Something to Keep
“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want – that just kills creativity.”
Jack White
A Second Look
There’s something intoxicating about seeing how other people work, especially creative people. My favorite thing about watching interviews where an artist tries to explain how they do what they do is that they can’t put some things into words. There’s something almost mystical, magical, and esoteric about creative work.
Take this interview with Taylor Momsen, for instance. Momsen (who used to be a popular actress) is the lead singer of the rock and roll band The Pretty Reckless. In the interview, she talks about many things, including her creative process for writing and making music.
She knows when the writing process is done, but mixing and mastering a song could be an endless process. As with many other creative projects, you could tinker with a song forever. So a lot of artists create their own constraints to finish quickly and avoid ruining the magic of early songs. I found that particularly fascinating.
Something else that came up during the interview was how modern technology influences the creative process. You could spend countless hours designing the perfect cover art for your album, but since people are going to see it on a tiny phone screen, most of those details are lost.
The same goes for the production side of making music. Most people don’t listen to albums on speakers; they listen to them on AirPods. As a music fan (and to a certain extent, technology), I find all of these changes fascinating. It’s easy to complain about the state of the modern world, but there’s a good side and a bad side to everything.
You have to pay a price for having access to everything all of the time. Sadly, in the case of music, that means people no longer stare at an album cover for hours on end, and they don’t engage with music in a communal manner.
It’s also easy to forget that we have a choice in this. You could get a record player, you could save some money and buy a pair of nice speakers, and you could leave your phone in your pocket when you go to a live concert.
Something I Liked
If there’s something I like as much as hearing people talk about how they work, it’s where they work. I watched the Taylor Momsen interview on Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. As I was watching it, I fell in love with the background. So as soon as I finished the interview, I looked for the studio tour.
Whenever I watch videos like that, it’s tempting to steal ideas and use them for my own space. In reality, it goes deeper than that. I don’t like copying specific things; I like figuring out the philosophy behind large spaces. What’s the idea behind the lighting? What materials are more prominently used than others? Does the design contribute to the workflow of the creator?
I love thinking about those things. And the weird part is that the more you watch content like that, the more you internalize it. So when the time comes to redesign the corner where I keep my guitar and amp, I’ll have some idea of what I want to do with it.
