Lessons on creation and how brains work
When making stuff is too hard.
Deepest apologies for the unplanned newsletter hiatus—the post I’d been trying to write for the past several weeks was A Big One (I bit off way more entangled concepts than I could chew) and I ended up wrapped up in so much confusion and self-loathing about it that I realized last Friday that I was probably better off scrapping it and just moving on. Combine that with several recurring bouts of mild screen-induced eye strain*, and there was just no way I was getting a newsletter out.
*This just happens to me sometimes; a few years ago the eye strain got so bad at one point that I could only use the computer if I was wearing sunglasses, which made for some really hilarious Zoom calls.
When I decided to abandon the piece I’d been wrestling with—which at last count was not even half finished and clocking in at over 3000 words—I became fixated on the need to write something for the sake of all you lovely people who signed up, for one reason or another, to get these posts in your inbox. Some of you pay actual money to support me via this newsletter (a thing I still have trouble wrapping my mind around, despite this being the case for some 7 years now), and some of you send me the loveliest email replies and/or post on social media about how great I am (which I also can’t believe). I can’t possibly get this much love and support from you all and not string a couple of words together in return, you know?
The thing is, when you get in the mindset of having to write for the sake of writing, it becomes harder and harder to actually write anything. It’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and you suddenly become aware of how badly you’re failing at sleeping; suddenly your self-consciousness about being conscious makes it impossible to fall asleep even if you’re bone-tired and know your body wants very badly to just sleep, dammit. I’ve run into the same problem with music; when I’m fixated on the need to practice for the sake of practicing—and I don’t have any actual goals in mind—suddenly my creative well is empty, motivation gone, and the act of toiling away at the piano seems utterly pointless.
That’s just the curse of doing anything that involves creation; sometimes you just don’t have it in you and then the awareness that you can’t create at that very moment puts you in a state of paralysis and it feels like the sky is falling. No matter how many times this happens to me, I always think, “Oh no, am I going to make anything ever again?”
Luckily, experience has taught me two things. The first is this: you can’t produce if you don’t consume.
When I feel like I can’t possibly produce a single thing, I know it’s time to just go into Pac-Man mode, chomping away at everything in my path (obviously metaphorically). I have to fill up the tank with everything I can: live shows and concerts, books, movies, art. But art alone isn’t enough—I have to also soak up as many observations and experiences as I possibly can: the feeling of open sky on a sunny day, the laugh of a friend’s baby, hilarious overheard conversations. In short, I just have to go out and experience the world in all its chaotic and majestic delight with my senses open and just absorb it all.
Update: the world is so beautiful.
The second thing I’ve learned: you can get the creative gears going again by creating in a different medium.
This was a harder lesson for me; I’ve been taught, directly and indirectly, that if you want to make good music, you have to pour ALL YOUR ENERGY into music and not let any precious inspiration or motivation get siphoned off into other areas. As a kid who was always drawing, painting, writing stories, and trying to invent new math theorems, I struggled with the idea that music had to be My One Thing even though I certainly loved it enough—but as an adult, I’ve struggled with the cold reality that there is simply not enough time in the day to do all the things I love and that for practical reasons I have to prioritize the thing that I have made my career.
Which is why, when I’m struggling to practice or write, I force myself to double down on the practicing or writing: you’ve only got two hours to get this done today, there’s no time next week so you'd better do it now, etc.
And yet, without fail, when I let myself get lost in a side quest of a skill purely for the fun of it, and I can practically feel certain parts of my brain lighting up again, boom! I can make music! And words! It feels almost like tricking myself into functioning, distracting the distraught toddler that is my mind with a new thing, until it’s happily trundling along and I can gently redirect it to the original thing that it got stuck on in the first place.
So I’ve been getting myself back to a point where I can make things again without wanting to chuck everything out a window. I’m taking walks, I’m riding horses, I’m sewing. In short, I am behaving like a young lady in the 1800s attempting to find a husband. (Mr. Darcy, I also play the pianoforte! Call me!)
Funnily enough, last night I went to a talk where a famous neuroscientist explained how the brain works, which was so fascinating and informative that I came away from it not understanding how “knowing how brains work” is not like, a required course for life. One of my most immediate takeaways was that endlessly scrolling news and social media is so bad for your brain that as a result of this talk, combined with Kate Wagner's excellent essay, I now think that as a society we should all throw our phones into the sea.
Just kidding. Electronic waste is terrible for marine ecosystems.
I’m badly summarizing and paraphrasing the concept, because I am not a neuroscientist, but doomscrolling is terrible for you because it essentially short-circuits the dopamine cycle, creating a habit of actual addiction that screws up your brain’s long-term ability to focus, remember things, or regulate your emotions. This is terrible news for me, a person who has historically spent so much time on social media that I have accidentally tweeted myself into the news multiple times and inspired a Snopes article, considering that making music requires me to focus, remember things, and regulate my emotions.
However! Tending to skills more complex than thumbing one’s phone has, thankfully, the opposite effect; apparently something about the brain’s reward cycle being tied to sustained effort over time is really good for brain health and function. Again, I am not a neuroscientist. What I do understand from all this is that my hobbies are SAVING MY BRAIN.
The science is clear. Taking care of my brain’s health means I’m better able to function, which means I can make music and write, activities that presumably all of you enjoy. Therefore, when I ride a horse, I’m doing it for your benefit.
You’re welcome, everyone.
Who knew crochet was so powerful
I was walking around New York City the other week (for my brain's health, you see) and I stopped by the Stonewall National Monument. (I’ve linked to an archived version of the page because I don’t trust it to remain up/intact amid current efforts to wipe anything remotely inclusive out of government properties, and because the current page has absurdly removed the last three characters from “LGBTQ+,” leaving only “LGB” for now. This is especially ridiculous considering that transgender activists were a crucial part of both the Stonewall riots and the larger movement for liberation and gay rights.)
There’s a plaque at the park that reads, “This park is kept living in fond remembrance of those whom we have loved long since, and lost awhile.” When I visited, there were trans flags, lovingly painted and crocheted, placed along the fence above the plaque.
I got weirdly emotional just looking at the crocheted flags in particular. It is so easy to be cruel when those at the top are modeling cruelty and egging others to follow suit, but seeing these little flags reminded me that there are people who are choosing care and kindness instead. It takes so much time and effort to knit or crochet (effort which is often downplayed because fiber craft is historically women’s work), so when you look at a little hand-crocheted flag like this, you become extremely aware of the care and time someone devoted to making it. Someone I don’t know made this with their own hands, and they did this to communicate to people they don’t know that there is someone who cares about them.
I think that's beautiful and hopeful. And it's why I refuse to lose hope even as an administration I did not vote for continues to force its misery upon us all. There are still—and will always be—so many people who are just so good, and you cannot change the goodness of everyday people by making pronouncements from on high.
All hail Amy Beach
This week I tricked people on Bluesky into giving me piano concerto recommendations and thus learned about Amy Beach's contribution to the genre.
This has everything you'd ever want in a piano concerto. How is the Beach concerto not played all the time??? (That was a rhetorical question, you don't have to answer that one.)