In the previous section we strived to explain in some fashion the creative process. Difficult as it is to relate how things come to be, the attempt to share just how these ideas take flight is always elusive at best. But once the idea is born, once we have captured a concept, how do we develop it? How do we keep it alive and then flesh it out, bring it to maturity?

There is only one way to do that: Listen.

One of the hardest things to do is to learn how to listen. We all hear everything quite well, but we rarely actually focus our attention and shut out the "background noise" so we can capture what is right there in front of us. Whether it is a friend pouring out their heart, revealing their torment or joy, or a complete stranger sharing something we may not think of any imporance at all, it doesn't matter. If we don't learn to listen, we will miss something of incalculable value.

How do you learn to do that? Where do you go to get lessons on "listening"?

Call it the Art of Listening if you wish, but it is an art and it is not easily acquired. The reason it is so difficult is varied and rooted in our selfishness. Most of us are concerned with how everything that goes on around us will affect us, personally. The economy is in shambles... how will that impact my ability to live, to work, to survive? War looms over our heads... how will that affect me (if I'm of age to be conscripted into service and fight)? Can I avoid service if it is compulsory? Will I benefit if I am not called up (for health or other reasons)? I met a man/woman... how will a relationship with them change my life? Will I like the changes? Will they be good for me? Will I regret it? I may have to move (either locally or out of state)... how will this move change my life? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? How will I know?

How will I know?

Of course, it isn't just creative people who ask these questions - we all ask them in one way or another, depending on the circumstances.

The truth is, these questions cannot be answered before the fact, before the thing we are questioning happens. But being aware of what is going on around us allows us, even offers us the opportunity to at least consider the possibilities. But that requires we have to be listening in the first place. We have to be aware of our surroundings in order to understand them. The same applies to our circumstances - we must be aware of our condition, our situation, if we are to have any hope of making sense of it all.

If you want to maximize your ability to draw creative ideas from your surroundings, events that are occuring everywhere, locally, regionally, nationally or globally, you have to be paying attention. We must strive to listen to the moment, to the idea, to the essence of our creativity that is sparked to life by these things or we'll miss what may be our "big break", our opportunity for immortality.

Okay, so that's a bit melodramatic, but it isn't necessarily inaccurate. Sometimes our creativity is a product of being in the right place at the right time with the right abilities/awareness/mindset to capture the essence of the things unfolding before us.

Weird Al Yankovic, the accordian playing song deconstructionist, parodying famous tunes, got his start by sending things in to Dr. Demento's Sunday evening radio broadcast program in the late 1970s. I think his first broadcast effort was "Another One Rides The Bus", a parody of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust". It was just quirky enough to get Dr. Demento's attention and he played it. This inspired Al to record more and more, sending them along to the good Doctor. You know the rest of the story.

Weird Al profitted on music he didn't write by skewering popular songs. It was "gimmicky", but it worked long enough to make him a star and earn a pretty fair living. It wasn't original, it wasn't even very good - if we're going to be honest - but it was funny and fresh. He wasn't even trying to be famous, not really.

Weird Al was listening, not just hearing, to something. That something was the germ of an idea. If all these weird songs were popular, and many of them were decades old, what if someone started creating new weird songs, even parodies of popular music? So he "got it", and then he responded and started creating these new songs, sending them to the only outlet available to him at the time. And it worked well beyond anything he had thought possible.

So, again, how do you learn to listen? Since there is no school that teaches the Art of Listening, most people stumble through life with the occasional prescient moment of having actually captured something because they just happened to be listening. They were not aware of this fact, but they did manage to capture the moment and do something with it.

For you to really get this concept, to really make this more the normal state rather than the rare moment, you have to quiet the internal "noise", all that cacophany between your ears.

To capture those seemingly elusive moments of clarity and deeper listening, the normal level of noise in our minds has to be silenced, or greatly diminished so that it no longer interferes with our ability to concentrate, at will, on being able to go beyond merely hearing the things around us and cross over into the realm of truly listening to and apprehending what is happening.

During periods of high creativity, where things are just flowing out of us, where the ideas coalesce into reality and come one right after the other, we may or may not be aware that we are operating on a different level than normal. When we are in this place, whether we are aware of it or not, we are actively, materially engaged in listening to our surroundings, internal or external to our experience.

This is what we want to be able to do all the time, when possible. It doesn't have to be an occasional occurance. It can be ongoing. The ideas may not come fast and furious all the time, but they come in a continual flow. There may be some cyclical rhythm where some weeks are low output and other weeks are high output, but it is the output that we are striving to keep flowing in a more consistent manner. We want to end the cycle of "feast or famine", where ideas come in a flurry, short bursts of brilliance followed by a period, sometimes very protracted, of famine, like a desert with no ideas at all. We want to have a more evenly paced output where our creativity is being continually exercised.

If the ideas stop coming, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we need to rest from creativity. Call it a period of recharging the batteries. You cannot continually flex a muscle and expect it to not eventually grow so tired that it will no longer work without a period of rest.

Once the ideas are out there, we can begin to develop them more fully, making them whole. If we don't apply our creativity in this aspect of our work, we cheat the creations from being all they are supposed to be. But sometimes, simplicity is what we want. Most of the time, though, a song isn't finished until it has been fleshed out.

There's more going on in the music than just the music.

The combination of the different instruments, when added into the mix, blends together to create a greater whole. This greater whole is an entirely different entity than what was created on the guitar or keyboard alone.

