The Great Crossword Puzzle

One technique that I find helpful in songwriting is to imagine, especially when the work is not flowing easily, that the perfectly constructed song already exists. It’s like a crossword puzzle already devised, but with the answers not yet revealed.

During the creation of every song, there are many points at which I feel completely stumped. I tend to forget those moments later on, when the song is finished. It looks so right then, so simple in its completed form. How could it have been so hard to write?

But when I’m actually writing, I hit many roadblocks along the way. A melody I liked yesterday seems trite today. A lyric line doesn’t make sense, or seems clunky and unconversational. As I’m trying to solve the puzzle of the song, I often have to erase my previous attempts at solutions, because they’re so obviously wrong. I start over, again and again. As I do, I believe in the as-yet-unfound solution, the true song that’s yet to emerge.

But what am I’m believing in, anyway? Unlike a crossword puzzle in the newspaper, an unfinished song has no actual, pre-written solution. So, is it foolish to act as if there is one? One might think so, except that the technique seems to work. By visualizing a solution that already exists, I bring it into existence. Perhaps this is a songwriter’s take on the “law of attraction” recently popularized in “The Secret”, but expressed in many wisdom throughout the ages. Ask, and you shall receive. If you build it (believe in it) they (the answers) will come.

I do wonder, during times of creative difficulty, whether the technique will finally fail. Perhaps this song, finally, is the one that's unsolveable. But my experience as an artist has taught me otherwise.

Again and again, I find that the intended song always does exist, even if it's temporarily beyond my field of vision. When I am patient and let the words and music unfold naturally, eventually they fall into a harmonious order, which seems perfectly natural. The completed work has the sort of internal logic I associate with things like Rubik’s cubes and mathematical equations. This leads me to believe that works of art are somehow mirrors of the many other perfect and beautiful structures that also exist in the universe. As artists, we may bring about a new interpretation of that greater harmony, but it already existed before we came along. Our works of art come from us, but are independent of us.

This principle can apply to my life as well. Even if I don’t understand or fully believe that my life will ultimately grow to take on some complete and meaningful shape, I can believe that it will...and that it already does. I can consider this at times when my life seems nothing more than a tangle of disorganized scribbles on the page.

Slowly but surely, just as I grope for the right lyric or chord, I move toward my life’s destiny, in assurance that it already is fully formed and complete…and that it needs my part to fulfill its promise.