Words To Live By

On Creative Manifestos & Keeping Hoping Machines Running

Sometimes you create on a need basis.

I was recently invited to give a creative workshop and figuring it was one of the few things in the world I actually knew quite a lot about, I thought I’d give it a go.

So I went searching through the wilds of the internet for a good creative manifesto to share. None that I could find were quite what I was looking for, so recognising that the whole point of a creative manifesto was that it set out a personal way of viewing the world or an artistic practise, I decided I would write my own, especially after noting that 90% of the ones I could find were written by men and feeling there should be more lying around in the psychic debris of the internet written by women. Trying to distil the way I felt about creating things into an actionable set of suggestions was much harder than I expected.

I thought about the postcard from Kevin Morby (read his Substack here) I kept stuck on my wall, along with a note to self, things I liked to look at to remind me of something I knew, and I went from there.

LO CARMEN’S CREATIVE MANIFESTO FOR WRITING SONGS & OTHER THINGS

1.    Work harder. Persistence is the key. Turn up, tune in, turn on. You’ll ride waves of lows and highs and despair and drowning but if you just hang on, you might get that short lived tremulous thrill of writing some good words.

2.    Art is its own reward. Create out of love or because you have to. Creating something because you want to be noticed or acclaimed tends not to work out so well. Create something you love so much you want to sit beside it forever.

3.    Walk on the wild side. Follow your instincts. Do whatever feels right. Ignore all rules, especially if they’re from so called professionals. Anyone who makes rules for creative expression or tells you ‘the right way’ to go about things has got it wrong - we all know rulebreakers make the most interesting things. Standards are for standard bearers. Different things work for different people at different times. There are no secret answers.

4.    Watch the world go by. Listen to everything. Choose to see the world around you though a lens of wonder. Everything is beautiful in its own way, including so called boring everyday things; supermarkets, bills, taxes, the bus, trees. Only boring people get bored.

5.    Take notes. Gorgeous words, brutal phrases. Mystical melodies. Character descriptions. Places that make you wonder what’s behind the doors. Review them once in a while. You’ll find you’ll be surprised and inspired.

6.    Set small goals and achieve them. Write one paragraph. Jog for one minute. Compose a lovely couplet. Make a list of words or rhymes you like. Writing is a muscle.

7.    See what happens. Creativity is the same as play. Nobody ever taught you how to play, you just worked it out. Everyone can do it. Pretend your words are toys and nobody’s watching.  

8.    Imagination plus effort is how you create. If you wait for the perfect moment or the perfect inspiration to appear, you might wait forever. Let go of fear and launch yourself in without too much thought. If you’re too afraid of failing to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard or fretboard) you’ll never get anywhere. Scientists estimate 70,000 thoughts go through your mind per day, just pick one and write about it, it doesn’t have to be anything important or extraordinary.

9. Trust that the words know more than you do.  Songs and people are equally mysterious, sometimes you understand things on a deeper level than you realise or know what will happen before it happens. Writing makes sense of things.

10. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Don’t show them. There’s no pressure, no right or wrong. Write for yourself. You don’t need to talk about it or show anyone until you’re ready. Trust yourself, you’ll know when it’s ready or if it’s something that is just for you. Sometimes you need to write a lot of stuff that’s not for sharing before you find the right words that you want to show to the world.

11.  Sing your own blues and own your own story. Writing is empowering and transformative. Write about things that hurt or are ugly or that you want to make go away. Bear witness. Illuminating darkness is an important and valuable pursuit.

12. Play tricks on your mind. Our creative minds are naturally rebellious and don’t like to be told what to do. If you really want to write but your mind is blank, try doing something where it’s physically impossible to write. Take a shower, drive a car, walk til you’re lost. Take your notebook with you and jump out of the shower if necessary, pull the car over to the side of the road, write down that thought.

13. It’ll happen. Or it won’t. Don’t stress. Some things need to gestate longer than expected. If you feel stuck, write something else for now, like a shopping list or to do list or your will. Send a productive email or do something useful for yourself.

