the group plays and creates a big music with deep feeling and meaning.

Let The Musicians Play

I’ll talk about myself a little, though I’m certainly not the perfect example that all musicians should follow. I do tend to take unusual approaches to music sometimes. For example, I don’t tell others what to play very much. I know this has thrown a few of my musical collaborators off a bit, because lots of folks are used to finding a specific part and playing that. “This is my part, and I’ll play it this way.” I figure the music works best for me if every practice and every performance has a spontaneous and present flavor to it. It has to smell and taste like “now.” And I tend to gravitate towards musicians who can put a lot of “now” into their playing.

I once heard an interview where mandolinist David Grisman said that playing with guitarist Doc Watson was always a great experience in the 80s and 90s, because Watson never told anyone in those sessions what to play or how to play. That’s trust and respect.

This “free” approach isn’t a magic formula. Sometimes musicians do need more direction, of course. There are settings, such as orchestral music, where freedom is the opposite of what makes the music come alive. You have to find the approach that works in your situation, so you can’t just follow this or that dogmatically. No matter what the approach your music needs, the trust and respect you give to your collaborators is a potent fuel for feeling a great moment with the music.

Earning and Giving Respect

What if the musicians around you haven’t earned your trust and respect? What if you’re frustrated because they aren’t playing very well? maybe they are playing fine but you’re just in a bad mood. Maybe you just need to give folks a little more room to play. The competitive nature of music and the music biz makes a lot of folks grouchy, arrogant, and disapproving jerks. Watch out so you aren’t becoming one yourself.

(Insert here your favorite memory of a conductor throwing a tantrum, because that is obviously what music is all about.)

Perhaps you are standing next to someone who really doesn’t have his technical chops down solid. If you’re trying to play with someone who is seriously in over his head, that will drag you down. In that case, you can be respectful to the person by trying to help them out as much as you can, even if you can’t trust the musician to stand up to the challenge. We’ve all been in that situation where we’re just struggling and fighting with the music, and nothing good is coming out of it. So be respectful when someone else is struggling, even if you have to shake things up to get the music right. Respect the person even if you can’t respect the music.

There is a difference between technical mistakes and improvising opportunities. You need to have sound musical technique. Bad timing, slowing down the groove, playing out of tune, and making lots of rattle and clunk are not what your audience is listening for. The mistakes can be opportunities for learning and improving, as I wrote in the previous post on this blog.
Bottom line; A lot of bad music is made in the name of “freedom” and “breaking the rules.”

on the other hand,breaking the so-called rules, listening, following, accepting, and trusting are all the breath and heartbeat of the spontaneous improv side of music. Can you follow the rules, break the rules, play freely, play strictly, whatever your approach, and carry the life and the story across to your audience?

Tell A Story

Performing music well is like telling a great story. Folks usually don’t worry if someone makes a few small hesitations, mistakes, and “ums” while telling that great story. People are more interested in you and what you are saying, as long as you are making that story come alive.

Imagine a person who doesn’t speak the lingua franca well because she grew up with a different language as her first tongue. There’s no reason why that person can’t tell a great story despite her limitations in grammer and vocabulary. Carry that over to your music, and you get the point. Try to get the technical things write, but at some point you have to get past musical grammar and spelling. At some point you have to make the story come alive, even within your technical limitations.

John hartford used to say that style is a function of one’s technical limitations. That’s a good thing to tell yourself once in a while. “I can only work within these limits and parameters, so whatever I come up with, that is my style.”
the next time you practice, alone or with others, think about the stories you are trying to tell with your music. What story, picture, and feeling can you speak into each piece of music you practice? Try to go beyond the rote and get to the story behind the notes.

The Magic Of Making Mistakes

Mar 252012

Imagine a person who builds a house making frequent mistakes from beginning to end without even knowing it. The foundation is not level and solidly laid. The supports are not plumb, the walls are not sturdy, all because the builder did not do anything about the mistakes. If the builder would recognize and correct each mistake as it happens, then the house would turn out beautifully. Maybe all that correcting and reworking would take three times as long to complete the house. But which result is better–a rapidly completed house that is flawed and worthless, or a slowly built house that turns out wonderful in the end??

Last night I was out for dinner and some live music with a crew of friends. The topic of practicing guitar came up. We talked about how hard it is to notice mistakes, and then to decide what to do about them. It seems like the whole point of practicing is to improve, but seeing mistakes and fixing them can be tricky when practicing becomes mindless routine and unconscious habit.

