Sometimes inspiration strikes and you get everything at once. I wish this were the norm. Perhaps it is with you or many others, but for me, I have to work a bit harder. Sometimes inspiration comes in the form of a fragment. These fragments then become something we get to steward into something more. In this Prodigals project, I've had a few such flashes in the form of a fragment.
The first is for the song I am most eager to write. The part of the story where the wayward son is out partying, living it up fits perfect into the current club song model. All about the alcohol, what happens post-alcohol, what happens post-post alcohol and so on. As a society we are in that place of "party til you can't no more then party a lil more". So that's the first flash. It's just a fragment. Nothing more. Two fragments really. The first, gets it's first pass through the refining machine and starts to look like this:
Dance til you cant no more then dance a lil more
Drink til you can't no more and pass out on tha floor
Don't worry how you gettin home, you comin home with me
Tomorrow is a life away--tonight we runnin' free
Which may lead to the second fragment which was:
Lets eat, lets drink, for tomorrow we die
Lets dance, all night, cuz we dont know if the sun will rise
Of course, the perspective is one of wasteful living - not unlike most club songs today. More on the lyrical meaning later. This post is more about the inspiration process.
The second flash was in the form of some chords and lyrics for the chorus of a different song. This song is the one where the wayward son decides to come home. Perhaps it is on the walk home as he is needing to build resolve and questioning the return.
The lyrics are definitely not as powerful alone and outside of what they will be. But sometimes you play and sing and not only the words, melody, and harmony come, but the emotional context of the song as well. As this fragment came, I could experience the emotion on his way home, and that's an indication of a song coming to life, especially when I hit on the "Father I'm coming home" part.
Here are the lyrics
I dont care what they say of me
I dont care what they think of me
All I want is a place to stay
Father I'm coming home.
Again, nothing amazing in the lyric itself. Now, for the embarrassing part. Here is the recording of the idea. This is the very raw capture and, in the interest of full disclosure to the creative process, it may help someone so I'll just have to deal with the embarrassment. I was playing a few chords on one of my pre-production Renovo Amp Works amps, and loved how it sounded so I hit record on the iPhone, directly into Evernote. Not testing levels, not concerned about mistakes, just about capturing the idea. The capture will be only for you (unless you are blogging about the process), so dont worry about quality.
The key take away here is that inspiration comes in many forms. Thomas Edison is credited with saying "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration," and that is certainly true of the creative as well. Even when we get the whole thing at once, it needs to be subject to our refining brushes. But more often than not, we need to be sensitive to the fragments. The small pieces, the song titles, the melodic hooks, the chord progressions, the themes, the rhymes, etc. And we need to catalog it and write it down so that we dont lose it.
I used to think, "if its an idea that it worth it, i will have it again," and therefore not write it down. I've since come to believe that is bad stewardship of the fragments. Capture it all, every fragment. You never know when that perfect idea comes to you not in the whole package, but in the form or a fragment.