14. Look for connections. They are everywhere when you start looking, especially loose ones.

15. Consume art. Listen to music, new and beloved. Read everything, including street signs, recipes and obituaries. Flip through books and TV guides. Triggers are everywhere if you are open to them.

16. Observe deeply. Meditate on a song or look at your object or person of interest and think on it from various perspectives, from 360 degrees. Think about witnessing yourself from someone else’s perspective or from the past or the future.

17. Everybody’s got a story. If you don’t feel like telling your own, tell someone else’s.

18. Sleep. Nap. Daydream. Dreams know things and have a way of showing us a way forward, or a different way, if you pay attention to them.

It might change as I grow but I think I can get behind this statement of artistic intent for now. Deciding what matters to you and what your core beliefs are is a really interesting challenge to set yourself as a human being, I recommend it. Maybe we should all have to write one on our twenty first birthdays, to be revised at leisure at important junctures in life.

Here are some of my favourite manifestos.

Woody Guthrie cut to the chase and knocked the personal manifesto out of the park with his famed 1943 New Year’s Rulin’s, including No. 19: Keep Hoping Machine Running:

Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Rulin’s

Amongst a lot of other wise stuff, Pussy Riot said ‘Life is a quest of coming up with your own. It’s kind of fun to be a pain in the ass of the status quo’.

If I had to pick a writer of a spiritual bible to live by, Willie Nelson is the person I’d turn to. He was invited to write Ten Rules For Life for his 88th birthday by We Transfer, and its pretty great:

Lee Scratch Perry managed to communicate so much to the world through his gigantic, mind altering gifts of music, often without even any words, and the manifesto he wrote shortly before he moved on to the real astral plane is full of great wisdom - my favourite is No. 1: Remember that life is an echo, it always gets back to you:

Apparently in 1977 Human League (when they were still called ‘the Future’ sent out a typed band manifesto to labels rather than a demo. I guess it must have hit the spot somewhere.

Godard’s 1970 manifesto ‘What is To Be Done’ is a strong call to arms and declaration of artistic intent, in part as beautifully obscure as his films:

Godard’s manifesto, part one - click the link above for the rest

Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, first created in 1975 and subtitled Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas, are not exactly a manifesto, but prompts or suggestive ideas that encourage creativity. Click here to get served one. Or here to buy a pack of cards to keep at your fingertips (or for an inspiring Xmas present idea!).

Memphis artist/producer Jim Dickinson (Big Star/ T Model Ford/Rolling Stones/Willy DeVille/Ry Cooder) wrote a magnificent production manifesto and you can and should read more about him here :

The : nature of the present creates in Man a desire to capture the moment. Our fears of extinction compel us to record- to re-create- the ritual ceremony. From the first hand-print cave painting to the most modern computer art, it is the human condition to seek immortality. Life is fleeting. Art is long. A record is a "totem," a document of an unique, unrepeatable event worthy of preservation and able to sustain historic life. The essence of the event is its soul. Record production is a subtle, covert activity. The producer is an invisible man. His role remains a mystery. During the recording process there is an energy field present in the studio- to manipulate and to maximize that presence- to focus on the peculiar "harmony of the moment" is the job of the producer. Music has a spirit beyond the notes and rhythm. To foster that spirit and to cause it to flourish- to capture it at its peak is the producer's task.

It’s not hard to see why Bob Dylan told Daniel Lanois "If you've got Dickinson, you don't need anybody else." (Harp Magazine, May 2003)

Nashville artist and producer Cowboy Jack Clements typed out these band member rules and stuck them on the wall in Sun Studios, featuring the wise reminder ‘Remember that it only takes three minutes to cut a hit record’:

Cowboy Jack also wrote these ‘ten commandments’ for songwriters and they always reverberate for me. Hatch Show Prints made this beautiful letterpress poster version.

These sage and widely shared words of artistic advice from Patti Smith have taken on a life of their own as words to live by, and really can’t be surpassed.

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency. Life is like a roller coaster ride, it is never going to be perfect. It is going to have perfect moments and rough spots, but it’s all worth it.

(Patti Smith: Advice to the Young". Interview with Christian Lund, the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, August 24, 2012)

Keep hope running, keep your name clean and send me your manifestos, or any great ones you stumble across…

LC x