Last week, I was listening to Terry Gross’ rebroadcast of a 1996 interview with Willie Nelson. Terry Gross is the host of Fresh Air and is, I believe, among the best interviewers in the media today. Her combination of empathy, curiosity, and listening skills enable her to extract the most remarkable stories from her guests, night after night.
During the interview, Nelson revealed that he had written three of his top hits, ‘Crazy’, ‘Night Life’, and ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’…during one eventful week in 1960. At the time, Willie Nelson was still a struggling song-writer. After he wrote these three songs, he figured he might have the requisite song-writing chops, and this was all the impetus he needed to pack up his ’46 Buick and head off to the rhinestone-lined streets of Nashville to see if he could make a go of it.
What a week for Willie! Regardless of whether you are a big fan of Willie Nelson or not, it is extraordinary that the inspiration for these songs struck within the span of seven days. Patsy Cline picked up ‘Crazy’ and the first time she performed it at the Grand Ole Opry, she received three standing ovations. ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’ has been covered by a whole array of artists…including The Supremes, Elvis, and Dave Mathews. “Night Life” was one of Willie’s first big hits via Ray Price, and has become the most-covered country music song of all time.
This got me thinking about inspiration. How does it strike? In Willie Nelson’s case, what was going on in his world to enable him to create three classic songs in such a short time period? I guess we’ll never know. In fact, I wish Terry Gross would have asked THIS question…
For the rest of us, however, is there anything that we can do to cultivate inspiration and creativity…or does originality “just happen” out of the blue?
Fostering Inspiration
Andy Stefanovich, who is writing a book on innovation, and is the senior partner at Prophet, a strategic brand and marketing consultancy….believes that intentional, focused inspiration is a discipline that requires deliberate practice and becomes easier to achieve when five modes of inspiration are practiced. He writes about this in "The Inspiration Discipline." Review the following five modes in sequence, each of which will lead you to greater degrees of “difficulty”:
Stay tuned. I’ve rambled on enough for one day. Next week, we’ll be talking more about inspiration and innovation, and specifically what you can do to cultivate more of both…including exercises. Fun!
Talk to you then.