In the Land of Ideas

In the mornings, I listen to meditations from an app called Calm. The woman's voice sounds like Sarah Michelle Gellar, but I try not to dwell on the fact that my podcast could be delivered by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

One of the things she says, which I like, is that thoughts are like clouds passing in the sky. In other words, we don't have to take our thoughts so seriously. This is comforting to me, because my thoughts usually bear a robe, carry a gavel and have springy gray tendrils under which rests their real hair. Truly, I usually hold my thoughts and ideas in the highest esteem but Tamara Levitt has given my the permission to say "Poo, poo, Judgie, you're just a cloud."

I'd like to see what happens in a meeting when someone pitches an idea and I say, "That's just a cloud passing by--pay no mind." Perhaps they too are listening to Calm, and it would be a well received reminder to bench the judge.

We treat ideas and thoughts as the holiest of things and they're wonderful, to be sure--I'm a writer, ideas are manna--but sometimes the idea spinner drops a dud. Just to keep us guessing. As a writer, if it excites me, I'm going to follow it, and I'm not attached to the outcome (a result of listening to Calm, which should consider paying me for every mention). I'm shaking the idea like a dog with a ball, gnawing on it for a while, seeing it through and then burying it in the yard or tossing it out into the street.

One of my favorite artists, Jack White, sums this approach up deftly in an interview: When I was an upholsterer, you know, sometimes you’re not inspired to reupholster an old chair. Sometimes it’s just work and you just do it because you’re supposed to. And maybe by the end, and you finish, you look at it and say, “eh that looks good. that’s pretty good and that’s it.” And you just move on, and that’s it.

Not every day of your life are you going to wake up and the clouds are going to part and the rays from heaven are going to come down and you’re going to write a song from it. Sometimes you just get in there and force yourself to work and maybe something good comes out of it.