Watch yourself as you practice to notice as many mistakes as possible.
Once you find a mistake, then you must decide what to do about it. You can choose to ignore it, because you are intentionally focusing on another part of your playing. Or you can stop and work on the mistake until you are playing the passage correctly. Or you can plan to work on the mistake later. Do you make a deliberate choice with your mistakes, or do you follow a habit or routine without much awareness?

The most obvious choice is to stop and fix a mistake when it happens. How does a musician fix a mistake? By repeating the phrase or passage and trying to play it correctly? By improvising an exercise to focus on the underlying skill needed to correct the mistake? By focusing your mental attention to the trouble spot to clarify the connection between mind and muscles? Identifying the cause of the mistake might point you to the best remedy. If the problem is mental distraction, then you will need to put more focused attention on the problem. If the cause is physical, then you will need to work on muscles and technique. Sometimes a mistake is more stylistic–a weak or forced presentation. In that case you will need to combine your imagination and technique to develop a more effective interpretation for the piece.

Here’s a novel way to make some good use of your practice-time mistakes. Watch for mistakes as you play, and write down a nice long list of them. Do this for fifteen or twenty minutes, and suddenly you have a list that can serve as your practice agenda for the coming weeks and months. If your practice time is boring or uninspired, build your mistake list and get to work.

I once read in a book of Zen sayings that “life is a continuous mistake.” That saying has stuck with me for years. Life is messy, and people make mistakes all the time. Sometimes we don’t see our mistakes, and they just continue to happen. Other times we can recognize them and use them to grow and improve. It works for practicing music, and it works for other areas of life. Look for your mistakes in your relationships, your finances, and the way you spend your time. It’s a good thing we are all so flawed, because we have lots of mistakes to help us learn and grow.

Getting Art Done: The Project Approach

Mar 142012

As an artistic person, how do you decide what to work on? Do you focus on one piece of work for a long time, getting deep into it until it is finished? Or do you do a little here and a little there? Maybe you are good at thinking up interesting ideas, but you struggle with turning those ideas into tangible, finished pieces. Or you might be someone who is great at creating little pieces and building blocks, but finishing your work is really tough.

I like to think of all the possible artistic things I could be doing as projects. Perhaps that comes from many years working as a software engineer. The word “project” feels like a well-defined goal and the time and work it will take to get there.

For some artistic personalities, thinking in terms of projects will be helpful by making the work seem attainable. A project is just a bit of work that you want to get done. You might find it helpful to focus only on a bit of work. Thinking about your entire career, about all the possibilities over decades, can bring a feeling of inadequacy or overwhelming despair. If you need to focus and calm your brain down, try focusing on one small project at a time, letting go of some of those bigger concerns for a while.

For others, thinking about a “project” may sound like a soulless, rigid, left-brain approach to things. What are we going to do–plan to have an inspiration at 9:00 am on Tuesday, to keep the project on schedule? I certainly do not use the word “project” to mean anything but a piece of work, no matter how you define that work and how you get it accomplished. For a songwriter, a project can be a song, a gig, or a recording session. For a playwright, a project might be a scene, an act, a finished script, and eventually a stage production. The mystery and soul and inspiration are all still part of the work, but it helps to clearly define what that work is.

So a project can be whatever size feels good to you. If you feel overwhelmed, then a small project can help you focus more on the moment. A small project might be something that you can accomplish in an hour, a day, or a week.

For folks who feel bored, unmotivated, uninspired, or discouraged, a larger project might be the ticket. A larger project could be a novel, a play, or a series of paintings. Dreaming up some big plans and ambitious ideas might help you get out of the doldrums. When was the last time you sat back and dreamed some big dreams about your artistic work?

Try writing down your thoughts on one of these questions.

Do you think that the idea of artistic projects is helpful for you? Why or why not?
What is one small project you can finish today?
What are three things you can accomplish to make this week feel successful?
Describe one of your big dreams. Write it down in as much concrete detail as possible. For example, I recently had a coaching client who told me, “If I could make $30,000 a year from my music, I would have all the success I could hope for.” That number is very specific, and it will help that person know the goal and the steps to reach it.

Take fifteen quiet minutes and write out your answers. Putting your thoughts into actual words on paper or computer screen will help you think more clearly.

The Attitude Of Abandon

Feb 202012

Imagine a bunch of kids in a backyard football game. They play for the pure fun of the game. The game is not a means to an end–just a pleasure in itself. None of them think about the status and wealth that comes to the most gifted athletes. They play because it’s fun to play. The kids abandon all thoughts except the game itself, losing themselves in the moment of the action.

