This conversation was a little different than most though, it took a turn at some point and I found myself seeing things in a whole new light. I started having thoughts like...
"Why do we do this to ourselves?”
“Why are we our own worst critics?”
“Why do we have these insatiable desires to try and force out incredibly complex masterpieces?"
The answer is simple. We get this desire by listening to and watching our musical hero's. We listen to one of our favorite albums and sit down with every intent to replicate the magic we’ve just ingested. What actually ends up happening is you put on a Death Cab record and start strumming a few chords. You cross your fingers and hope to magically force a brilliant Ben Gibbardesque literary hook with a magical melody to boot to just appear out of thin air. Rarely is this the result, very rarely in fact. In my personal experience it goes a bit more like this: You end up spending hours painfully writing silly, meaningless dribble. You more or less end up whining out melodies until your roommate comes in the room and you sheepishly pretend like you weren't actually just attempting to write the next world changing song.
Or you get to the next step in which you actually slightly like something your working on and decide to share it with someone. You grab a sibling or close friend and nonchalantly pretend like you weren't really doing anything else and could maybe just show them a little silly thing you're working on. All the while your palms begin to sweat, your fingers shake and your voice slightly trembles as you invite this person into something that is so incredibly personal and real to you. As soon as you finish you desperately want to be validated but at the same time you don’t want them to necessarily drown you in over the top affirmation. You’re hoping for a middle ground response where they don’t flatter you but still firmly appreciate what you just played for them. If this doesn't happen JUST the way we were hoping, that song might as well be buried 100 feet underground, never EVER to played for anyone again.
This might be slightly exaggerated for some but the reality is that the songwriting process is much more like this then most would think or give credit for. Our musical hero's are the one's who found the bravery to play their music with little to no fear of the rejection. As I was discussing this with another tormented budding song bird I began to feel for the first time, probably ever in my short musical journey, that I needed to discover a feeling of balance and pace with this all. The desire to want to write a beautiful album like 'Bon Iver' is only natural when you listen to it. I feel that I actually get swept into something quite magical and as a songwriter you begin to dream of what it would be like to produce something of that magnitude.
I found myself in this conversation remembering why I fell in love with music and songwriting to begin with. When this love affair first started it was pretty simple. I had close to no ambition or musical influence and my musical library was highly limited. Their weren't all of these layers of validation and approval necessary to sit down and thoroughly enjoy playing 3 simple chords and belting out a simple and naive' song. This is the thing we all love about music the most though. We love it when we see someone playing a song for no other reason than the simple fact that they are head over heels in love with the beauty of music.
This is the thing that inspires the artists in all of us as well. This is the foundation of true art and the beauty therein. The foundation unfortunately gets shaky along the way and we are tempted to compromise for many trivial to tragic reasons.
Me and Nate playing just for the love of the game
Tens years has passed since I first took the plunge into the deep and vexing world of musical composition. I’ve consistently teetered back and forth from the soaring heights and simple joys of creating melody, rhythm and rhyme, only to crash back down to the tedious, grueling and heart-wrenching side of what it means to become truly vulnerable and really share what’s happening deep inside of me.
This is what I love to call a beautiful tension.
I’m convinced that pretty much every beautiful thing in this world has this type of tension. I’ve found in my experience that the creator God seems to live in this tension and that he doesn’t shy away or become intimidated by it. The tension I'm referring to is the evidence that we all have true freedom and the ultimate choice in being like the creator God.
When God sat down and decided to create the most beautiful things we could ever imagine I get this sense that he had an almost naive’ hope that it would all come out beautiful and perfect and full of his love, and really to start off, that’s exactly what it was. I’m toying with the age old question of God’s foreknowledge but really the last thing I want to do is get too theological here, so please just journey with me a for a second.
I believe creation also required a great deal of vulnerability on Gods part. The capacity he’s given us to reject the true beauty he’s made for us or to choose to enjoy it like a good song, is to me even more proof of the wonder and beauty of God. I kinda see it like inviting someone to listen to one your new songs for the first time, only on an infinitely higher level. God was sharing with us the most beautiful song that would ever exist. True beauty can never be objective and will always be highly subjective. We must be able to choose both the things we love and the things we dislike, otherwise the appreciation of beauty would become obsolete and vanish.
All that to say, I see songwriters and really any type of artist as being someone who is tapping into this freedom. Someone who is giving people the ability and place to choose whether to love or hate what they have created. They are allowing themselves to both be naive’ and incredibly vulnerable, all in the same breath. It’s a good thing that God possesses not only all creativity in the universe but also wisdom. The ability to be both hopeful and vulnerable at the same time is enough to drive anyone absolutely mad. Wisdom is paramount in this journey and God is absolutely full of it.
