BOXES, UNFILLED
Okay: a melody is like a box. Build it carefully, like icing a cake or closing the bedroom door when someone is sleeping. Make it smoothe and pleasing to the senses. And when you finally come to the end of it, make sure it connects back firmly to the beginning: a box with three sides won't hold much.
Once your melody is complete, it's time to find things to fill it with: thoughts, emotions, tirades, clever rhymes and sad truths. Arrange each item carefully in the box, stacking some, laying others side by side.
And here is where I always face an old problem: I sit and gaze with pride and affection at my beautiful box, with all its clean lines and subtle details, but I find that I have nothing to put in it. And each new box I produce gets stacked neatly on the shelf with all the other boxes, to be privately admired, but only rarely displayed in public.
Imagine me now: lying in the middle of my bedroom, boxes stacked all around me, doomed to remain forever empty. The melodies come so easily. But when it comes down to it, I've simple got nothing to say.
If only the contents of the box came to me as clearly as the container itself.
"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past." --James Joyce
Okay: a melody is like a box. Build it carefully, like icing a cake or closing the bedroom door when someone is sleeping. Make it smoothe and pleasing to the senses. And when you finally come to the end of it, make sure it connects back firmly to the beginning: a box with three sides won't hold much.
Once your melody is complete, it's time to find things to fill it with: thoughts, emotions, tirades, clever rhymes and sad truths. Arrange each item carefully in the box, stacking some, laying others side by side.
And here is where I always face an old problem: I sit and gaze with pride and affection at my beautiful box, with all its clean lines and subtle details, but I find that I have nothing to put in it. And each new box I produce gets stacked neatly on the shelf with all the other boxes, to be privately admired, but only rarely displayed in public.
Imagine me now: lying in the middle of my bedroom, boxes stacked all around me, doomed to remain forever empty. The melodies come so easily. But when it comes down to it, I've simple got nothing to say.
If only the contents of the box came to me as clearly as the container itself.
"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past." --James Joyce
I feel the same about my writing. Turning a phrase is useless if you don't have meaningful things to add to the world.
Creativity is a bitch.