So you want to be a writer

Mr. Bukowski's thoughts on the creative process.

This poem means a lot to me - and I love what you've done here. I have to play this back every so often, I think...

Very well done.

Superb work Rob. Brother you just pick the best material and take it somewhere I want to be everytime.

eugene ukulele said:

Superb work Rob. Brother you just pick the best material and take it somewhere I want to be everytime.

Click to expand...

I truly believe that poem is way over the top. If only it were true, that things would just gush
out of you spontaneously. Sadly my own experience is that creativity is 99% perspiration
and 1% inspiration.

I think he is perhaps talking about the compulsiveness of creativity... of just having to do it.
Here is the thing, a song or a poem can be crafted, and it can be performed by many people
in many different ways, and sometimes it will be dead for the words have no life,
but sometimes there is a spontaneous spark that sets the whole thing on fire... when it has
some inexplicable energy. Performance works best when it is like driving a 6" nail through
a 2x4 with one blow of the hammer.

You may have noticed there was a change of hats during the performance and some how
an important stanza went missing. I it was where he says don't run it past your wife, girlfriend,
boyfriend or anybody else seeking their acceptance. The essence of creativity is that it
should be new or original, and that won't come if you merely copy or seek approval for the
things you do. That is a tough road to walk, cos perhaps most of YT is geared to getting
people to like you. Perhaps it should have been "just do it" instead of don't do it.

There is also a difference between creativity and performance. You can have a beautiful
creation and a shabby performance. I remember seeing a DVD of Leonard Cohen croaking his
way through his best songs, and his own performance distressed him so much he was weeping
in the dressing room, and on the same DVD when he got it just right there was elation and euphoria
afterwords. To have that spark to everything you create must be very exhausting.

I think everyone is so grateful for those songs that "write themselves". But that's a rarity in my reality.

Sting said it very well (as far as songwriting) "You have tell a story and you only have two verses, a chorus and a coda (bridge)"

It takes a certain "craft" to be able to paint a satisfying picture with those constraints.

Jnobianchi said:

This poem means a lot to me - and I love what you've done here. I have to play this back every so often, I think...

Click to expand...

Glad you enjoyed it. I always have to remind myself that Bukowski
wrote a book called "Ham on Rye" and of course you immediately
think of something you would get from the deli, however Chuck
said that the title was more about a very bad actor that drank too
much sour whisky... and that is how he presented himself... always
hamming it up for the audience or the camera.

Good video!

Very reminiscent of advice I once heard a long-time pastor give to some young men who felt they were being called to ministry. "How do you know you're being called to ministry?" he asked rhetorically.

"When you can't 'not preach'. If you can be happy doing any other thing, then do that other thing, because you will be miserable as a pastor." (I'm pretty sure he intended miserable as a double-intendre.)

I think there is much of that same dynamic in almost any avocation - it is probably the inability to be happy doing something else that turns a mere vocation into an avocation. One thinks about doctors who leave lucrative practices to travel to the backside of nowhere in a third-world country because that is where the need is. Or, top-notch teachers who take the "troubled kids" class not because the school system doesn't give them a choice, but because they can't not do it.

Sadly, that drive doesn't always come with the creative spark to satisfy it. Likewise, many have the creativity without the drive that makes their vocation an avocation. I think of the quite famous and very talented science fiction author who confessed to a fellow passenger on a long international flight that one of his "greatest" achievements was actually a joke; he had basically set out to see how long he could string his publisher along with a series of books that had absolutely no plot and no finish. Personally, I had burned out after about book six in the series, after haunting bookstores waiting for the release of the next volume through the first few volumes. This, of course, has nothing to do with the video - but we all know I'm wont to ramble at times...

John