Tag: inspiration

I have an hour between testing sessions at schools, so I’m sitting outside in my car listening to Howard Stern’s interview with the great Neil Young.

The two spent a great deal of time discussing Neil’s songwriting legacy and what inspires him. Neil spoke about the ideas that come to him as a gift. When he gets an idea, no matter where he is or what he is doing he stops and takes care of the idea right then. His ideas, he said, come to him out of the ether.

Howard chose that time to play one of Neil’s greatest hits, “Ohio,” the lyric story of the murders at Kent State so many years ago. The inspiration came from the Time magazine cover that captured the horror of that day, an image that drove Neil into the woods where he sat on a rock until he had captured the song. It didn’t take him long–many of his songs came to him quickly.

He made me think a lot about inspiration. Some days the ideas flow like a wide open faucet and I’ll end up with five or six posts without breaking a sweat. That doesn’t mean they’re all great, but that’s not the point. Someone else, says Mr. Young can decide if what one writes is good or not. The world has plenty of critics.

Other days no ideas come. It’s like I’m knocking on a door, but nobody answers. On those days I just start typing. Sometimes what happens is surprisingly good, but usually it gets the delete treatment. I try to capture my ideas as soon as they hit me, but many float in and out of my head before I even recognize them as ideas. What I’d really like is for Neil Young’s creative genius to be magically implanted in my brain.

Fun fact: Did you know that Neil Young and Rick James once roomed together and played in a band called the Mynah Birds? They weren’t yet out if their teens.