Friday 9 February 2007

What drives me?

I'm generally lazy. I know this, and I accept it, and furthermore I'm way too long in the tooth to sign up for the Army.* Anyway. The last job I had (read: travelling to paid work) they'd want me in at 10am and I'd roll in at eleven. It got to the point were they'd just be glad to see me, which was odd - though I didn't think so at the time. It not that I can even put it down to drugs.

Where was I?

Music: I haven't written a song in nearly a year. I have instead, switched to poetry and prose. I'm not unhappy, because we rehearse three or four times a week, but I was so intensely into song writing and now the energy, the muse, has gone elsewhere, and I'm worried I won't get it back to music.

Each of us has a great 'work' we have to produce for - well,posterity isn't right ... maybe it's for a shelf in the library of the gods. A 'work' we can be proud of in our final hours. Something we can hold close and say "I did this! It wasn't all for nothing."

I don't think money is important. Ha, fucking ha. We don't need it to survive, to create. Ok, that's fatuous. Money is important. You can't produce shit if you don't eat. Hmm, there's deep for you. This is beginning to be a ghastly ramble, and here it ends.

No! Wait. The question 'what drives me?' I have no idea.

*"Join the Army, and you'll get a grounding in personal discipline that will last you for life" - some dozy relation.

2 comments:

Kapitano said...

The army being good for self discipline? If it was, the army would be full of soldiers doing what they wanted in a very determined way. And (literally) half the homeless wouldn't be ex-military.

Odd how someone could confuse "mindlessly taking orders" with "being determined". A bit like confusing apathy with hyperactivity. Anyway...

I don't think anyone who writes as much as you do could possibly be called lazy. It would be like calling a marathon runner a couch potato.

No new songs in a year? That's surprising. And yes, kind of worrying. But the muse of songwriting is the same as the muse of everything else. Creativity may be difficult to summon or direct, but I believe if you're creative in one direction you can be creative in any direction. So yeah, I reckon you can go back. And in fact I hope you do.

Someone once said to me "Money is only important if you don't have it". He ended up stealing money from me, but I think the words are right.

I don't know if there's a single great work waiting to be born from each of us. I think I'd prefer to produce several good works than one great one.

Oh well. I don't have any real answers. And I've no idea what drives me either. But the work is usually more interesting (and I think more important) than whatever strange motivational thoughts were bubbling around in the author's subconscious when he wrote it.

Camy said...

When I talk of the army being good for self discipline, I'm talking about the getting up, keeping your room tidy, methodical a to b to c way of thinking that is instilled in you ... not the "run over there and be shot, Jenkins."
"Yes Sah!"
mindset.