Lose Yourself

How can an artistic personality bring an attitude of abandon to his work?

Lose track of time. Set up your schedule so you have some blocks of time to just hang out with your work. Find an afternoon or evening where you don’t have to think about the next thing coming up in an hour. Even better, set up a regular time. “Every Saturday night I stay up late with my sculpture work.”
Lose yourself in space. Find a comfortable place where you feel good doing your work. That place might be a typical work area, such as a library or home studio. It might be an unusual place, such as sitting in your car in the park, or on the steps leading up to the attic. Find a place where you can get lost in your work without interruption, even if that means negotiating some spatial boundaries with others in your home.
Lose yourself in the work. Produce without worrying about marketability. You can decide which finished pieces you will send out into the public later. First things first–just work and forget everything else. Your imagination has enough material most of the time. It only needs you to struggle through the hard work of choosing, creating, revising, and finishing.

Play games

Give your imagination some freedom, let it run off its leash for a while.

A poet who is stuck might try to write the worst poem possible, or she might try writing a love poem to an earthworm.
A musician struggling with an intense piece of music could try playing a few lines backward or in a silly rhythm, just for some comic relief.
An actor might parody himself, or imitate his cat performing Shakespeare.
A novelist could imagine a plot where a large rock is elected prime minister of Canada, and how that would bring about world peace. Or perhaps a story where scientists discover that the number eighty-two doesn’t really exist.
An artist could draw cartoons of giant forks and spoons having a dance in the kitchen.

Though these are silly suggestions, there is a serious side to the attitude of abandon. Sometimes the intensity of artistic work makes a soul miserable. Sometimes a creative person holds to tightly to her project. She tries to hard, worries too much about outcomes, and suddenly the joy of the work turns into resentment and harsh self-criticism.

For the artistic personality that feels discouraged or stuck, letting go with the attitude of abandon can help break up the ice around the imagination. What are some things you can do to grow the attitude of abandon in your creative endeavors?

Take Something Good From The Other guys

Jan 062012

There’s a rule for songwriters that I have heard from Jack hardy’s quotes: always take something positve when you listen to another performer.

This rule is not just another case of “because you should” or some similar vague guilt trip. I’m not a big fan of the imaginary mom who stands in your brain ready to evaluate what you are doing, just because.

No, this rule is very practical. If you focus on criticisms and negative parts of another person, then you walk away with nothing to add to yourself. “she talked too much about herself.” “He came across as a salesperson more than a musician.” and what do you gain for yourself?

But when you focus on finding some positive stuff from another performer, you then have a little reminder of what you can add to your own work.

“She talked too much, but her arrangements were very interesting. I need to get better at arranging my songs”
“His sales pitch was annoying, but his lyrics were clever and provocative. I want to spend more time polishing up the lyrics on my new batch of songs.”

I’m talking about musicians learning from other performers here in these examples, but You can pick up ideas for yourself from areas other than your own.

A novelist is listening to a rock band, and she is inspired by the dramatic shifts from loud to soft. She tries to employ some dramatic changes in tone while working on her next chapter.
a songwriter is really digging the characters in a spy novel. He tries doing some character and plot in his next batch of songs, making a deliberate move from abstract symbolism toward a narrative style.

Focus on what you like, and take something for yourself from the other guys.

Meditation Helps The Wandering Mind

Dec 272011

The Los Angeles Times published a recent article about the benefits of meditation to prevent mind-wandering and depression.

Note the key sentence in this article that perfectly describes the goal of mind-focusing practices:

Meditation, suggests Brewer, appears to be “perfect practice” in the skills that make undistracted work a possibility: the ability to detect the first signs of mind-wandering, to recognize and essentially forgive the impulse, and then gently to draw the mind back to the task at hand.

In creative work, a habit of resistance can build up to the point where you lose the ability to work on your art. You want to do your work, but you don’t want to do it. The resistance comes from a long history of negative feedback about you and your interests and your abilities. meditation exercises, as this article points out, can be a huge step toward rewriting your thought patterns and breaking down the resistance.

some folks like meditation for its own sake. It is an escape or a relaxation–a way to let go of stress and feel renewed. I’m in favor of all those things, but this article brings out an extra emphasis. meditation helps one control the thoughts and stay focused. When we go beyond meditation for its own sake, we can see practical benefits. It’s like building up your mental muscles so you have the strength and stamina to keep your focus.

Read my post on centering for one example of a thought exercise to help build stronger mental focus.

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