Thursday, May 13, 2010

Songwriting and a "Blue-Sky Mind"


For the Essentials In Songwriting Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt
A few years ago, when I began my journey as an artist, I found that the biggest hindrance to creativity was internal dialog. I would start to create and then stop because it didn't look right, I wasn't talented/gifted/creative enough, who did I think I was anyway...

And I would stop before I had even started.

Somewhere along the way, God revealed to me that I needed to turn away from that voice, press through, and create. Anything. It didn't matter if it was a stick figure. Creating was the point. Not the product.

Dan Wilt calls it "having a blue-sky mind."

I love the image that brings me: a wide-open space, deep blue and beckoning me to enter its depths. It's the process of turning off the internal editor and allowing thoughts and feelings and ideas to flow uninhibited over the pages of my heart, not judging or condemning or assessing. Just being and flowing.

I haven't painted or created much of anything in a while. So as I pick up the songwriting craft in a more purposeful way, I'm going to cultivate a blue-sky mind, expecting creativity to come forth filling the wide open spaces with an abundance of thoughts and ideas to play with, to create from, to explore...

How about you? Join me! Turn off that internal editor. Pull up a blue sky.
Brainstorm.
Dream.
Create!

1 comment:

  1. I love this blog!! When I was in a band and writing, I loved to create to give a song what it seemed to need and not necessarily just playing "chops". I love atmospheric sounds and textures, space, effects, etc. For me, Tears For Fears album "The Seeds Of Love" was definitely one of those creative endeavors, just as "Sgt. Peppers" and "Pet Sounds" was for another generation.

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