The Creative Independent Professional and the Muse
October 29, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
When I work with entrepreneurs and people in transition, I see a lot of attachment to status quo advice. The same old regurgitated stuff is ubiquitous and plays into fear and limiting beliefs. It takes a long time to shift into what I call radical self-trust (the “R” in D.R.I.V.E.) because it contradicts what is so embedded in our belief system and reinforced by gazillions of writers who sell to these fears.
So to help clients crack upon the door just a bit to radical self-trust, I like to share success stories that I come across. A favorite is Neil Young. His responses to questions in this recent interview just blow me away.
Vintage Neil Young, Still Working for the Muse: “With his new album, Mr. Young has rejiggered his career and reconfigured his past.”
He speaks the way he writes lyrics: in terse, unadorned cadences full of plain one-syllable words. As far as career goes, he says, “I work for the Muse.”
When making albums, “it’s not like you have a real idea what’s going on,” he said. “You just start, and sometimes it happens easier than other times.” For the new album, “the songs came pretty fast, and they weren’t there in the first place, and they were there when I was done.”
For Mr. Young, faith doesn’t involve organized religion. It’s about walking among the trees on his Northern California ranch, “trying to figure things out,” he said. “How did I get to where I am? I mean, what happened? Where’s the guy who wrote the other songs? Where’s the guy who wrote a lot of the early songs? There are some songs I can’t even sing. I don’t even know who wrote them. But I know I did. When I listen to myself, I go, ’O.K., but I can’t do that now.’“
“I want every song to be coming from me, not coming from who I was or who I’m trying to be or who people think I am or who they want me to be,” he said. “All those things are out. It’s just got to be: ‘Is this going to flow like water through me? Can I swim in this sound?’”
Now, getting inspired is just the beginning. The big shift is knowing, and believing with ever fiber of your being, that the same Muse, flow, energy..whatever you want to call it..is always there for everyone. I can relate to typical reactions like “yeah, that’s really cool, but that’s Neil Young, not me with my problems, past issues, history, traumas, failures, screw-ups, bad karma, scarcity and constraints”. Uh huh…I know them all. So here’s an image, which conveys how one of my teachers helped me see the absurdity and insanity of believing in what you don’t want.
(Via NYT > Arts.)