Leave Your Ego At the Door
Dunking on the moon, two good books, and honest writing
Edification – Newsletter #102 – December 26, 2021
Dear Reader,
Happy Sunday!
Say, y’all got any opinions about the moon? Let me rephrase: any negative opinions about the moon? Just meh opinions? 2.5 stars?
I’m a fan of outer space. Practically a prerequisite of poetry, I love the moon, the planets, the sun, space travel, the lonely and dangerous astronaut. So naturally, space-related news, especially visual content, is my internet catnip. But if you’ve been anywhere on the internet where commenting is enabled, you can probably predict the quality of the commentary under pictures of the moon.
“Kind of a dump, isn’t it?”
Sheesh, tough crowd!
It feels like a metaphor for the disaffection poetry itself suffers in popular culture.
I sometimes feel a bit like that moon up there. Pockmarked, shy by spells, tidally locked with a planet that doesn’t seem so into me.
Is this poetry? Are we the moon? Pining for an indifferent Earth? No more inspirational than “a random ball of concrete”? *cries in moondust*
This week I read two books. First, an utterly stunning chapbook by Haolun Xu, which I bought for myself for Christmas. Ultimate Sun Cell is a newly released collection of poems that are at once introspective and wildly wide-ranging.
Xu covers mythological and contemporary ground in one stride. His work is sensuous, vivid, and accessible. His poem “Blue River Myrrh,” included in this chapbook, was one of the first pieces of his that I read – on page 29 in the Spring 2021 issue of the Raleigh Review – and I assure you it will knock your socks off, too.
The second book I read this week was the 2020 bestseller How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy (of the bands Wilco and Uncle Tupelo). It’s a slight book that I read in almost one sitting, but I came away with a few new ideas for songcraft.
Tweedy maintains that the biggest challenge for breaking into songwriting is a psychological one: it’s about giving yourself the permission to make art, to make mistakes, to be vulnerable. That’s bound up with getting your ego out of the way, or as Tweedy puts it, “disappearing” to let yourself explore ideas and subconscious connections.
Some shortcuts around the rational over-thinking side of your brain can involve nonsensical word pairings; Tweedy suggests pulling words or phrases out of books or transcribing conversations about things that are important to you.
He emphasizes that you should squirrel away anything that strikes you. If you only have one line, save it. And write all your ideas down – don’t count on your own brain to remember even the best idea you’ve ever had. Start amassing phrases and verses, then pair them with music ideas you’ve saved the same way.
It’s important to know before you read this book that Tweedy focuses on lyric-writing, not melody. If you don’t know where to begin with chord progressions or arranging a tune, you’re not going to learn very much here. That said, Tweedy suggests playing around with apps or even singing melodies into your phone voice recorder app (he even gives tips about singing in the bathroom where the hard surfaces provide reverb). The most important thing is to begin collecting snippets of melodies you can work with.
I really appreciated Tweedy’s liberation of songwriting from the guitar. I play guitar myself, and like Tweedy, have for decades defaulted to a godforsaken G chord every time I’ve picked up my instrument. It’s spinal, part of the tuning process, but it certainly primes the creative pump with stale water. We think entirely too much in the key of G, default our way through life. In the new year I think I’m going to experiment with non-guitar-centered songwriting and see where it gets me.
Speaking of advice, a friend shared this great “Tough Love” advice column from Outside.com, and I wanted to pass it along to anyone else out there who needed their creative jaws jacked.
The problem? The writer moved to a remote cabin in the woods hoping for inspiration from nature. She left everything behind, secluded herself with books, and… she hates it. (I would, too.) All her friends were expecting to read her transcendentalist memoir, but every word felt like a chore.
The advice:
“I think that a lot of writer’s block comes from trying to write something you don’t really mean. Fiction, memoir, whatever—you have to feel it. You have to care. The work needs to have stakes for you. That’s how you get electricity on the page; your readers feel the risks you’re taking. Readers are smart. They sense, even when they don’t understand. Even when they don’t know. And there are few things more dull on the page than a performance.
“The next time you sit at your typewriter, I want you to be honest. You’re not writing for your friends, who keep offering to read your manuscript. You’re not writing for Thoreau. Forget about readers. Forget about judgment. Wipe that from your mind. All you’re trying to do is write about how you really feel. I know you’re capable of it. After all, you sent me this letter, didn’t you?
“Play the proverbial therapist: write a sentence, and then write how you feel about that, and then write how you feel about that. Start a page with ‘I’ll never admit—’ and then fill it.”
Start the page with a confrontation with yourself. Or a confession to yourself. Forget the performance. I read this little advice column, bundled it against my chest, and raced back to my poetry.
Well, this is it from me for the year. I want to thank you for reading, for hanging in there, and wish you a safe and happy 2022!
Talk soon,
Edie