a.m. gold
another morning, another riff emerged from the subconscious womb and crying for me to commit it to fretbroad memory before it recedes into nothingness.today marked the third time in as many weeks that musical inspiration has blitzed me before i've even had the chance to shower away the cobwebs of sleep. and many of the songs i've written in the past few years found germination in a.m. gold that i struck inadvertently.
i'm starting to think that such somnambulant* moments are creatively fruitful for a good reason -- i doubt it's coincidence that some of my most lucid writing in college came out of those times where i stayed up all night in order to meet impossible essay deadlines. the dulling of sensory perception that occurs as an effect of deep rigor tunes out life's white noise and hones one's ability to focus on his inner muse. throws the friggin' spotlight right on it; everything's effortless from there.
i sound like a flaky ass (yuck). i do believe in this shit, though.
anyways, i have elliott to thank for an invaluable trick in this regard: anytime i need to snare a fleeting musical nugget, i grab my cell, set it to record video (have yet to figure out voice memos) and play the figure on whatever guitar's handy, or hum out the melody or riff if i'm lacking an instrument.
* -- i just realized how funny and wonderfully appropriate it is to have learned this word at the office where i used to temp while reading "word of the day" on one of those screens they have in some elevators that hit you with news and fun facts.
posted by jomilkman @ 8:34 AM
2 Comments:
I'd just like to say, for the record, that I didn't get that idea from the horrible Nokia commercial with the fake rocker girl. Man, that whole ad campaign sucks.
one of my all-time favorite songwriters (who happened to be wildly prolific) wrote nearly all of his music while emerging from sleep. there really does seem to be something to that method.
-briana
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