Lyrics by Indi Riverflow

There are two types of blocks. The first is a true void: you have nothing to express; your artistic endeavor is predicated on some artificial notion of activity without any impetus. All I can say is, if you find this to be your situation, that you are not ready to create. You must first go out and find your artistic purpose. Study from the perspective of a non-artist for now, practice being an attentive audience, and learn the techniques which you will be able to employ, once you have found a vision.

For everyone else, the problem is usually not a poverty of ideas, but a crippling panorama of them. In a universe of infinite possibilities, the artistic process generally gums up on selecting among them, being unable to value any one idea over another in a meaningful way.

For this, we employ conceptual clarity. What ideas are in play? Do they integrate or conflict? Is my problem the result of trying to do too much at once? Am I hung up on perfectionism and unwilling to settle for anything less than the epic, world-changing epiphany before I proceed?

Art is nothing more and nothing less than a set of willful choices. Every stroke is a choice, a statement of values. It is your choice. You make this choice with the confidence of knowing you are doing so in a context that places the current project into your work as a whole, and the canon of your art. You are a part of the Great Work. It is infinite.

The journey of a thousand songs begins with a single breath. Don’t judge your ideas on arrival. Let them come out! All the malformed, impractical, ridiculous notions…if you have nothing else, start there! Be unafraid to see awful art spew from your elite fingers, and watch what wonders wash in on the wake.

Detach from the misbegotten misadventure, knowing that it is nothing personal; you merely don’t like it. Study it. Why does it fall short for you? What was it trying to be? How can this unsatisfying piece be carried along to fulfill its potential?

Why am I doing this? If you are stuck, ask, simply, why am I working on this piece? What do I want it to say? What values am I trying to convey: emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and technically? What is the purest, shortest route to that result in my medium?

Art, literary or otherwise, involves the transmission of values from artist to audience. This is true whether the medium is literary, visual, or musical. The artist presents a set of choices in the arrangement of a fairly constrained set of coded values, which becomes a highly nuanced system conveying ideas of quality. When artist and audience agree, quality has been conveyed. Joy!

You can not know your potential audience, but they will know you…the part of you that they will see in your creation. You look like a very different person after a long, mangled night of partying than you do freshly bathed and groomed. You may be a lot more fun in the crazy wee hours, and you may find that you are dry as a desert when you try to create within conscious constraints.

The trick of the artist is to be both…to let your mind get drunk on ideas, caution thrown to the winds, knowing that you will be by again, in a more serene state of mind, to tidy things up. You are artist and audience both…but to express them simultaneously is what is known popularly as “self-consciousness”. It is death to many a talented artist.

Creating a critical faculty is important for every artist. Review the characteristics of those who have mastered your art; learn to evaluate the work of your influences, as well as those you distinctly dislike, without the taint of preference. A wise critic does not ask “is this good?” but, rather, “in what way is this work successful? What goals does it achieve, or fail to, in my estimation?” This is nuanced critique.

“The critic” is antithetical to “the artist”. If you are stuck on perfectionism, the “critic” is too involved in your generative process. On the other hand, studying your unsatisfying attempts with an internally critical eye is the path to achieving clarity.

Balancing your internal critic with your internal creator is the key to a flowing process. Let the mad artist experiment, review the findings with your trained analytical faculty, and in tandem the two opposing forces of will work to push and pull on the piece, refusing to let either control the floor until the wild-eyed artist and the sober critic agree that we have some good shit here.