Swimming Pool
Post, the First
The same guy wrote “More” by Sisters of Mercy, and “Bat Out Of Hell” by Meatloaf.
Jim Steinman. Also the composer of hits by Bonnie Raitt and Barry Manilow. He was a constantly working hitmaker through the seventies, eighties and nineties, writing and producing for a variety of bands, artists, and even media. One of his songs ended up on the soundtrack for the film Iron Eagle. He also scored Brecht plays in the early ‘70s.
Creativity is weird.
All us creatives (i.e., all of us), are fishing in a big, wide ocean. That’s David Lynch’s metaphor, and I’m stealing it.
Lynch talks about how to catch the real big fish in his memoir/creative practice bible Catching the Big Fish. You should read it. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
It’s a great book, and years after reading it I stumbled upon something early this morning. Ways, as a creative person, to catch maybe more fish. And bigger ones.
Go out in your boat a lot.
Whether you want to explore tidal pools, or go way out, after the big, deep ones, you have to do it a lot. Every day. Play around to see what’s in the surf. Dip a net in at cliffside, or toss a line from a pier.
Or maybe fire up the Broward, she’s a big one, a hundred-five footer. Take it way out. Stay for a while, move to different spots. Listen to those twin Detroit Diesels churn.
See what you get.
A lot of times, ladies, gentlemen and y’all, it is nothing.
Zilch. Nada tostada. Fuck all.
Most often, it’s almost worse than that.
It’s pieces. Little stuff, a few clams, that must be a starfish. You can’t figure out what to do with those.
That’s fine. The point is you went out, and put your nets or your lines or your hands out, and gave it a go.
Or if it’s more your style, go for a swim in your own private pool. The water’s perfect. That wet and clear smell, humid and vaguely chlorine. No one to bother you, or maybe there is, few kids over in the shallow end, but you never mind that. Just start your laps.
Hold your arms out to the universe, and see what it gives back.
Every day, you sit down and write. You stumble across a piece of an idea, so write that for a while. Or you’re in the middle of the Great American Novel (as we all are, are we not?), then draft a few thousand (or hundred) words of that.
You go out, cast, see what you get, pull it in, try again.
Point is, you showed up.
Stephen King basically says something similar, and I might be paraphrasing, “Do your fucking job.” That’s pretty much the quote. Read his book, On Writing, too.
You’re a musician, so sit at the piano and run some exercises for fifteen minutes, then let your fingers and mind wander for fifteen more, then work on that Liszt thing you’ve been trying to master.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Set your own schedule, set your own target, this many words per day, this many pages, this many minutes of scales, or whatever works for you. You can do it first thing in the morning, last thing at night, or you can steal thirty minutes of your lunch break. Or all of the above.
But take your boat out. Every day.
Get in the pool. The water’s fine.
You catch what you catch.
Back to Mr. Steinman. You thought I wasn’t going anywhere, which is understandable.
Old Jim, he didn’t give a shit what song fell into his lap. He didn’t say, “I only do chonky ‘70s rock ballads, sorry,” and send a song like “This Corrosion" (Sisters of Mercy) back to the bottom of the pool when he pulled it out.
Whatever they were, the first chords or melody or lyrics to “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” came along, and did Jim say “No thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze, that was twenty years ago”? He did not. It was an enormous hit.
Jim Steinman couldn’t have known that though, when he first started doodling on a pad, or a piano, those first lines, maybe that D/G/A of the chorus. He hadn’t written it yet.
He caught what he caught, out in his boat, or pulled up some little trinkets on the beach when he took a walk. He wrote those, composed them, they’re classics now. Big hits.
But only because he went out, got them, worked, got a bit more, tried it this way.
Point is, you get what you get. Don’t deny what is sent to you. It’s sent to you, because it’s yours. Yours to write, to sing, to play or paint. It came to you, because you’re the one, you see.
I know. Plonk-plonk, you thump around on your synthesizer, it sounds hackneyed, maybe, not like a burst of brilliance. At the start, they never are I don’t think. So, juice it up, see what you can do with it, turn it upside down, make your country ditty a more rocking ballad, or rewrite your memoir as an autofiction and change your name at the last minute, or vice versa.
Don’t give it up, is all I’m saying. Don’t think it’s stupid and ignore it. Don’t send it away.
I think if you send it away too often, well. You may not get as much next time. Or soon, maybe not any at all.
But if you keep coming out, keep opening your arms, keep making those first strokes across the pool, the ideas, or parts of them, will show up too. Soon, who knows what you’ll have.
Is that God? What do I know. I just think it’s true. This is where the big ‘G’, Gratitude, can come in. The biggest gratitude is taking what you’re given, and showing up again the next day, back to work, ready for more. Write another thousand words. Work through another exercise. Start a new sketchbook with a few dozen poses of your hand. Work hard, your best. Tell your people you love them.
And write, or sing, or draw, some more.
Get back out there and see what you need next, to take the next step. A novel, a story, a song, they can take a long time, don’t always show up all at once. Go back out. Get the rest. It’s there.
You just need to go fishing (or swimming) again. The ocean, the universe, are incalculably big. You’re tuned in, when you take your boat out. When you start typing, or handwriting, or strum that open E chord. Let it tell you what’s next.
That doesn’t mean don’t give up.
Some things don’t work. Some songs don’t work. Some paintings blow chunks. Some stories, you just can’t get the pieces to go together right.
You tried. You were grateful. Put it in a drawer. Maybe it stays there a month, a year, or forever. It’s not up to you, is the thing. You get what you get. Your job is to show up.
The more you go fishing, the better your chance of catching something.
You went out. You caught what you caught. Maybe there only was that much. You might find more later, or you might not.
Fire up the Broward. Jump back in the pool.
Start again.
Start now. If you haven’t.
It’s not too late, don’t play that game with yourself. The ocean is always out there, the pool ready for you to jump in today, get those laps.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.