Lately, I’ve developed an uncanny Pavlovian reaction to Andrew Bird. Whenever I play one of his album (it doesn’t matter which one), I can sit and work without thinking of the time or distractions. Even when I’m in the mood to listen to other things, it’s the only music that let’s me listen and work without feeling the urge to get up and have a mini dance party.
When I was a pre-teen and fancied myself a bit of a writer, I spent a summer break or two holed up in my room writing terrible fiction. At the time, Blur’s Parklife was all I could listen to on my old yellow Panasonic Shockwave with those cheap foamy headphones (horribly ugly but very comfortable). The whole album, just over and over and over.
I’m not entirely sure what is clicking between my mind and my ears when Andrew Bird is playing, but it works. Twyla Tharp talks about rituals in The Creative Habit. Each morning, Ms. Tharp wakes up at 5:30 AM, dresses, and takes a cab to the gym for a two-hour workout.
First steps are hard; it’s no one’s idea of fun to wake up in the dark every day and haul one’s tired body to the gym. Like everyone, I have day’s when I wake up, stare at the ceiling, and ask myself, Gee, do I feel like working out today? But the quasi-religious power I attach to this ritual keeps me from rolling over and going back to sleep.
It’s vital to establish some rituals – automatic but decisive patterns of behaviour - at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way….Turning something into a ritual eliminates the question, Why am I doing this?
Andrew Bird on La Blogotheque:
