This past week I felt a block in my heart...i couldn't find a melody. I was so pre-occiupied with things out of my control, those things that cause anxiety and heartache. I don't know what day it was last week but I started listening to a few of my favourite artists...like really listening...taking a few hours a day and digesting, analyzing, picking apart what in these songs made my soul move... I found after a few days of this I was so overwhelmed, so overstimulated that I couldn't find a melody or worth for my work. I was so in awe of these other artists that I started to question my own music and whether or not I could ever stand beside these people. Its a scary thing to have this happen... I than went into it deeper and though about my career...my idols...non of them were females...none of them sounded like I did. I sort of froze and said to myself " I hope I dont sound like the rest of those singer/songwriter/folk/ women that I hate, or I thought... why aside from old blues women( even then I dont have one favourite who stick out to me) do I have NOT one female musician/songwriter I admire? like really admire,,talking like how I admire Tom Waits... I questioned and questioned and questioned..and well yea you get the idea.
I had to talk it out with friends, mentors, fellow musicians.. I got the answer I was looking for in the end, but that's not what matters. What I realized is underneath it all...what drove the whole dialog was my fear for wanting to find value in what I create...my fear of " what if this is not good enough?" or " what makes something good enough?" and than I whispered into the air " tell me the answer" and literally not even a moment later I recalled an old poem that one of my guitar proffessors gave me last year in school...I kept in taped to the inside of one of my acoustic cases...I ran downstairs to my furnace room and within the hum of the heater that filled the space I sat in I read it aloud to myself...
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
That is translated through you into action
If you block it
It will never exist through any other medium
And be lost
The world will not have it
It is not your business to determine how good it is
Not how valuable it is
Not how it compares with other expressions
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly
To keep the channel open
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work
You have to keep open and aware directly
To the urges that motivate you
Keep the channel open
No artist is pleased
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time
There is only a queer, driving dissatisfaction
A blessed unrest that keeps us marching
And makes us more alive than the others
Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille
