About this blog!

 Why do I write this blog? Because Bill enjoys it.  I am not trying to sell anyone anything and I am not trying to impress anyone.  I am a songwriter. Hence, the title to this blog.  And I intend to write a great deal about songwriting here, but this blog is more of a place to talk about creativity in general; songwriting is simply my vantage point.  At the age of 58, I have realized that, for better or for worse, my mind has been both productively albeit idly engaged in one creative pursuit or another since I was a child.  I am only now beginning to understand and embrace what has, at times, seemed like mere daydreaming.   One of several reasons to collect my observations here is to deepen my own understanding and to shine a light for others to focus and expose their own creative pursuits.  So I ask: Where does creativity come from? Why are some people incessantly creative?  Is creativity accessible and applicable only within the realm of the artistic, or can our lives become the reflection of our creative expression?

I may not be able to answer these questions now, but I intend to discover much in the attempt.  Creativity runs in my family.  My mother was an artist; her mother and sister were both artists.  She painted landscapes and portraits, sculpting clay and teaching junior high and high school art for years.    My father, while spending his life as a dentist in order to feed his family, defined himself as a photographer. He spent nearly all of his free time behind a camera or in the darkroom.  He had also longed in his youth to be a musician.  By introducing me to the music of the 30’s and 40’s, which became the soundtrack of my youth, and later to modern artists he admired,  he also taught me more about creative musical expression than anyone else, without knowing he was doing so.   With all of this creativity around me, I began writing songs at the age of 15. I didn’t know that I was becoming a songwriter at the time, the way that a pictorial artist or a novelist doesn’t know that they already are what it is they are destined to become.   I was simply going through the motions. 

 My wife is an artist; a highly skilled professional calligrapher and illustrator, whose work and desire to improve expands and inspires me. My daughter, however, was more creative as a child than my wife or I. She was often obsessed with creating with words and images and, later, music.   While it remains to be seen how she uses her creative seeds, it is obvious that she came by her proclivities naturally and without parental direction.

My guess is that if you are reading this, you are already aware of your own creativity. You may be a songwriter, or at least an aspiring one, or perhaps a novelist, vocalist, or landscape painter.  No matter,  I hope the general discussion of creativity sparks you and the specific focus on songwriting provides an entertaining framework.