Inspiration quite frequently arrives as a surprise. The key is being open to it.
Not everyone wants you to become your potential, for whatever reason.
Where we focus our energy is where we will get the results.
We all must develop a grounded clarity for ourselves.
We can all choose to become our potential, not just talk about it or dream about it. But daily, make a shift whereby we begin living and being our potential. With each day, that potential can expand because we are open to learning something every day.
Not being afraid to make changes is a valuable tool - knowing you can change back.
Finding people in your life as sounding boards who can be neutral and clear is worth nurturing.
People can be quite bullish with their opinions. That does not mean they have their finger on the pulse. It just means they value their own opinion.
Being able to hear an opinion. And then how to apply that opinion is something I am learning and working with every day. What can be tricky is how to differentiate a good suggestion that you should apply to your work [from] someone's personal taste at their opinionated best.
When you value your crew, they look after you.
There are quite a few very funny people in my life. You know those people who don't mean to be funny, they just come out with these zingers that just make you howl with laughter. Usually you find these people in the road crew. A good crew is a key to a healthy funny bone.
Getting people to go above and beyond the call of duty can be achieved but only if you, the artist, are willing to go above and beyond any and all calls of duty yourself.
If you can surrender your protection devices, in order to track the potentially raw and perhaps elusive emotions that are the song's DNA, then that is creative vulnerability, which is ultimately hugely empowering.
Vulnerability can be empowering as a songwriter and storyteller.
There certainly are situations where I feel not empowered or uninspired. Particularly when the person's agenda is to intimidate through abusing their position or their authority. When I am present and in a nonreactive state, then I can become like snake and slide through their "intimidation net" back into the creative plane. When I am in a reactive state, I usually regret responding, because usually all that happens is that the intimidator feels righteously vindicated.
When I am able to be present, listening - really listening - to a viewpoint described through someone else's lens, I am here in the now and alive.
In order for my live performance to work, which is about generating a focused energy for about an hour and a half, it is necessary for me to listen and take in someone else's focused energy the day of or the day before the live show. That can transpire through a conversation, or inspiration can occur by looking through any type of visual book which sparks a narrative. That narrative then becomes today's seed and can then take root in music terms, where a sonic tree begins to grow.
I don't allow challenges to trip me up.
When interviews are good, the conversation can be amazing. Sometimes I've had conversations with journalists that I've never had with anybody else.
Don't give up. Don't listen to these foolish critics that are so small minded they don't get it tonight.
I collect art books. I have hundreds and hundreds of them and they get me to start hearing things. Sometimes people look at them, but I find that visual art gets me listening, gets me hearing things.
Sometimes listening to music can motivate you. It can. But if you're a musician, that isn't always the way to get new ideas because you don't want to take somebody else's ideas. You need to find your own. So if you go to different artistic mediums, whether it's dance or it's visual arts or films or books, stories, sometimes it gets you hearing things, hearing progressions that you wouldn't come up with if you were just listening to other music because you don't want to copy progressions you've just heard.
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