Prolificity

pro·lif·ic Pronunciation[pruh-lif-ik]
–adjective
1. producing offspring, young, fruit, etc., abundantly; highly fruitful: a prolific pear tree.
2. producing in large quantities or with great frequency; highly productive: a prolific writer.
3. profusely productive or fruitful (often fol. by in or of): a bequest prolific of litigations.
4. characterized by abundant production: a prolific year for tomatoes.
[Origin: 1640–50; < ML prōlificus fertile. See prolicide, -fic]

My creativity tends to ebb and flow with the seasons. It's surging right now and it's almost freaky. In the past a wave like this would be a side effect of serious neurotransmitter party and I'm almost surprised that it's happening now that I'm taking balance pills. But I'll take it! I got really scared the other night but a calm voice inside my head (it's always nice when the kind voices speak up, haha) gave me a pep talk, told me not to second-guess myself and let me know it's okay because this is what God stitched me together to do! It's natural. It doesn't make me cocky as long as I acknowledge that the songs are gifts from God and just a method of telescoping ideas and feelings into something other people can enjoy.

Last night I finished a song I wrote the chorus for at least three years ago. Then I just started playing a new chord progression that I might match up to old lyrics or make new ones for. I don't know - that's the cool thing. I'm going through my old journals and have found at least 10 songs that are 75-90% finished and just need for me to pick up my guitar or sit down at the piano with a fresh, blank mind and play through to decide how it'll be. I try to let the song decide what it'll sound like in the final analysis. I hate for anything to be too crafted or contrived.

The last thing a songwriter wants is to fall into a rut of writing with the same meter or theme. I'm writing a song making fun of myself how I always try to be ironic and clever in all my lyrics. A songwriter's greatest fear is having the well run dry and thinking "is this all I've got?" Hemingway commented on that in A Moveable Feast:
"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. . . . If I started to write elaborately . . . I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline."

In a conversation about being creative with someone who doesn't have it in him, I said an artist can't help it. You don't have a choice. You create whatever it is because you have to because it's what and who you are. So call me crazy - I'll never be normal by any conventional standard so I'm just rolling with it.

It's getting to be studio time again. I almost have to lay it down and then memorize it from there because I'm not one of those poets who go around with the ability to spout their own crap from memory unless I've been playing it for years. But it'll be my fourth record and I'm looking forward to it.