If your life was a symphony, what would it sound like?
creative wrestling and the gifts I am finding there
Last fall, I purchased a used Casio piano keyboard on Facebook Marketplace. I hauled it over from Oakland and set it in my apartment with the giddiness of Christmas morning. It’s been more than two decades since I played regularly. While scheduled lessons with a teacher could accelerate my muscle memory, I was convinced I could stay disciplined on my own. (I was wrong.) Since I brought it home, I’ve been fairly inconsistent with practicing and guilt-stricken when weeks go by and I haven’t touched it.
And then earlier this month, something shifted. I became a mad woman, utterly obsessed. Any time I had a break between meetings, I’d turn it on to feed whatever was coming through like it was my therapist. For the past couple weeks, I’ve consistently been waking up between 3-5a with a jolt of messy phrases and melodies. My voice notes app is filling up with random keys and nearly inaudible fragments of my voice shifting in my pillow. It is all so poorly constructed and repetitive and BAD. I love it!
I am not sure what caused this surge of devotion. YouTube says it may be something the stars and Neptune are doing. It could also be that I’ve been listening to Rick Rubin narrate his new book The Creative Act and his reverberating voice is compelling the inspiration right out of me. It could be that my full-time job has become less stressful or that I am eating better or exercising more, all of which contribute to tuning one’s antennae (as Rubin puts it). Perhaps some psychic sludge that was blocking my creative juices has finally been exiled due to my good habits and newly established routines. Go me! Honestly, I do not care what caused it. I feel alive! My keys feels alive! All of life feels like a symphonic gift.
The keyboard sits in my bedroom now, in front of my large bay windows facing the top of a tall tree. When I have breaks in my day or am feeling overwhelmed, I sit down and turn it on. Sometimes I’ll watch videos and learn certain chord progressions or songs, but most times I’ll just sit.
I look at the tree leaves dancing, take a deep breath, place my hands on the keys, and close my eyes. My antennae takes the lead. Sometimes it starts with me pressing down on one note over and over again until I feel something more. Other times I play a short melody or (very) basic chord progression. But nearly every time I feel something different.
One day, it is complete surrender. Another day, a slow stroll between me and the ideas. When I’m lucky, the improvised notes and the lyrics match in some way. They are bad lyrics, very very bad. But who cares! It is a clunky and un-followable choreography between myself and probably a dozen other cosmic beings shepherding their music through my brain. And it is magical. Even in my poor human translation of it all.
It feels like a creative wrestling. It’s not like wrestling with your mind, analyzing something in your head or having a conversation necessarily. It’s also not like wrestling with another, which often involves a battle of egos. The wrestling done with creative spirit does not drain you in the same way. It is nourishing. It is vibrant. It is pure.
Since consistently tapping into this feeling through daily practices, I am like a crazed woman desperately carving out more containers where I can wrestle in this way.
I joined a weekly writing group who meets at a coffee shop by the beach to discuss the The Artist Way. On Wednesdays, I FaceTime with my youngest brother, who is a musician, to chat through things we’re writing and listen to songs together. Monthly, I meet with a slow tarot book club, mastering the symbology and using it as a channel to deeper self-awareness. On new and full moons I set intentions around these creative endeavors with another set of close friends. Then I have this newsletter, which feels like a catch-all update on how all of this is going.
The wrestling done with creative spirit does not drain you in the same way. It is nourishing. It is vibrant. It is pure.
Everything feels unruly and yet, I have never felt more at peace. The key seems to be embracing this haphazard approach to creating art. Most times I don’t know if I’m writing a song or an essay, but I’ll follow the thread wherever it wants to take me and trust it. I know this is right because every other aspect of my life has improved since. A greater freedom has poured into areas I’ve struggled with, especially these past couple years. Now, I take care of my body better. My rituals have returned. I take more time to cook fun meals for my partner. I tend to my relationships with more ease. I am less stressed about work. I let emotions ride out when they need to.
