Here’s An Underrated Trick For Eliminating Writer’s Block: Experience More Art

Everybody is always so keen on silence and isolation.

The idea of going off into the woods by yourself and writing some magnum opus of a novel or a record, discovering yourself in the quiet, that’s a commonly revered story… in the current musical era, the idea usually leads back to that Bon Iver record.

But I hate that isolation, that is not how I operate. For me and maybe for you too, it is the dead opposite.

The more new music I can listen to, the more books I can read, the more interesting movies / visual art I can take in, the more it all feeds into my own creativity.

The Consumption Slump

For a while I was not consuming much new music or art. I’d hear a few new albums when a band I love dropped something new, like last year’s excellent Tera Melos album for example, but otherwise I stuck to what I knew.

_{seriously - tera melos delivered in 2017}

Lots of Hella, Death Grips, FlyLo, Aphex Twin, some of that Alex G (Sandy), a few throwbacks like Modest Mouse and Elliott Smith. The comfort zone.

In the tail-end of 2017 I hit a turning point… I needed something new. So I listened to 30+ new records in the month of December. Suddenly everything has changed - my brain is exploding with new ideas at all times. And the ideas come from so many different places…

I’m Listening to All of The Music Genres

For example, here are some songs that I discovered and loved recently:

Lightning Bolt - Saint Jacques

David Bowie - No Plan

Disasterpie - Beacon

From the noisiest and most energetic punk, to the most vibrant and gorgeous synthesizer music, with some Bowie to round it out. And there have been dozens of other songs that struck me too - from metal to neo-soul and all around.

As these songs and ideas stick in my brain, bouncing off each other, they naturally morph into new concepts. It’s not something that requires effort.

It’s like, the same way if I eat a cheeseburger my body just starts to digest it, if I listen to a few good new albums then my brain starts to digest those too. Within days I will be dying to get into my home studio and create new songs.

On a deeper level, it’s about experiencing life. If you sit in the studio all day every day, you won’t have anything to say with your art, at least for me that’s how it works.

Like David Bowie said, “Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you're pretty much on the way out...”

I need to experience feelings and ideas for a while so that I can then use my own music as a way to express my own thoughts, making music as a sort of reaction to or a building upon what I’ve heard and felt before.

Your Turn - How Can You Increase the Input of New Art In Your Life?

Listening to tons of new music has been one of the most positive changes in my life from 2017, even if it happened at the very end - and I’m thinking that 2018 could be one of my most musically exciting and inventive years since high school 10+ years ago. Fuck yes!

Do you want to try this? If you feel like you could use some more new art in your life, go ahead and give the “High-Information Media Diet” a try. Start a note on your phone where you can jot down anything you hear about - songs, movies, visual artists, books, etc - and try to actually check them out in your spare time each day.

For example I use a simple Spotify playlist to track new music:

Aim to take in one new thing per day, especially stuff that confuses you. It is an awesome feeling to make this a regular habit.

What do you think - is experiencing other peoples’ art a big part of your process? Or does it all come from within? I’d love to hear how you relate to this topic.