I think there are two forms of creative energy. One is "energy A," which is an analytical energy where you layer things up track by track, then zoom in and work on little details. The other is "energy Zed," which is a Zen-like performance energy that is spontaneous and improvised and produces a different animal. Both are useful and important. The smart process involves harvesting performances then analyzing them and layering them up. Initially you might just look at rhythm, then maybe you look at melody, then harmony, then timbre. Each time you put down a layer of performance you slow it down and analyze it. Musicians need to be aware of how they work. Sometimes you just need to flip it and do it the other way and see what happens. Working backwards is an exploratory process. I love diversions and I keep on following them, which makes the process a lot longer.
Peter Gabriel, Guitar Center Sessions
I’ve been returning to a resource that I draw upon once a year or so.
When I want to think about the creative process, I go back to a 90-minute episode of The South Bank Show that features Peter Gabriel, shot while he was working on his fourth solo album (the one called Security here in the States).
“I worry sometimes I’m taking too long,” Gabriel says at one point, “but I don’t give a damn if the result is worth it.”
Orson Welles once said that films are never finished, they are simply abandoned. In my own creative life, I have felt often that sense of overwhelm that comes from having projects sprawl and expand. That has happened to me with audio, with film projects, and — God help me — with a couple of books I have under contract.
That’s why this South Bank episode is so interesting. Gabriel here is not the Gabriel of Sledgehammer fame. That success is still several years off. Instead, we see Gabriel the mad scientist, an Oppenheimer in his Los Alamos bunker, taking time to get the gadget just right.
What I mean is, there is serious project sprawl going on here. However, even though the songs, and the songwriting processes, take months to complete, I don’t get the sense of panic that I detect in the Welles quotation above. Gabriel is not afraid of the process, and you always get the sense that he is confident the process will end.
I am delighted by this. The work can develop organically, in this process, and new ideas can spring from the process. It amazes me, listening to the earlier footage in the episode when Gabriel is talking about a repetitive sequence that would eventually become “The Family and the Fishing Net,” he modulates into another chordal sequence (originally part of the same proto-song) that will become the end of “San Jacinto.”
At another point, he is demonstrating the Fairlight CMI sampling system, and playfully sings “Mommy” into the microphone. As he manipulates the sound, you hear a sonic pattern that (to my ears) is the seed crystal of a much later song, “Mercy Street,” from a much later album.
That’s another takeaway from watching this process: Peter Gabriel saves literally everything. I’ve confirmed this in watching other interviews and documentaries about his process. When he comes into a studio, there is literally a recorder running at all times. The point is to capture everything, and then to go back and edit it later, to manipulate and layer it. But it all starts in that unconscious “capture” stage.
This is that “energy Zed” that Gabriel is talking about above. It is the free creative flow, when you are associating and not editorializing. You trust that the editing and layering will come later, but at this “Zed” phase you are collaborating with others — and with yourself — to bring out the most combinations of ideas you can manage.
When I set down to my own process of writing, I have adopted this practice. At this point (since I was released from the writer’s block I suffered from for several years) I have managed to generate about three-quarters of a million words.
So the good news (for me) is that I have become comfortable with the generation process. The bad news is that I am still anxious about that second part of the process, what Gabriel calls “energy A.” This is the ‘analytic’ and layering part of the process.
What I realize is that Gabriel has figured out how to make both these parts of the process into playful exercises. For me, up to this point, I can see the generative portion as playful, but the analysis portion finds me rigid and fearful.
I wonder, now that I am thinking about it, what it would be like to introduce openness and playfulness into the process of editing.
Gabriel seems so willing to let his subconscious do its work, and to trust where it leads him, in all aspects of the process. As I study his work (and I guess it is clear that I have paid a lot of attention to it through the years), I have just become more fascinated by it. But I have also tried to incorporate it into my own process.
I’m sure I’ll return to more facets of this process in future posts, but for now, here’s that full South Bank episode, along with a few bonus interviews. I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think!