The Cure For Lost Inspiration
Why inspiration sucks and how to make yourself independent of it!
It’s the most treated feeling every musician, every creative faces. A blank page with endless white paper. An empty session in your DAW. Hands that can’t play the guitar in a new way. Lost inspiration.
We all share this feeling. Some get over it in a matter of days. Some are stuck in a rut for months without end. Getting new ideas seems like voodoo. A mystical force that makes itself known only when it wants to. In the dark shed in the depths of the forest, we beg the voodoo lady to give back our mojo. To give us some potion, fill us with creative energy. But with a loud bang and gusts of smoke, she too vanishes. We’re left empty-handed.
If we sit around and wait for inspiration to find us, this will never change. You need to change how you create new ideas.
Why Inspirations Sucks!
Before we pull inspiration through the dirt and steal its lunch money, we need to define what kinds of insertion there are. There are a lot of ways you can be inspired by. But the one thing I hear musicians complain about is… Instant inspiration. The type of inspiration that comes out of nothing, with no work on their part. It’s unreliable.
It can’t sustain a long-term career.
But the worst part is, it has no intrinsic drive. As fast as the idea visits you, as fast it will leave you. It always vanishes as soon as you hit a problem or road block.
This kind of instant inspiration sucks.
You should never lean on it. It’s like expecting that you will gain muscle only by visiting the gym. Without effort, you won’t build anything. Like with everything in life doing things long-term will yield more reward in the end. It's time to train your inspiration muscle.
Obsession over Inspiration
What’s obsession, and why is it more important than your inspiration?
Simply put:
Obsession acts like an internal drive that connects everything you interact with, back to music. Obsession means that every second you’re awake, you think about music in some way.
As we go through our day, we take on the persona that is best fitted to the task. You’re a parent that brings their children to school. You’re the polite co-worker that makes small talk with people you don’t like about to pass the time. All these personas act and think in certain why. They’re suited to solving the problems in their areas. But what they aren’t is a musician. The occasional burst of inspiration we get rips us out of the day to day and activates your inner musician. If you let the responsibilities of your daily life tell you who need to be, then how do you expect to find new ideas?
That’s the key point. Turn on the musician mode and never turn it off again. Be obsessed with music and think about it every second. Ideas will swarm your mind. But if your not in musician mode, you can’t expect to find new connection with your music.
If you're not actively looking for it, you will miss it. Like when you walk down the street and I tell you to think about a red car. You will immediately notice every red car in front of your eyes.
Do you want to know how can become an obsessed musician? Do you want to learn a new way to create inspiration?
The Obsessed Musician - A Summary
An obsessed musician can wake up at 5 am and write you a song, about what’s on his mind. He sees the whole world around him through the filter of music. Every little thing he does. While working at his day job, he thinks about 3 new song ideas to compensate for his mundane work. While washing the dishes, he sums the melody of his next hit single. At night, he writes about what he felt that day and is motivated to turn it into a song tomorrow. That’s what’s an obsessed musician is like.
The thing is, he never does is sit around and waits to get an idea. His head is always filled with them. The only ones who do this are musicians that wait for their next fix of instant inspiration.
Like the biologists who seek new animal species in every last corner of this earth. The obsessed musician is actively looking for it in every corner of his life. He creates new ideas every day and builds himself a well of endless inspiration.
To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention. Refining our sensitivity to tune in to the more subtle notes. Looking for what draws us is and what pushes us away. - Rick Rubin (Book: The Creative Act)
Obsession To Gain New Perspective
If you only listen to punk music, watch punk shows, cover punk songs, you can write a good punk song, without a doubt. But the problem is that your songs will sound like everyone else. Even though you combine riffs and ideas from different punk artists, you will always make generic punk music. If you want to build your voice. If you want to be memorable. If you want to make an impact on the lives of your listener than you need to change your perspective.
The best art in life and the most prolific artist have one thing in common. They combine different areas of life and bring them together into a new form of art. Look at the works of Prince, David Bowie or even Lady Gaga. Their music, even tough a bit out there, spans a vast array of styles. From party pop anthems to somber ballads.
The artist Basquiat was known for taking interesting visuals and phrases and recontextualizing it in his art. His style transformed the art scene because he created new perspectives.
And that’s the part where your obsession with music comes in. If you think about music all day, it’s easy to connect different and seemingly unrelated ideas to your music.
