What I Learned About Creativity From My Kids
“Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one."
-Tom Waits, 2002, as quoted in GQ
The Self-Serious Artist
If you listen to my music even for a second you will immediately hear that I’m a little…self-serious, to say the least. There’s a part of me that wants to make sure I make something good or important. I know this is a big part of who I am. I know that more-often-than-not I must go to the depths of my soul and unearth my deepest truth in order to just write a damn pop song. I know this about myself. It keeps me engaged and interested and moved. But lately I’ve been thinking that the best moments in my music are when I’m the most childlike and free. Do you have this experience? I feel like this is true! I feel like the best moments are when the part of me that wants to prove my worth through song is too tired, or forgets, or is busy with something else, and the most-excited, most-child-like parts of me come out to play.
Let me backtrack for a second.
It is my experience that inspiration is a life force that wants to be known through us, that inspiration is a spirit or spirits that are looking for humans who will make them and their thoughts and feelings manifest in some way in reality. Songs are spirits looking for a songwriter. And it is also my experience that the friendlier we are, the more-open we are, the more-likely it is that these spirits of inspiration will want to do this communication through us. And what’s more friendly and inviting than our most child-like parts?
This Is Where the Kids Come in
When my wife and I had kids – first a daughter and then a son 5 years later – it was very soon that I saw how they were always playing and making things: drawings of huge colorful mountains, or monsters with long, sharp teeth, furry lamas made of felt, clay sculptures of hearts, massive lego cities. And it was the way they made these things that was a revelation to me. They made them with utter concentration, with a spirit of pride and celebration, and then immediately forgot about them and moved onto the next thing. Let’s for a second take apart these 3 aspects.
Utter Concentration
I have memories of my daughter a few years ago, in her room, listening to calm, quiet indie folk, sewing little pink and purple llamas for hours. She’d be happy to talk and hang out, but only if it didn’t get in the way of her flow and focus. Or in the case of my son, all the time he’s making these truly amazing Minecraft buildings — huge architectural feats filled with secret doors, waterfalls, blossoming cherry trees — and he’ll be just hyper-focused on making these things for hours.
Pride and Celebration
This is where the parents usually come in. My daughter invites one or both of us into her room, and she describes everything that went into her lamas – all of the materials and creative decisions and time that went into it. What I love about these moments is that I can still hear in my heart the soft feeling of affection in her voice, the sound of care and pride. She loves these things she’s made. Or with my son, he’ll invite my wife or me to sit with him and his Nintendo Switch, and he’ll point out all of the incredible things he’s built. And it always really is so incredible. And he feels really good and proud of what he’s done, of how he tried to do a hard and complex thing and he achieved that hard and complex thing. Like, literally yesterday, he showed me this music studio he’s built in his Minecraft world, and how the piano that he’s designed plays the opening notes of “Never Gonna Give You Up” (a classic!). And when he showed me the incredibly elaborate mechanisms that had to go into that, it blew me away. We’re talking hours of time and Youtube tutorials to gain this level of mastery.
Immediately Forgetting and Moving On
This is maybe my favorite part. They so quickly just move on after making the things. They are not precious about what they create after a very short time. We have hundreds of their old art projects around the house, in drawers, in our basement, on our fridge and walls. They’re everywhere. And once the kids are done with what they’ve spent hours making – just for fun, for nothing else but the fun of it – they pretty much completely forget about it and move onto the next thing. There’s no angsty comparing and competing; there’s no hanging their self-worth on whether what they made is “good” or “bad.”
Watching my kids do this process hundreds of times tells me one thing:
Making things is our natural birthright. We are built in such a way that we love making things, celebrating what we’ve made, and moving onto the next fun thing.
And all of this endless adult worrying and trying to control an uncontrollable thing (creativity and the outcomes of our creativity) is just a waste of time. It really is. In particular it’s wasting the time of all of the songs that want to get written through us. I’m learning this! I really am! I hope for you and your inner artist and for all the art that wants to get made through you, that you’re learning it too. :)
