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Words and Music

By Peter Lloyd

“Are they making that up as they go?” a friend asked me. We were gathered among colleagues in the bar of an upmarket hotel. All of us had worked together some time ago. It was a “Those were the days” kind of evening.

My friend who posed the question may have been paying attention to live jazz for the first time. Really paying attention, that is. Who hasn’t heard live jazz. But because my son was playing bass and offered up a solo inside nearly every number, she and all my friends were very attentive that evening.

Those familiar with the spontaneity and expressive excitement of jazz improvisation, recognized most of the timeless melodies as each song opened. They followed as the pianist wove the melodies in and around tuneful variations.

I did my best to explain to my friend what goes on with live jazz improvisation. Try it sometime. How can you explain? The answer to, “Are they making that up as they go?” which is Yes, leads inescapably to How?

Creativity experts like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explain the process as flow. In “Go With The Flow” John Geirland in Wired grabbed this definition from an interview with Csikszentmihalyi.

Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.

As a songwriter I’ve been asked, “Which comes first, the words or the music?” I’ve thought about this cat-and-mouse, yin-and-yang, chicken-and-egg aspect of songwriting enough to have even written a song about it. “Let Me Roll.” It begins,

Sometimes the words come first and sometimes the words won’t come
Sometimes the tune comes first and sometimes the song won’t come

Then the lyrics slip into a love song, comparing the mystery of songwriting and creativity to love, one of the other great imponderables of life. Are they similar? I don’t know.

I’ve heard great songwriters explain to interviewers that they think of the songs they compose as coming to them as gifts. As if the songs have already been composed and the songwriter fields them and brings them home.

Someday creativity may be understood to the point where we know exactly what happens when inspiration hits. Until then, at least for me, it helps to attribute the magic of creativity to gift.

See also:

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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