Thinking and writing

I'm laying down right now to get out if the heat and rest a bit. I was wiped out by a virus most of last week and though I feel much better my energy level hasn't quite recovered to where I'd like it to be.

So as I'm laying here I'm thinking. And I'm actually thinking about thinking. Specifically the process I usually use to solve some kind of an issue, be it spiritual, existential, logistical or whatever. Anyway, it occurred to me that whatever solutions I may think I've come up with, they almost always happen when I'm NOT consciously considering the issue at hand.

Consciously it seems that I am an idiot. I can consciously consider a problem for hours on end and whatever I come up with will be completely unsatisfactory and/or completely worthless. Then the phone will ring, or one of my kids will need something, or some noise or something will distract me and BAM, I have my solution.

I write pretty much the same way. I want to be disciplined so I'll give myself blocks of time to use for writing. I'll sit down with my guitar and work up a progression. I'll consider whatever mood the progression might evoke and then try to write lyrics for it. I'll have a specific theme in mind. I'll force myself to concentrate on the task at hand and stay hard at work until I have a song, good or bad doesn't matter, but a song from beginning to end verses choruses and bridge (if necessary) completed.

And often I find that what I just wrote sounds like it was written by someone who was forced to write it. It's crap. It's formulaic. It's uninspired and uninspiring. And sometimes I get so dejected by this process that I actually burn the paper I wrote the song on just to eliminate it from this world.

There are songs I've written, however, that I am quite proud of. I've stopped a rehearsal before because a riff just wouldn't leave my head. I've pulled a car off to the side of the road before because a lyric just jumped out of nowhere and had to be written down right then and there or be lost forever. I've even called my wife and dictated lyrics to her because pen and paper were not available. The songs that have seemingly come out of nowhere; the ones that I never tried to write; the ones that came at, actually, quite inconvenient times; those songs were pretty much all keepers.

I don't know if there's a way to combine discipline with inspiration. I don't know how to intentionally tap into whatever or wherever it is that these ideas come from.

Maybe some day...