We were working under the assumption of the latter advice yesterday. It wasn't working. It was a day of disappointment, frustration, to-&fro-ing, false starts & hitches, lost time and dead ends. And, of course, the reality of our New Fascist Terror Dome Regime lately hangs over us like a toxic cloud.
We both were ragged & out of sorts. Still, we powered thru, we went to our rehearsal studio with the idea of banging thru some of our songs, preparing for a session with our band this coming weekend. Before we started, my partner discovered that one of her drums had cracks in the skin. Another frustration. She took a detour, picked up her phone, and started calling around to find someone who could repair it.
While she was doing that, I started hacking away at my guitar, more from boredom & frustration than anything else. I started playing the chords to Neil Young's "Down by the River." I got aggressive, and then started hanging on the Eminor chord, I discovered a very hard & funky rhytmn and riff. My fingers danced on the fret-board in a new way. I played that over and over. It was sort therapuetic. Basically fucking-off.
My partner found a repair-man for the drum. She put down her phone, put it in "record mode" and picked up an old notebook that I don't recall seeing before. My partner looked at me and said "Keep playing." And then she started singing lines from the notebook.
I was in standard tuning, so we tried the same riff in a couple keys with me moving a capo up the fretboard, E-minor>F#-minor>G-minor. We settled on G-minor and played and recorded the riff & lyrics a few times. We realized we had a new song. So wild. Out of the ether. Unexpected. Not even trying. The moment of creation just seemed to appear from nowhere.
My partner told me she"re-discovered" the old notebook the day before, cleaning out a closet. She had paged thru it, filled with drawings, recipes, and a few poems & lyric fragments. She just happened to put the notebook in her satchel and brought it to the session with no thought or intention.
It made the day. No doubt.
Good lesson there. Inspiration can come from frustration & boredom, and the ragged, jagged moments of a day. There does not seem to be a method to our creative madness, sometimes it's an accident, a gift, a goof. You need to be alive, aware, awake to the tiniest of moments. The "magic" can happen in an instant. Easy to miss or fumble, unless you are paying attention. Yes. Instant Karma, indeed...