The obsessed musician runs only out of ideas if he stays in his comfort zone. He stagnates if he shies away from new experiences. If you don’t know what to say any more than change your routine and do new things, learn new skill, meet new people.
A Guide to Obsession
This is a guide to let music consume you and fuel your art:
Morning Routine: Begin your day by awakening your inner musician. Dedicate time in the morning to write a song or engage in music-making exercises. This practice will shift your perspective and allow you to see the world through the eyes of a musician. Rather than falling into the personas of daily life, be a creative!
Midday Reminders: Set alarms on your phone as a reminder that you are a musician first and foremost. Set a wallpaper to reminder you of what you are and what you want to achieve. Use your commute and lunch breaks to brainstorm creative ideas. Do small things to keep your creativity flowing throughout the day.
Nightly Routine: Before you end your day, reflect on the ideas that stood out to you and why. Plan out which ideas you want to work on for tomorrow's project. Journal about what made you feel angry or emotional. These topics can serve as fertile ground for new songs to develop from.
Consistency: Consistency is key in everything you do. Engage in your music practice daily, as doing it for just one day won't yield significant results. By sticking to your routine for even just 10 days, you will create a multitude of ideas to draw inspiration from.
It’s more important for you to stay to locked-in, than to plan a 4-hour-long working session. This will still work if you only have 1 hour a day to work on your music. But this hour will be charged by the ideas you generated throughout of the day.
How to sustain this obsession:
Obsession can be a strong motivator once it starts to roll, but can drain all your energy if you're not careful. Here are some things to look out for:
Energy Management is Key
Prioritize Sleep: Ensure that you focus on getting enough restful sleep. This is crucial to recharge your energy levels.
Engage in Activities that Restore Energy: Your body while accumulate wear and tear over the day (allostatic load). This will drain your brain of resources that are necessary to sustain your obsession. Make sure to schedule recovery breaks between your working sessions. While taking breaks, engage in active activities. Sports, meditation, cold showers, even a walk in nature helps. These are designed to reduce mental stress and free up space in your mind for the next session.
Avoid Energy Vampires: Stay away from passive activities. Passive activities are the opposite of actives one. They will clutter your mind, fill you with stress and drain your bodies resources even more. Don’t use your brakes to just sit down. Movement is key. Excessive consumption of social media, or distressing news, is the worst thing you can do. Ever noticed after a binge on Instagram or TikTok for hours, you feel worse than before. That's the effect they got on you. These rob your energy.
Learn to Embrace Failure
Don't Let Things Own You: Remember that the work you produce doesn't have to be perfect. Avoid burdening yourself with unattainable goals. The things you create aren't an extension of yourself. They're just a thing you created. Move on to the next.
Embrace Making Art You Don't Like: It's essential to understand that you won't like everything you will produce. We all create music that doesn't make a cut. We experimented with new ideas but couldn't connect them. That's fine! Take away what you learn! Now you know what you don't like. Move on!
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own” - Bruce Lee
Love To Lose: Make as many mistakes as possible and learn from them. If you shy away from making a mistake, you won't get insight in your artistic process. The one who make mistakes aren't afraid to take risks. They tackle every opportunity that emerges in front of them.
Release Short-Term Ego: Let go of the need to impress others or appear successful. Embrace looking like a “loser” or a “tryhard” and allow others to underestimate you. They can't understand your obsession, because they never had any drive to begin with.
Take Your Time
Avoid feeling pressured to be immediately successful. Follow your own path and create the art that resonates with you. Start with small steps and gradually build momentum. Avoid overburdening yourself with long work sessions. This is a marathon you want to run for the rest of your life, not a sprint!
The Obsessed You Will Awake Today!
If you want to be independent of instant inspiration. If you want to create music that stands out, then reawaken your music today. Turn the musician mode on and never shut it off. The way you start your day is as crucial as the way you end it. Embrace your inner musician at all times. Stick to a consistent routine that prioritizes your creativity. And immerse yourself in different influences and bring them pack to your music.
By living and breathing music every day, you'll never run out of ideas and your art will truly stand out. So go ahead, let your obsession drive you to greatness in your music journey.
If you got something out of this, share this with someone who you think can benefit from this advice. We all need to watch out for another.
BECOME A SONGWRITING MACHINE!
— Max of Current Mindset