Real life story:

I wrote a song based on a suggestion by a friend. Once completed, I played it and made corrections, as I always do, listening to what was happening as I proceeded along, making sure I wasn't screwing it up. When I was done with that, I was fairly satisfied with the result. It wasn't the greatest thing I'd ever written, but it was good. I laid it down for a while and went on to other things, other new songs that were emerging.

When I went into the studio to record this song, I had nothing more than the rhythm guitar part and the lyrics. The song was essentially complete, but began to reveal that it needed a musical interlude in the center to make a smoother transition between the first and second half of the tune. I quickly created a nice little passage, rhythmically, and we set about laying down the rhythm tracks.

We got the rhythm guitar, bass and drums laid down along with a scratch vocal. When we played back what we had recorded, something different was coming out of the speakers, something I did not hear when I originally wrote the tune. The song was coming to life - it is the only way to describe it. We were hearing the song I had written, but it was no longer the same song! It was becoming something more. And as it happens, it became a great song simply because I was listening to what was happening, listening to what the song told me it wanted, needed - as well as what it didn't need.

And this is what I'm talking about - the greater whole. As each new track was laid down, the song changed. And we were listening to - not just hearing - the changes, and we responded to the changes by listening even more intently to what was happening with each new addition; did the new part belong? Was the song accepting or "rejecting" the new part? Yes, you read that right.

When you are truly listening to the music, you will hear when something doesn't belong. Remember in the previous section that I mentioned incomplete songs on the radio, that I constantly hear songs that aren't finished, had a bad lyric or lacked something else, but were recorded anyway? This is what I mean. This is what it is to truly listen to the music and what it is telling you.

Part of my personal philosophy about song writing, the creative process, is that once I have the skeletal structure of a song laid out and the lyrics more or less in place (that is to say, the subject of the song, what the song is going to discuss or be about), not necessarily complete, the song begins to "speak" to me. How can I explain this?

As I'm writing, I'm listening - not just hearing - what is happening musically - the interplay between music and lyrics. If I first create a passage musically, I consider what part of me it has come from, what is the "state of mind/heart/soul/spirit" behind the music. When I learn what it is, this suggests content, lyrically, as to what the song should (not merely will) be about. I'm listening to everything the progression is saying to me, musically, so I can begin to apprehend lyrically what needs to accompany this particular passage.

Sometimes I create a whole section of music encompassing the introduction, verse, bridge and chorus passages of the song. In this event, I have a big flow, a "stream" to follow. The greater scope of the song is revealed in these cases, I have more "information" to draw from in order to understand what this particular song needs to be about.

If I create a lyric first, it's a little more clear what the mood is. But, that doesn't automatically suggest what the music should be. When writing a lyric without first having music, I strive to be aware of what is happening as I'm writing the lyrical passage. Is there a melody lurking there, too? Is the melody being included at the same time as the lyric? If so, I scribble down the intervals, or I pick up a guitar/sit at the piano and pluck it out right in the moment, before it disappears.

This is critical stuff here, okay? You have to stop everything else that is going on and capture that moment, that essence, or it will vanish in an instant and you may never get it back. You have to silence the noise. This is what I meant when I said you have to quiet the cacophany in between your ears. It is the only way you are going to be able to capture things with any regularity, with any consistency.

I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. Since I've had an answering machine, I've tried to call myself (if I don't have time or paper to write it down) and talk myself through it, knowing I will be listening later, and hum the line, sing the melody - whatever it takes to convey the idea in a way to ensure I will not lose it. I don't care that I'm in public and that people think I'm crazy. The inspiration is happeing now and I am going to capture it and not let it get away from me.

The greatest opportunity for success is being able to listen to what you are hearing, what you are doing, what you are creating, and trusting the process to guide you into knowing what needs to be there, and what needs to be jettisoned as cluttering up the whole idea.

Here is a real life example of what I mean by that:

One song I wrote a very long time ago was very well written, but had this middle section in it that was very progressive and different. One day I sat down and edited out the middle bit and put the front and back half of the song together without it. I can't exactly remember why I did this, it doesn't really matter now. Suddenly, there it was, a very complete and whole song. I had never been entirely happy with the song prior to that, thinking maybe it lacked something in finesse, rather than being bloated bigger than it needed to be. Now the song is really fun to play and is very well received by audiences when performed where before, it was getting only luke warm responses.

The exact opposite of this occured with another song I wrote. It needed more than was there. I think I always knew this, but had trouble listening to the song trying to tell me what it needed. So I just let it go. Finally, I got fed up with that discomfort and sat down and figured it out by playing the song, recording it, and really listening to what was going on. And when I added the missing section into the greater whole, the song came to life in a way that was impossible without the new section.

If all this doesn't make sense to you, you're not there yet; you still have a way to go before this begins to click in your heart/mind/soul/spirit. If it does make sense in a "Gee, and I thought I was the only one who thought like this" kind of way, then you absolutely understand what I mean. Remember, this has been a journey, a process of learning about learning, learning about the creative process as it occurs and applies to me. How it works in you may be different, but not so much so that it isn't actually all that set apart from any other artist's experiences and learning curve.

I think that is what connects artists together, even if they don't think alike in many ways. The creativity within all artistic people is really no different at all from person to person. How we arrive at the destination that is the given created work is essentially the same. We sweat, we agonize, we strive, we fail, we succeed and we have our ecstatic moments before moving on to the next idea, the next challenge, the next revelation.

And the more we understand how to listen to our surroundings, both within and without, the more likely we are to create something truly sublime and satisfying to our whole being - and hopefully to anyone else who comes in touch with the wonderful children that are our creations.