I'm listening to the notes from Lin-Manuel Miranda about Hamilton. It's really enjoyable and frustrating at the same time, as he's reading his notes aloud. There isn't always context, since the note comes from a piece of the musical that he's talking about. Once, he said, "This can be applied to modern politics." What does this mean? No idea.
But Miranda is a really engaging, interesting, brilliant (and I mean that) person, so I don't want to stop listening to his thoughts, even though they're incomplete.
One of the things he talked about, though, was how a song came to him. He was riding through New York City (in a more detailed route than I'm going for here), taking the A-Train to get to a friend's birthday party. The train commute was long, so he was working on one of the songs that would wind up in Hamilton, only to be so taken in by the process of writing that he ended up only attending the party long enough to drink "half a beer" and then return home, composing on the train all the while.
He finished up with a thought (which I'm paraphrasing here, since I can't remember which song he was talking about), that music will take you where you need to go, if you let it.
I want to modify that a little: Art will take you where you need to go, if you let it.
I often think of Neil Gaiman's speech from a few years ago, and I think it fits in well with what's described in Hamilton, particularly the song "Non-stop", which has a refrain, "Why do you write like you're running out of time?" (This line has changed me so much that I not only have been writing this blog consistently, as I recently discussed, but I put it into almost every creative writing student's yearbook, save I made it an imperative.) Gaiman and Miranda are both hitting on the idea of creative efforts. Sure, contextually, Alexander Hamilton was writing this way because he was trying to form a new nation. Gaiman writes fantasy, horror, and the weird. Different kinds of creation, different kinds of writing, but the impulse is the same. And Miranda fits into this, too. Having learned more about the process to create the musical (or hip-hoperetta as I like to call it), I'm more and more impressed with the Miranda's abilities.
In my own writing, my own life, I don't feel that I'm necessarily making good art. I don't know if I'm ever going to contribute in the large-scale ways that Gaiman, Miranda, or (gasp) Hamilton. Well, I can correct myself: I know I'm not going to make that large of an impact. It's nothing particular (save, maybe, a nagging thought that, were I to do something remarkable, I would have likely figured out what that thing was by now), and I'm not even certain I would want to have the responsibility that such high art requires.
At the same time, it makes me wonder if my own ambition (or lack of it) is instead a precursor to something larger.
When I served my LDS mission in Miami, Florida, I often felt that I was one of the "planters", not one of the "reapers". This comes from the idea of missionary work as both planting the word of God and then harvesting ready souls--in a non-homicidal way, of course. For a long time, I was convinced that my job was to do the work and share the gospel, but not to help anyone become converted or change their lives. That was work for others to do at another time.
In terms of baptismal numbers--salfivic notches on the belt, as it were--I had only a few before my final three months. Then, in the last area where I served, I helped teach an entire family, who chose to get baptized together a couple weeks before I left. In other words, the great purpose of my mission was reserved for the end.
If that's a parallel to my life, then I'm unsure of how I feel about that. I didn't have an opportunity to stay long after the family was baptized--really, it was about three weeks, if I remember correctly. If my mission successes are an outline for how my life will be lived, I guess that means I'll die shortly after I get what I'm after.
But it also means that it'll come.
Well, if that's the case, the only way to prepare to make art is to do what Miranda did on that A-Train however many years ago: Follow the art to wherever it leads me.
But Miranda is a really engaging, interesting, brilliant (and I mean that) person, so I don't want to stop listening to his thoughts, even though they're incomplete.
One of the things he talked about, though, was how a song came to him. He was riding through New York City (in a more detailed route than I'm going for here), taking the A-Train to get to a friend's birthday party. The train commute was long, so he was working on one of the songs that would wind up in Hamilton, only to be so taken in by the process of writing that he ended up only attending the party long enough to drink "half a beer" and then return home, composing on the train all the while.
He finished up with a thought (which I'm paraphrasing here, since I can't remember which song he was talking about), that music will take you where you need to go, if you let it.
I want to modify that a little: Art will take you where you need to go, if you let it.
I often think of Neil Gaiman's speech from a few years ago, and I think it fits in well with what's described in Hamilton, particularly the song "Non-stop", which has a refrain, "Why do you write like you're running out of time?" (This line has changed me so much that I not only have been writing this blog consistently, as I recently discussed, but I put it into almost every creative writing student's yearbook, save I made it an imperative.) Gaiman and Miranda are both hitting on the idea of creative efforts. Sure, contextually, Alexander Hamilton was writing this way because he was trying to form a new nation. Gaiman writes fantasy, horror, and the weird. Different kinds of creation, different kinds of writing, but the impulse is the same. And Miranda fits into this, too. Having learned more about the process to create the musical (or hip-hoperetta as I like to call it), I'm more and more impressed with the Miranda's abilities.
In my own writing, my own life, I don't feel that I'm necessarily making good art. I don't know if I'm ever going to contribute in the large-scale ways that Gaiman, Miranda, or (gasp) Hamilton. Well, I can correct myself: I know I'm not going to make that large of an impact. It's nothing particular (save, maybe, a nagging thought that, were I to do something remarkable, I would have likely figured out what that thing was by now), and I'm not even certain I would want to have the responsibility that such high art requires.
At the same time, it makes me wonder if my own ambition (or lack of it) is instead a precursor to something larger.
When I served my LDS mission in Miami, Florida, I often felt that I was one of the "planters", not one of the "reapers". This comes from the idea of missionary work as both planting the word of God and then harvesting ready souls--in a non-homicidal way, of course. For a long time, I was convinced that my job was to do the work and share the gospel, but not to help anyone become converted or change their lives. That was work for others to do at another time.
In terms of baptismal numbers--salfivic notches on the belt, as it were--I had only a few before my final three months. Then, in the last area where I served, I helped teach an entire family, who chose to get baptized together a couple weeks before I left. In other words, the great purpose of my mission was reserved for the end.
If that's a parallel to my life, then I'm unsure of how I feel about that. I didn't have an opportunity to stay long after the family was baptized--really, it was about three weeks, if I remember correctly. If my mission successes are an outline for how my life will be lived, I guess that means I'll die shortly after I get what I'm after.
But it also means that it'll come.
Well, if that's the case, the only way to prepare to make art is to do what Miranda did on that A-Train however many years ago: Follow the art to wherever it leads me.