Now that we are one-twelfth of the way through 2024 and all the shenanigans about New Year Resolutions is over, it’s time to talk about how to create something you love and send it out into the world.
Forty-plus years ago, the band DEVO made an album that took them from near-obscurity to the top of the music charts. In “The Story Behind Devo’s Surprise Break-out Hit Whip It,” founding member Gerald Casale talks about how the band worked:
“[Bandmate] Mark and I kept sketch books and lyric books. We were both artists. We would bring in and share everything we had come up with creatively into the studio, and we would lay it out on a table, and anybody in the band could look at what we had been trying to write or what we were thinking. Mark…would start bringing in things that we didn’t create together in the rehearsal hall for us to listen to if we liked something. I would diligently listen to everything he had brought in…
…And Alan came up with what became the famous “Whip It” beat, which we thought at the time was so cool and strange, and we just loved it because it didn’t really sound like any other beat that anybody was doing. It was kind of like jazz meets disco, and only Alan could do a beat like that because he came from a jazz background where he was a super-accomplished drummer before Devo….
…And I had these lyrics I had written already, that for six months I had no uses for because they were so strange. I thought nobody’s going to like them. They’re not rock and roll. And I wrote them only because I had been reading Thomas Pynchon’s book Gravity’s Rainbow, and in it he created all these poems and limericks that were satires of American exceptionalism. Like, “Horatio Alger, you’re number one. You’re special. It’s only you. You can do it.” And it’s this whole propaganda of America that keeps people and capitalism going. And I thought they were so funny and so clever. I’m laughing out loud in my own bedroom alone reading this book. I thought, I want to make one of those. I want to make a Tom Pynchon kind of limerick, and I wrote “Whip It” in one night in my bedroom.”
So “Whip It” came together because band members did what they were into, what made them laugh.
They were musicians who got inspired by each other, by their training, by other art forms, and by other bands.
Casale says,
“My heroes were the bands that were both artistically valid and popular, because that’s the hardest juxtaposition in the world. It’s easy to be artsy and obscure and bum everybody out. And it was easy to create crap that was so dissolute that the next year you couldn’t even remember it because it was so bland.”
While working on “Whip It,” Devo was told that the record company didn’t like their stuff any more and wanted out of the five-record deal. The band went out that night and played a sort of a “screw you” gig, giving the audience and each other their full attention.The album was released, “Whip It” rocketed to the top of the charts, and the record company executives changed their minds about dumping DEVO.
Art is the Big Yes–Marvin Bell, poet
So…how do you create something you love and send it out into the world?
In my experience, creating takes full commitment to playing with your own ideas.
Steep yourself in the raw materials. Get into your ideas and take them somewhere you find entertaining. Get obsessive. Be patient with where the project takes you.
Writing, like any art, requires skill, so learn your craft. Read compulsively. Have heroes in other artists or writers whose style you like.
The world isn’t set up for this kind of commitment (unless you count social media influencers as heroes). You have to make it happen yourself. Create an ecosystem that helps you flourish as you make this thing.
Then, once the creating is done to your utmost ability or satisfaction, make another full commitment, this time to the process of getting it out into the world. You won’t know what that will look like until it starts happening.
In my experience working with writers, getting a book published is never an accident. It takes curiosity and a form of devotion–to the project, to yourself, and to the eventual reader.Take the time to learn how publishing works. Make friends with other writers. Make room for serendipity.
Commit, commit, commit!
Cheers,
Pat
I’m back from New Zealand, which was a hugely enjoyable and meaningful experience. My brother and his family are four of the funniest and kindest people you could meet. (Hi Mike & T! Hi TBCG!)
I swam in the ocean, bathed in the mud, slipped in the Pak’N’Save, strained a muscle playing ping pong, did some laps in the pool, ate hokey pokey ice cream, toured the Weta special effects workshop, went up the Sky Tower, took a tiny train up and down a big hill, soaked in the hot pools, ate delicious food, sipped Chardonnay, had my first French 75, and loved every minute of it.
What a country, what a summer, what a great time.
Book Bag
The Axeman’s Carnival, by Catherine Chidgey
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022
I did not expect a novel written from the perspective of a magpie to be gripping. It’s funny, smart, and filled with tension and the threat of violence. The story takes unexpected turns that had me on the edge of my seat.
An enthusiastic ten thumbs up.