How? How did he know to write this post today? How did he know that these have been the things swimming around in my head the past few days? That I have been filled with copious amounts of self-doubt (yet again!) over how I am going to write a really good piece of prose for uni and to know, to be able to tell when it is even remotely good enough? To not end up throwing out the baby with the bath water because I can’t tell what’s good and what isn’t because I convince myself that NONE OF IT is good and I can’t critique myself objectively? HOW DID HE KNOW THIS?
He has such lashings of self-belief! To be ssooo sure of yourself must be incredible! It really must be. What a way to be in life! To just KNOW what works and what doesn’t. To go through life feeling really great about working with someone and then, when it gets too stagnant just…cut your losses and move on. NEXT!
Except – you can’t escape yourself in that regard. What if YOU’RE the one that’s the weak link in the chain. The injured player on the field? There are stories aplenty of sports players staying on the field with broken limbs, etc.
I felt one of the comments I saw made a very valid point. They said to Jim that they saw his point but followed it with “…but is art sport? How much of the chemistry do you compromise in order to hit the big time.”
I wish I could have the courage of my convictions like he does. Yesterday I was thinking about what he had said about the writing for Once Upon A Time. How, at the crunch point he literally bullshitted his way into convincing Jimmy Iovine that he had songs written for the recording sessions coming up. He had NOTHING – so he tells it, but he to Jimmy “No sweat. It’s all good. I’ll have it by the time we get into the studio.” I mean, fuck off!!! That’s some swagger! And, true to form, he produces lyrics for Alive And Kicking, All The Things She said, Ghostdancing, Sanctify Yourself (which he now can’t bloody remember!) and Oh, Jungleland (there’s that “kid called hope” again!), among others, for the album.
I have written an essay out twice already, and probably will do several more times and will most likely ditch everything unconvinced that any of my writing is at all any good. All of it is an exercise in self-analysis and self-reflection. Objective forms of these! Essential for being a good writer! If I can’t see the wood for the trees, “the road for the tears”, then how am I ever going to learn? How am I ever going to be able to truly judge my own work?
Perhaps I wouldn’t want to be in Jim’s glorious position of thinking that everything I write is fucking terrific and if it isn’t, I KNOW it will be, because I’m just awesome. Perhaps it is all an exercise on his part to convince himself as much as everyone else? I don’t know!
But it was good to read that, despite how it looks on the surface, that things just come to him and he’s such a wordsmith, it all just magically falls into place, that… IT IS TOIL, even for the likes of him. I still come away from it with a sense that he is waaaaay more sure on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to his writing. I envy that aspect of it. I envy his undying faith in his own ability. It’s ridiculously attractive.
I don’t want two weeks of turmoil. I can feel it bubbling away within myself. Never being sure of anything. I know I just have to find a way to work through it. To “trust the process.” But in the past few days I am questioning why I am putting myself THROUGH this bloody process in the first place!
I keep telling myself I’ll learn. If I keep writing. If I just keep writing, I will start to feel my way through it. It will be only by doing that I will learn.
While typing this out I remembered writing down about wanting to ask Jim about this process about how he knows what’s good and what’s not when it comes to his writing. I posted this pondering on the other blog as it was all to do with uni and I try and keep the uni stuff and my personal stuff, the “off topic” stuff – for the most part – separate from this Minds/music blog. Dare I think he went and read my other blog? Nah. Hell of a coincidence though, and bloody timely, as I face yet other of my personal existential crises. I’m an existentialist at heart.
I may well be “a whole ocean in a drop” – but that’s just due to the fundamental complexities of every human being. All that “baggage” we all carry around with us. But, in the grand scheme of things, we truly are just a drop in the ocean. A blink in a life of existence. Jim’s just lucky that many people got to see him blink. How many of us blink without notice by others? Blink without even realising that we blinked ourselves?
Is Jim a great spotter of potential? He seems to think so, as he as spoken about it before. I take heart in that thought but believe I delude myself with the thought that he spotted some potential in me. That those interactions in the past were borne of that notion.
