November 30, 2011 Why do you write?
“Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it’s something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.” -A History of Love, Nicole Krauss
Why does one begin to write? In songwriting, I think I am most inspired not by making a new story but by annotating one that’s already been written. T o me, all life’s stories have already been told. And artists retell those stories, illustrating them with the details of their lives or their imaginations, and make something new. Maybe the newness lies in the incorporation of that story to your own, like the dreamland painted on Joni Mitchell’s cloak. You experience a story–whether it be fact or fiction–and you carry it with you, you clothe yourself with it… to protect you from loneliness, from disappointment? I don’t know.
I’ve been dusting off my head and my heart for some writing. What have you been reading? What inspires you to create? Do you have a philosophy for creating or do you just simply go for it?
Image from Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon cover
