Bulldog at the Garden Gate, Approximately

I’ve been feeling terribly discouraged. Though I’m producing a poem every week for The Great and Secret Thing, and blogging regularly for Radio Sweethearts, I’ve been feeling that my creative powers are waning.

I’ve started several songs since moving to Memphis, but I haven’t finished any.

I don’t think that means I’m done; however, a year and a half-long creative slump is easily the longest I’ve had. Through sheer force of will, and what feels like a dearth of other options, I’m beginning to claw my way out.

One of the strongest forces in my life is the lack of motivation. If I can’t figure out why I’m trying to do something – like songwriting – it’s difficult to make myself do it.

I’m sitting at Otherlands – one of the best places for coffee in Memphis – trying damn hard to dredge up ideas for this week’s creative projects (thankfully, The Great and Secret Thing is taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s), and listening to Dylan’s eerily beautiful Time Out of Mind, and wondering about its production.

Dylan in Noblesville, originally uploaded by mutineersofindy.

Naturally, I’ve pulled the record up on Wikipedia and I’m learning less about the record than about Dylan’s creative process. Which is highly encouraging.

Bob Dylan, of all people, gets discouraged, too. In an interview with Paul Zollo, likely from the same interview included in Songwriters on Songwriting, one of the most helpful volumes on craft I’ve ever read, Dylan says:

there was a time when the songs would come three or four at the same time, but those days are long gone…Once in a while, the odd song will come to me like a bulldog at the garden gate and demand to be written. But most of them are rejected out of my mind right away. You get caught up in wondering if anyone really needs to hear it. Maybe a person gets to the point where they have written enough songs. Let someone else write them.

I’ve been there. I am there. And though this Web site is intended to be a venue for my insatiable drive to write songs, I haven’t posted any. It might be a while yet before I do, but if Dylan can keep putting out records despite his discouragement, I can try likewise.

Or, to put that a little more strongly: If Bob Fucking Dylan feels like he can’t write songs, then what business do the rest of us have feeling sorry for ourselves?

We have two options: pack it in without really trying, or put it out there and stop worrying about stupid shit like whether our little experiments are worth anything.

Posted: December 23rd, 2009 | Author: Matthew | Filed under: Writing | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »