3rd
Jarvis Cocker - Songbook
Curled up on the couch this morning with fruit toast and a cup of tea, Organic Gardening book in my lap, rain sprinkling outside - conditions could not have been more perfect to watch Jarvis Cocker talking about the process of songwriting.
I know it’s not very rock’n’roll, but Jarvis and English Breakfast just seem to go together.
I particularly liked what he had to say about songwriting at the end: “I think the beauty of songwriting is the fact that if you are prepared to throw yourself into it, any human being could do that. And that’s what I appreciate when I listen to songs; that another human being did that thing, and it came from nothing. One minute they were sitting in the living room having a cup of coffee and the next minute they picked up a guitar and they wrote something where there was nothing before. That’s kind of a miraculous event to me. That’s what keeps me doing it because it’s nice to have little miraculous events in your life, innit?”
It reminded me of what Elizabeth Gilbert had to say about creativity in her TED talk, that it doesn’t help to think of people possessing creative genius, but rather that “creativity” or “genius” it something outside all of us, accessible by all of us. What it takes to link up with it, though, is hard work, or, as she put it, turning up. Keep turning up at your desk and writing your words, painting your pictures or whatever and your genius is likely to turn up as well and together you can create a little “miraculous event”.
Ahh Jarvis, bless. Such a lovely way to look at creativity.