When I stop wasting my energy attempting to restrict or conform, I just feel better. On all accounts. Perhaps this is the fountain of youth. To remember that this wild nature lives within us and to allow ourselves to dive in. Here is another example of that:
I used to try and be so organized with my writing and reading practices. I felt incompetent and lazy when I couldn’t manage my journals and writing material like other people. I also never liked that I couldn’t finish one book at a time, and instead would prefer to read five books at once, some I never finished. What a strange thing to not like what you prefer. Even typing that is so funny. How can one not like what they prefer! What a maddening and silly sentence.
So now, I do what I want. And it has been a joy! I have been collecting words like little beach pebbles in my pocket. They’re dispersed all over my home now in the form of highlighted lines in various books I’m reading or words on post-it notes where I keep my grocery lists or image descriptions in my notes app from when I jot them down at 3am. I have some underlined from previous journal entries and some on my computer in Notion where I write these newsletters. I live in a word garden every day, full of material serving no purpose other than to simply exist.
Most words I note are relatively unimpressive and not very special on their own. But I get a sort of feeling about it and so to avoid hoarding it in my mind, I have made a very untidy practice of writing it down somewhere, anywhere. I am learning this is how I work best creatively — to not fuss too much over the form and pay closer attention to the feeling and to get it down immediately.
I live in a word garden every day, full of material serving no purpose other than to simply exist.
All of this word collecting has made it very fun to write songs when I sit back at the piano every day. I don’t know what I’m doing really and have mostly just searched on YouTube for “how to write a song”. I was comforted by the fact that much of the advice is to write a lot of bad songs first before the good ones come.
So today, I will go back again and sit in the window. I will close my eyes and set my fingers on the keys. I will let the swirling symphony of words and sounds outside bring something sacred and strange to my lips. And if it is bad, I’ll keep going. Because all of it is a reminder I am alive. That everything is alive.
~*creative seeds*~
Here are a few things bringing me creative joy this month.
🕯️“The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.” ― Wassily Kandinsky (creator of the featured art in this newsletter) How does it make you feel?
🕯️The Plant Oracle Deck by Dirt Gems, recommended by
. I pulled a couple of them for friends on the new moon as inspiration for this next cycle. The writing is so beautiful and the images - wow!🕯️ A hand-written tea recipe sent to me via mail by my dear friend .
🕯️I saw Weyes Blood live over the weekend, and I’m currently practicing Something to Believe on piano and vocals. I’m so in love with everything about this song.
🕯️I’ve been down a Joni Mitchell rabbit hole. This 2013 video of her explaining her creative process makes me laugh. The interviewer seems confused by how she describes what happens in her mind as she creates visual art vs. music. I think every artist I know will see themselves in this interaction. (I also loved this 1989 interview clip.)
🕯️Last but not least, I am planning an at-home weekend solo writing retreat. I am trying not to spend too much money these days and figured I could just stay home and stay off my phone to write for a weekend. If you have done this, let me know if you have suggestions!
Thank you for being here. Pay attention to the symphony around you, and tell me what it sounds like. ♫
with love,
— B.
Your experience sounds not unlike what I experienced when I first started to write: I started to feel like words were literally flowing thru me somehow, as if I were just channeling them. One night as I was pondering this, a song came into my head: Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is.” It was so random I started googling to find lyrics in search of some message, then very quickly landed on this, by its writer:
“I always worked late at night, when everybody left and the phone stopped ringing. "I Want to Know What Love Is" came up at three in the morning sometime in 1984. I don’t know where it came from. I consider it a gift that was sent through me. I think there was something bigger than me behind it. I’d say it was probably written entirely by a higher force.”
As you describe your antenna, I wonder what’s newly made you so open to receive?!
I’m all for a writers weekend and love the scent idea: I would go for Alora’s Vaniglia myself.
I absolutely love what a permission slip this is to let yourself lean all the way into what works for you. The image of words surrounding your home and the energy of getting them down as fast as possible is so sweet and your words “what a strange thing to not like what you prefer” just hit me really strong.
This is such a beautiful illustration of the unique creative process. What a gift to connect with that antenna.