Play until it sings right
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when he grows up." Pablo Picasso
Play matters
When I first read this post on Lit Hub about the Importance of Play, back in 2017, I actually felt myself relax and let go. I had been working so hard - recovering from one major surgery and trying to psych myself up for a second - that everything I did felt like hard work. I’d forgotten about the importance of just enjoying everything - yes, even writing.
I was charmed to find the little trinket on my seat. What was it for? While the auditorium began to fill, people traded them, pocketed them, bounced them from hand to hand.
One of the workshop leaders took the microphone. He asked us to take our bells, hold them as tightly as we could, and give them a shake. Nothing happened, although several faces turned red with exertion.
“Now take your bell,” he said, “hold it loosely in your hand, and shake it.”
Lovely tinkling music filled the giant room up to its vaulted ceiling.
“That’s how you need to approach writing,” he told us—not with clenched fists, but with open hands.
Relaxed. Playful. Open to possibility.
Susan Bruns Rowe on Lithub
The importance of play really cannot be overestimated - and yet we are somehow prone to forgetting. We’ve been indoctrinated into thinking anything important must be work - when the most important, meaningful and transcendent experiences is always so much more than work.
John Cleese on Play
Cleese’s little book on creativity is full of remarkable insights.
“Play happens outside ordinary life. You create boundaries of space and time to allow that to happen.”
John Cleese
He also mentions how liberating and exciting can be to have other people around to play with, to bounce ideas off. This was obviously true of the Monty Python team.
Sometimes I wonder what it might be like to collaborate on the writing of a novel. - I know some make it work brilliantly, but I can’t imagine how.
Nicci French is perhaps one of the best known examples in crime fiction. Nicci Gerrard and Sean French have combined their names and their writing talents and have created some fabulous stand alone psychological thrillers as well as an addictive eight book series about psychologist Freida Klein.
Although there are articles about how they manage it, I really can’t get my head around it. One of the main attractions of writing a novel is the ability to have everything one’s own way - at least up until the point where agents and publishers have their say.
Although writing is mostly a solitary kind of pursuit, we are very fortunate now to have thriving online communities where we can support each other.
And I do have some good friends who I chat to about this stuff and we spark ideas off each other, and occasionally can counteract each other’s blind spots.
It is in playing and and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.
DW Winnicott
In other words, we are able to be most completely and authentically ourselves when we play, when we are creative. And there’s something very special about those relationships where we nurture each other’s creativity
Watching The Beatles Play
I was looking forward to the Peter Jackson marathon three part documentary Get Back from the moment I heard about it, sharing every update and trailer.
As has often been said just recently, the Beatles are a huge part of our cultural history. Many of us have personal memories and associations bound up with them.
Since I was a small girl sitting cross legged in front of the TV I’ve loved the Beatles. One of my earliest memories is of my Dad singing All My Loving to me, as I was dropping off to sleep, knowing that the next morning before I was up he would be away on a rare business trip. As he was not a demonstrative man, this is a precious memory. Back then, trips to the cinema were a rare treat, but he took me to see The Beatles’ films.
I went to University in Liverpool. We were living in Everton when John Lennon was shot and the whole city went into mourning. The man next door, normally a tough guy, was wandering around dazed, with tears flowing freely down his cheeks. Unemployed and constantly short of cash, he had sold nearly everything of value he owned, including most of his records and his ancient record player. He still had all his John Lennon albums, and the Beatles albums.
I was half expecting to be disappointed when the documentary series finally landed. How could anything be half as good, even, as the anticipation. Instead it was so much better - not just for the music, which is a joy, but also for what it shows about creativity and how it works.
John Harris, in The Guardian, transcribes a scene where John Lennon was helping George Harrison, who was struggling with the lyrics for Something -
“Harrison: “What could it be, Paul? It’s like, I think of what attracted me at all.”
Lennon: “Just say whatever comes into your head each time: ‘Attracts me like a cauliflower’… until you get the word, you know.”
Harrison: “Yeah, but I’ve been through this one for about six months.”
Lennon: “You haven’t had 15 people joining in, though.”
Harrison: “No. I mean just that line. I couldn’t think of anything like a…”
John: [sings] “‘Something in the way she moves / Attracts…’ ‘Grabs’ instead of ‘attracts’.”
