Getting Unstuck as an Artist—Create a “Small” Effect
When you’re starting out with any art form, there are many things you can “stuck” in to the point where you never actually take off. On of those is: you’re trying to put all of your artistic messages and impact into one piece. When I started out with music, it took me several years before I was able to write my first song, after I decided that I wanted to start writing songs. I had been writing poetry since I was about six, so the idea of writing lyrics was not a big problem; it seemed to me that it should not be that big a transition from poems to songs.
But for some reason, it was a big transition. Every time I came up with an idea, I almost immediately shut it down by telling myself that it was “not good enough” and feeling disappointed with the result. And then I would give up for a little bit and think “maybe I’m just not very good at this.” And it would take some time before I would try it again (and not with any better result).
After some years of this, I finally spotted something about what I’d been doing. I had tried to write “the perfect song.” I had tried to write a song that would encompass ALL of my feelings, thoughts, philosophical insights and best wishes for Mankind, and I had tried to do all of that in my very first song! So instead, I then tried the opposite.
I tried thinking of a song on ONE small, tiny aspect of life that I felt was very real to me and that I could easily write about. Just for fun, I actually even tried to make the topic AS SMALL as possible. That worked. It got me unstuck and it gave me a ton of ideas. I don’t actually even remember that first song that I end up writing, but I did start writing songs, and they were okay. It made me happy that I as able to write something. Anything. And some of my songs were even good. I remember one song I wrote a couple years later for a friend, was even pretty GREAT. It was so good that I still remember all the lyrics and melody of it this day. (And it wasn’t a jazz song.)
A couple years after that, when I was on tour as a promoter of a swing band, I ended up writing my first jazz song. And it happened in a very natural way. I had just been in the Italian town of Pordenone, a relatively small and quiet town in the Northeast of Italy. I had had a very good experience there, with friendly people who had been remarkably helpful, and I had accomplished everything I had set out to do. In addition, the town and its surrounding area had been a real surprise; it was an area largely untouched by tourism, but it had a surprising quiet beauty to it that I found really refreshing at stage of my trip. So I was sitting in the train waiting to leave the station (and possibly never come back to this place again in my life). And I very lightly and very playfully started thinking “what if I actually wrote a little JAZZ song about this very moment,” and the words and melody just started coming to me right about the same time as I had this thought. And within 5 minutes, the whole song came to me in its entirety as the train was leaving the station and then made its way to the next destination.
It was not an earth-shatteringly profound song. Nothing about the human condition. Nothing about my wishes for Mankind. But it was a genuinely heartfelt moment, and expressed a sincere admiration I had for that town and set of people in it in that moment. Then, some decades later, when that song happened to be discovered online by a wonderfully artistic person in Pordenone, she brought it to the attention of several others, and the song ended up being featured in the regional newspaper several times. It suddenly got some thousands of additional views on YouTube and I received a thank-you call from Pordenone’s mayor, as well as private messages from many citizens of Pordenone who were thankful that I had highlighted the beauty of their city.
So in the end, that relatively “light” song unexpectedly created a connection with a number of people in a way that felt very meaningful to me—more meaningful than, perhaps, I had expected. And I realized that the connection is perhaps at the heart of the human condition; just as good a way (or perhaps even better) to express what it means to be human and convey my best wishes for Mankind.
To end off with, here are some practical tips that I have found useful when creating works of art (or anything in life, really):
Keep it light, the more unserious you can be, the more effective you will be
When stuck, challenge yourself to create small effects (maybe even as small an effect as you can think of!)
One message per song/artwork; you will have plenty more opportunities on future pieces!
Remember who you are doing it for; remember whom you are trying to communicate to and who needs to hear your message
When all fails and you are REALLY stuck, go out and look at, or even better, meet with some people
Happy art making, and keep swinging!
Best,
Thisbe