Cant Write the Same Song Over Again

GEORGE: I can't get it out of my caput. I just go on singing it over and over. It only comes out. I have no command over it. I'm singing information technology on elevators, buses. I sing it in front of clients. It'southward taking over my life.

JERRY: You know, Schumann went mad from that. He went crazy from ane annotation. He couldn't go it out of his head. I remember information technology was an A. He kept repeating it over and over over again. He had to be institutionalized.

GEORGE: Actually? What if it doesn't stop?

JERRY: [Gestures] That's the breaks. —Seinfeld, "The Jacket"

I won't say that I present the picture show of mental health or anything, but almost people would be surprised to notice out I harbor a habit that hints at deep insanity.

I heed to the same song over and over over again. Alone in my office, or on my iPod, or on my phone, I play them on repeat over and over and again. Loudly.

In my iTunes library there are certain songs of an embarrassing nature that I take played more than 300 or 400 times in a row (that is a full 24 hours each). I've gone through then many computers over the last few years that I don't accept an accurate tally, merely if I were to add together them upward, the numbers and the songs would seem preposterous, even to me. They are my version of the lawn shed, covered in incomprehensible gibberish inA Beautiful Mind, or the wall in Carrie Mathison's apartment after a manic fit. And and so I wake from my stupor and discard the songs like used condoms and pretend it never happened.

Every bit a effect, I no longer relish "music," a fact that the 16-yr-former version of myself–the one who was in a band and had hard drives total of rare music–would have plant unthinkable. God knows, I never thought I'd notice myself 142 listens in on a Taylor Swift song on a Tuesday morning.

But there is a method to the madness. I found that this secret habit has been the fuel for my creative output.

See, part of writing–or really any creative endeavor from brainstorming to marketing–requires tuning everything out. There are a couple ways to do this. You accept your noise canceling headphones or ambient noise machines. You can put your phone on "Plane Mode" or tell everyone to go out you lonely.

The problem with these reductive techniques is that they leave everything a piddling empty. In my experience, it's not about quiet, it'due south about finding your zone.

I think melodic music, played on echo, puts y'all in a heightened emotional country–while simultaneously dulling your awareness to most of your surroundings. It puts you in a creative zone. The important facilities are turned on, while all the others are turned off.

Sometimes "good" songs can assist you with that. But Bruce Springstreen only has so many songs that work for this (Attempt "I'm On Fire"). You frazzle them shortly enough and have to commencement listening to songs on the Top 40. And you cease caring who wrote them–as long as information technology brings you closer to that state.

Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker, The Bullheaded Side, The Big Short) has spoken about this also. Writing a volume–or really any major creative project–puts you in an "agitated mental state." Information technology'southward hard to sleep, it'due south hard to concentrate, it's difficult to be present in everyday. Just yous tin can't afford that when yous're actually working. He fixes that past doing the following:

"I pull down the blinds. I put my headset on and play the same soundtrack of 20 songs over and over and I don't hear them. It shuts everything else out. And so I don't hear myself as I'm writing and laughing and talking to myself. I'm not even aware I'm making noise. I'g having a physical reaction to a very engaging experience. It is not a discrete process."

You might ask, tin you reach this by listening to music like a normal person? I would have thought so too, simply the answer is no. Repeat on the same vocal or the same 2 or three songs allows the songs to fade into themselves–to become a more than or less a continuous stream. The reason I gravitate towards radio singles is that they normally have big, tricky choruses. The idea is that after enough listens to vocal becomes a perpetual chorus.

Time stops. Distractions finish. Extraneous thinking stops. (Proof of which is the fact that you lot're not bothered past the fact that the song is looping every three minutes and xxx seconds.)

All that'south left is the work at hand. All that's left is that niggling voice inside your head that you're attempting to hear and translate onto the folio. All that's left is the book or the paper you're reading. All that's left is problem yous're trying to crack when you go for a walk. All that'southward left is the conditioning you lot're trying to consummate.

The bullshit–well, it disappears for a fleeting 2nd.

Creative work isn't most pleasure. It's not ever fun. It's about reaching something within yourself–something that guild and everyday life make extraordinarily difficult. This is i manner to practice it.

The fact that information technology basically ruined music for me is a price I am willing to pay. I'll take my fix from anyone–and I'm not ashamed to say that I take. Even if that means I have to mind to the Blackness Eyed Peas or some other god-awful group.

Every author (or painter or thinker or adman) finds their own way. This is mine. Perchance it volition work for you lot. Or maybe you'll try information technology and never await at me the same manner again.

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