Episode 236
A question I get asked again and again in columnist seminars is: What technique can you use when you can’t think of anything? While I’m not sure my solution will work for everyone, in my case, unloading the dishwasher for inspiration has worked well. Usually something comes to mind. It doesn’t always lead to a column, but sometimes a nice shopping list comes out of it. But watch out! The technology I recommend also harbors the potential for frustration: Sometimes there is simply nothing in the dishwasher. Then you look stupid and the writer’s block clown keeps dancing happily in the octagon.
There is quite a bit of beautiful art that deals with the subject of literary jams, such as the Coen Brothers film “Barton Fink” or Geoff Dyer’s book “Out of Sheer Rage”. In the music world, too, various methods have been used for years to free oneself from the grip of the absence of ideas. Björk, for example, recommends going for a walk when hanging artistically in the shaft. It may help her, but all the time going for walks, I don’t know, that can’t always be the solution.
Billy Joel once mentioned that a pleasant view (preferably of an ocean) helps when writing. Apart from the fact that this statement sounds a good deal of privilege: If you live in Cologne, the setting Joel favors can only be produced to a limited extent. It’s better to look in the dishwasher. Country singer Garth Brooks is reported to bang tennis balls on the wall of his room whenever he gets stuck. There are probably also musicians who fight the terror of white paper with balloon knots, wood carvings or forging garage doors. Speaking of which… The most classic method for overcoming a difficult blockage in songwriting is the cover album. In the case of Bob Dylan, replaying old blues pieces is known to herald his great late creative phase. Dylan’s other trick, stealing and overwriting pre-existing songs, also works well. Even Robert Forster once helped an album with cover versions (“I Had A New York Girlfriend”) from the valley of poetic drought. Dylan and Forster have a clear advantage here over Virginia Woolf or JK Rowling (to name two famous writers who suffered from writer’s block): a prose text doesn’t cover very well.
More columns by Eric Pfeil
There are a surprising number of songs about writer’s block, but hardly any good ones. Which is not without a certain logic: where people sing about a lack of ideas, one should not expect a spark. One of the few positive, if rather unknown, examples is Gillian Welch’s 2003 published “One Little Song”: “There’s gotta be a song left to sing/ Cause everybody can’t have thought of everything”. Nonetheless, pieces on the subject can be commercially successful : The pop rapper Just Jack, for example, made it to number 74 in the UK charts in 2006 with his song “Writer’s Block”. The video for Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For?” also deals with the topic. Stefani keeps getting calls from her producer Jimmy Iovine, who wants to produce the next hit with her, but the artist is short of ideas. After she came across a notice that promises a remedy, a journey through “Alice In Wonderland” worlds begins: In California, one only knows extremes.
The lack of inspiration in the punk/hardcore environment is surprisingly often discussed. It means something, of course, but I don’t know what. “It’s all well and good with these songs about writer’s block,” one or the other may object, “but what about songs about dishwashers?” Well, there’s not exactly excess here either. Maybe that would be a good exercise to get past a songwriting block: writing a song about a dishwasher.