My trick to handle the darker side

Inspiration, the Muse, creative flow, is something we cannot control or understand. It is from the Holy Spirit, I believe. A gift. So if I am not feeling inspired, or feeling down, I try to take the focus off of myself. Pray. Then shift to something that needs tending to, maybe to some noncreative chore, especially for someone else, unrelated to the project at hand. Also I get out of a depressed mode by reflecting on what a gift it is just to be in the world, to be alive, to be conscious, have awareness even of the anxiety, horror, and sadness we all face. There’s a joy beyond — actually deep within the heart of all that — also a gift of the Spirit.

I try to make myself write and usually I find something creative to write about that takes away the negativity. I try to stay motivated and do something else goal oriented to stay focused and on the right path. And I would like to just stay in bed sometimes but I force my self to get up and maybe exercise that morning to make myself start off by doing something positive to make a positive impact on my day so other things will be positive and fall into place hopefully. Last thing I do is just take a break that usually helps cause I do alot so it helps to stop and breath and relax a little and let the block block me and then it will stop cs it did its thing and made me take a break. It’s helpful to rest.

Love the humanity and the emotional grounding in this course Chris. Awesome. I run 2 to 3 times a week, I meditate every morning – just 10 to 20 mins, practice conscious and box breathing and journal most mornings with scribblings of regrowing neurological pathways, unlearning limiting beliefs and practising gratitude for the things that are good and wholesome in my life. I feel creativity is created in the sweet spot that we generate when we attend to our stuff. Get tooled up, I say……

I did not send comment regarding my muse so here it is … life! I find inspiration for songs all around me, all the time … no matter my mood. I also believe if you think you have writer’s block, you will have it! I find it easy to write a song on most any topic at most any time regardless of my mood. I often write a song and move on. Often I come back to songs written some time ago and may reject (delete them) or use my muse of the day to rework them. Of course, writing a good song is another thing entirely. I sometimes think writer’s block is not so much a block to writing a song, but a block to writing what we conceive at the time to be a good song. My advice … write something and move on. Some will be good, some will be bad. Time and your future insights will sort them out, cull the good from the bad. Dave M

I tend to get in it, but it is hard on my wife and kids, so some piece of me is always trying to "be okay". A lot of my best music has come from those dark times, and I don’t want to ignore this gift – whatever it ends up being.

Hey Chris… there are no coincidences. Rain right on cue.
I see this topic from several angles. One is from the perspective of writing for one’s self, purely for the act of expressing one’s self musically. Singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg used to call this “going down to the well” and he likened it to his own personal therapy, wrestling with his dragons, finding resolution to problems in that murky, shadow place we all have. He found much to explore there, as well as his own solace, but he said that writing got harder for him each time he approached it, because he would drive himself to go deeper, further into the darkness or the pain, and pull out some savory nuggets of truth that provided the answers he sought and ultimately which resonated with millions of others.

The other perspective is that of writing or scoring with purpose, for a brief or a scene in a film, etc. Being creative on demand, regardless of your mood or the events in your life. I’ve always found that writing to picture is a great motivator. It gets me out of my head entirely, and causes me to empathize with the story, the characters and emotions I see before me. The visual scene literally tells me what it wants musically and I can hear it beginning tomorrow compose itself in my head as I watch the scene. Just for practice, you could take any scene that inspires you from a favorite film, turn off the sound, or even do a rudimentary dialog ADR so you have the storyline as a reference with the original sound turned off, and then compose your own version of what you perceive emotionally. I almost always find it easier to compose in response to an external visual input, than just conjuring up a theme from the daily hum-drum influences of my life, which for me are not consistently a source of musical inspiration.

Lastly, I have also found that, like jazz composer Chick Corea (RIP) getting my hands on a new sound library always injects new excitement and inspiration, as each new unfamiliar sound will inspire in me a unique way to use it and produce an interesting foundation to build upon. If you can write on a keyboard, even in a rudimentary way, I’d suggest getting a subscription to a massive sound library like East-West, Spitfire, Omnisphere, Keyscape, Kontakt by Native Instruments, etc. There are many hours of inspiration to be found at your finger tips.

I break from it and think about what is the block about while doing another task and find when I come back to it I have worked out the issue out as that is why am back working on it as timed it with when I figured out the why was blocked. Can’t always know every time but often do know this after a bit of introspection.

I watch music videos that I have never seen before, sometimes from other countries.

Chris, thank you, man, for asking. I’ve always felt you are a really sensitive person. I believe that we must feel the dark side as fully as we feel the bright side. Over 50 years of the Primal Therapy approach developed by Art Janov, thirty years of Holotropic Breathwork developed by Stanislav Grof, and being a long time devotee of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and Siddha Yoga Meditation practitioner have included lots of screaming and crying and stillness. Sounds kind of funny when I put this into words. I find that nowadays my ability to feel my pain of human existence is commensurate and often times coincident to my feeling of ecstasy. I also find that in the stillness that follows deep feelings is a time of great inspiration. If I let my brain get outta da way, i.e., clear my vessel, the Creator is better able to fill me. Again, thanks for asking.