George: “But it’s not as easy to say…”
Lennon: “Grabs me like a southern honky-tonk…”
In between the music came endless conversations – about their history, what they would have for lunch, their hangovers
Harrison and Lennon: [singing] “Something in the way she moves / And like a la-la-la-la-la…”Lennon: “Grabs me like a monkey on a tree…”
Lennon and Harrison: [singing] “Something in the way she moves / And all I have to do is think of her / Something in the way she shows…”
Harrison: [sings] “‘Attracts me like a pomegranate…’ We could have that: ‘Attracts me like a pomegranate.’” [laughs]
Lennon and Harrison: [singing] “Something in the way she moves / Attracts me like a moth to granite…”
George: “Pomegranate.”
John: “Cauliflower.”John Harris’ transcription
I love the randomness of this, and the glimpse into how it works. It’s related to the advice for novelists to write a crappy first draft, and fix it later. It’s always possible to improve something which exists than to create from scratch.
In song writing though, it seems to do more than that. Simply having suitable placeholders means the absences don’t interrupt the flow during practice. Creating the right-sized shape and rhythm for the words when they finally arrive allows the playful, creative brain to generate something (not intended!) more meaningful.
When they are reaching for the right lyrics for Get Back and eventually settle on Tucson, Arizona it just sounds immediately right. I keep thinking well, it would, but that's because we know the song.
But watching them, it seems like more than that. It goes from vague and fumbling to absolute confidence straight away.
There's a magic in this which we can't quite understand but it's real.
And as soon as they know, they move on to the next bit. And they do just KNOW. Both of them. All of them. And as they move on they mumble in the right kind of rhythm where the missing words are - until they find something that fits - that means the right thing, and that sounds right.
As John Lennon says at one point, “It means the right thing but it doesn’t sing right.”
Watching Get Back (I won’t admit how many times I watched the whole thing through) I became totally hooked on Dig a Pony, a song which hadn’t really spoken to me at all before. It’s fascinating because some of the lyrics make sense and sing right, but some of them sound like John used the method he suggested to George of just singing anything which scanned - and kept it, regardless of whether or not it made any sense.
I read a very earnest piece analysing the lyrics and trying to decide on the meaning of each phrase, and couldn’t stop laughing. To me, some of the meaning is obvious, some may have personal relevance to writer or listener, and some is clearly surreal, but it’s all about the joy of creative word play.
Part of the pleasure for us lies exactly in that groping towards finding meaning. These surrealist, nonsense lyrics, like dreams, can take us on to the road to the unconscious, and away from every day rationality.
Creativity is damned hard work too
So much of Get Back is full of the of joy of creativity - and yet doesn’t once lose sight of just how much damned hard work is involved in releasing that joy.
The dedication to perfection is demonstrated as they practise performing Get Back, or Don’t Let Me Down, over and over again. There’s an enormous amount of drive and a real work ethic.
But in between all that hard slog, there are moments where the sense of fun breaks out, and they sing and play just for the joy of the performance. There’s a particular rendition of Two of Us where Paul and John are grimacing at each other, performing a mad ventriloquist style version. I really wanted to share a video here for you, but sadly Disney have taken it down as a copyright violation.
That joy still speaks to us after all these years - I don’t think those songs, those albums would have been loved half so much if these extraordinarily creative people had not enjoyed making the music. Even if sometimes they did get stressed and irritated with each other, and even though the Beatles were destined to break up all too soon.
What a brilliant gift they, and Peter Jackson, have given us in this fairly bleak time of Covid. I even forgive Peter Jackson those long and dreadfully boring Lord of The Rings films….
Oopsy, did I say that part out loud?
To quote a newly favourite song, “You can celebrate anything you want” - but I also suggest it has a corollary.
We don’t all have to like the same things - in fact, it’s pretty much certain that we won’t. Although as a culture we may have a kind of shared sense of what matters, our own creative DNA is entirely personal and unique. Follow that path. Stay on the fucking bus.
And this is what it’s all about…
"I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did’."
Kurt Vonnegut
Ann
If you have a novel opening or a full manuscript which may benefit from professional editing, please do check out my web page linked below, or come over to The Accomplice Page on Facebook to contact me and discuss your needs.
Let The Dog See The Rabbit
The Importance of Play - On Finding Joy in Your Writing Practice
John Cleese’s little book A Short and Cheerful Guide to Creativity
The Beatles
I know, it’s fifteen minutes. Worth it.
Ian Leslie, in The Ruffian - a really insightful piece of writing
Learning from The Beatles - this post too is exceptionally good
John Harris in The Guardian - Beatles on the brink
The Beatles, Get Back, and London - a great fifteen minute video
Jonathan Freedland, who loved Get Back
Alexis Petridis, who was more than a bit sniffy about Get Back