I am the one I've been waiting for
On creativity and self-love
It’s International Women’s Day today, and rather than go anywhere near the vast topic of gender equality, I thought I would write a little bit about self-love and one particular singer-songwriter who has inspired me.
I was in the studio yesterday for the first time in over a year, recording some vocals for a new project. It was fun and challenging in a good way, getting to stretch out my vocal muscles, which I haven’t done much of recently. My life as a musician means that I do a lot of different jobs, some of which are pretty seasonal. Lately, my days have been filled with a lot of music therapy (working with people with learning disabilities in care homes) and not much else. It is traditionally quieter in terms of gigs etc at this time of year, and while part of me enjoys these calmer periods, for one because it allows me to focus on things like this newsletter, I do miss the variety of busier times.
I’ve been reading Emma Gannon’s “The Multi-Hyphen Method”, which is about having multiple jobs and projects rather than one set career, and how this is a legitimate way of working. It’s funny because I think this is how I've always worked without realising that it was a thing. I think it’s how a lot of musicians and creatives make their lives work, as it can be pretty difficult to earn a living from just one thing.
This morning I had someone come over to PAT test my PA and gigging equipment (making sure it was safe to use). I’ve recently made Friday mornings my “writing” time, being very much someone whose energy and creativity are best in the mornings, so the timing of this appointment wasn’t ideal. When I finally started writing, a bit later than usual, I realised that I had no idea what to write about. Or no clear idea anyway, but rather lots of little fragments of ideas, and no clear path. This scared me because since I started doing this weekly newsletter a couple of weeks ago, what I was going to write about had come to me very naturally, but this wasn’t happening today. So what should I do?
I’ve been here enough times before with songwriting. Sometimes, whatever you do, things are just not flowing, and the best thing to do is to take a break and go for a walk. So that’s what I did. Just letting ideas percolate, in my experience, always helps. I usually listen to either music or a podcast when I go for a walk. I knew I couldn’t handle a podcast as my brain was already overwhelmed with ideas and words, so I chose an acoustic playlist, but that wasn’t doing the trick either. Then I remembered the Hadestown soundtrack. If you haven’t heard of Hadestown, you’re in for a treat. Hadestown is a Tony Award-winning musical by American singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, which I have been wanting to see since it premiered on Broadway in 2019, and which I’m finally seeing in London next week. It is based on Greek mythology and tells the tragic story of Orpheus and Eurydice. One of my favourite books on creativity is Mitchell’s book “Working On A Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown”, where she discusses the process of creating the show and writing the songs.
The whole book is beautiful and fascinating, but I particularly loved the bits where she talked about the massive amounts of re-working and re-writing of lyrics she did between the original 2006 version of the musical and the 2019 Broadway version. She’s so open about the fact that often the great ideas don’t come naturally, that sometimes it takes an enormous amount of re-writing, re-structuring, and even getting rid of songs altogether to get to the really good stuff. She writes -
“What is seen and heard onstage is the blooming flower, but most of the plant is underground. Every line, verse, or chorus - every idea any of us who worked on it ever had, even the ones that never saw the light of day - they’re down there. They’re the roots of the plant, and the flower wouldn’t exist without them.”
If anyone knows about creativity it’s Anaïs Mitchell.
So I kept writing. And I realised that there was no point in getting worked up and stressed about what I was going to write about. Stress and creativity do not mix. I remembered that the point of this exercise was to just show up as I am and write what was true. Just the process of sitting down and writing something every Friday, whatever else is going on in my life, is good for me. That is self-love.
This reminded me of a song I wrote back in the summer of 2022, and released at the beginning of this year, called “One”. It’s a love song, but it is also an ode to self-love. Just as the love of another can help you to bloom, it is only when we love ourselves that we become fully capable of loving the world around us.
If you can read the above lyrics then good for you! For those of you that can’t, I’ll share the most important bit, the chorus, here.
“You are the one
You are the one I’ve been waiting for
And I am the one
I am the one I’ve been waiting for.”
One thing I’ve learned about creativity is that sometimes you can’t force things. It’s a process, and sometimes you just have to let go. Go for a walk and pick things back up later. You have no idea what might be growing underground in the meantime.
E xx