Please don't try to be profound
Just like being funny, it really doesn't work to aim for it
As she passed and I stepped to the side, I smelled pencil shavings. “A woman who smells of soft wood and graphite?” I thought, “What a profound lesson in paying attention!”
I considered what else I had noticed on my hours long walk around PLG and surrounds: several lost gloves, knit graffiti that says “you matter”, a gorgeous pair of pattern clashing leather boots (on a stylish woman), what I believed to be a wasp nest … such quotidian yet rich and meaningful details, surely.
And honestly, idk, maybe? But also, maybe not? I have no idea how the details I tried so hard to make matter this afternoon will wrap themselves around my brain in the coming days. And I don’t need to know, because trying to be profound is the same as trying to be funny. It doesn’t work.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a trap I fall into often. I want to make art that is important. I want to sing songs that move people. I want to write newsletters my readers find insightful. I want to be special. And like ~50% people in the room rn, I believe I am.
What I know, though, is that I don’t make great work when I thirst for it—when I set it as my intention. If I want those things listed above, the only course of action is to listen for and find reality and be in it and bounce it off myself. I have no control over the level of profundity I achieve, just the quality of the lens through which I see the world.
This week: memos on shaping that lens.
Big love and keep going,
Lucy
On finding a lens for reality
MEMO - Are you seeing what is there, or what you wish were there?
Are you accessing the unvarnished, (maybe) ugly reality of the thing you’re trying to write about or is there vaseline on your lens? Have you pulled the story too far into the realm of the dramatic? Are you trying to make the emotions neater than they are? Ask yourself: what exactly is right in front of me, or in my mind’s eye?
MEMO - Are you forcing or allowing?
Sometimes an idea isn’t ready to be fully written, and we try to force a finished work regardless. We hold the initial promise of an inspired line or catchy melody too tightly. We look for the next brilliant bit too intently or desperately. It can be hard to catch yourself in this act, but you will probably feel tense doing it—whether mentally or physically. Also, this is not to say ‘don’t draft!’ more to say ‘learn to know when the draft is not done and needs more time’.
MEMO - Are you trying to be great, or trying to be truthful?
I have written about the idea of grinding toward genius before. You sit down with the intention of writing a truly great song and the process becomes quickly turgid, if not also painful. I think this is because actual greatness comes from telling the truth in a new, interesting way. Actual greatness not necessarily easy to recognize as you’re doing it. If you catch yourself doing this, ask: what is the work trying to tell me? (As opposed to, you know, how do I want this work to perform excellence on my behalf, or similar.)
Let me know: What are some ways you keep your reality lens on?