I often hear song writers say this or that isn’t what they meant, when people interpret their lyrics a certain way. Some writer care about exact interpretations, some are open to whatever. But the message received is the message received. Does it matter?

We hear the Matchbox Twenty song 3AM, or see the video of Rob Thomas standing out in the night time rain emoting “It’s 3AM, I must be lonely.” It’s easy to assume it’s the angst of lost love singing. Did you know the song was written about his mom’s dealing with chemotherapy?

Does it really matter what inspires or what’s taken away? One instance is a trivial moment coming off as touching, the other is a life and death situation appearing to be the trials of youth. The gifts from the creative Gods come in many ways. To both the creative individual and to those who decipher their creations.

Effective creative resonates because it sounds/looks/reads the way people really talk/view/sound. Observation is absolutely key.

“it’s about time they got some recognition, isn’t it? Or a byline. It’s a great line. As it is, they never play Twistin by the Pool on the radio station anymore, but I’m tired of Far Away.

As for missing creative gifts…that’s falsely phrased: waiting in line for them is more like it, then falling asleep cause you weren’t paying attention. Okay, so I’m the kind of girl who thinks radio waves are permeating my skull all the time, and they wake me up on purpose when the Counting Crows are seeing Round Here in the middle of the night. You can call that luck with whatever kind of twist.

Unfortunately, in my interactive and design study, I took all the highest level idea courses before they even let me near business ethics.

One example of follow through is with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith on his song “Janies got a gun.” According to Tyler he had the phrase and the musical hook only, for about a year, continually rolling it around in his head, until he saw a news article about child abuse. He then knew why Janie had the gun, and went on to finish the song.

One of the differences between pop song writers and business people is that they can take their time in the process. But the “being open to the gifts” part is exactly the same. For instance, most business people hate focus groups for how they so often kill ideas. When I was in a particularly open-minded state a few years back I sat behind the one-way mirror, watched one of my babies get pulverized, but got a great idea from one of the difficult people, and idea that took the project in a much better direction.

In the Janie case Tyler still had to be open to the seemingly random inspiration. He could have read the article with a less open idea receptor and missed an opportunity to complete a fairly powerful song. In DIY Lobotomy terms we call this Ask the Question Early. Often just planting a seed in your mind - the stated problem, a probing question, or in this case, a piece of a song - then puts the subconscious mind in a position to have something to be open around.  If you hadn’t asked the question beforehand, then that oppotrunity is lost.
Our subconscious mind is so much less encumbered than our rational mind. It’s usually amazingly open, seeing avenues of possibility almost all the time, but the judge in our surface consciousness is the closed-minded SOB. Often the openness is called intuition.

All ideas have to come from somewhere. I get a hoot out of learning where they are born and how they come about.