A few months ago I was listening to the DavidBowie: AlbumtoAlbum podcast, a terrific show about Bowie hosted by Arsalan Mohammed.
In Season 3 episode 11 Arsalan spoke to Donny McCaslin, the leader of the jazz band that Bowie discovered in a New York club, and asked to work with him on what turned out to be his final album, and one of his greatest masterpieces, Blackstar.
At one point Donny was talking about what it was like to be working with Bowie in the studio:
‘He was such a dynamic performer and just a dynamic presence, and we felt it when we were recording and it felt magical. I would finish the day in the studio and be going home and was thinking, “Man that was a great day. I hope that tomorrow is like that, I hope every day is like that”. And I think for the most part every day was, we felt that connection was happening in the room. You know, there were some days where it’s like, there’s thirty alto flute overdubs, you know [laughter] it’s not ‘Sue’, you know, every day.’
So when he says ‘it’s not ‘Sue’ every day, he’s referring to the track ‘Sue (Or In a Season of Crime)’, which for him was one of the highlights of recording the album.
I love Donny’s honesty here, and it rings so true. Even when you’re working on a dream project, with a superstar, on a masterpiece, and it’s a transformative, magical experience, there will be days when the work will be repetitive and start to grate a little. Where you’ve done twenty alto flute overdubs and there’s still another ten to go. When you have to grind the work out.
And we’re not talking about grunt work, that can be automated or outsourced or delegated to someone junior. Sometimes, as in this case, it requires high artistic knowledge and judgment, but it can still get dull if you’re doing the same thing over and over.
And I thought, if that’s true when you’re working with Bowie, then no wonder if it’s true for the rest of us!
When I’m writing a book, it’s checking proofs. Of course I have a copyeditor and a proofreader, but I wrote the book, so I need to check it too. It’s tedious, and it’s also the stage when I’ve looked at the text so many times I never want to see it again. I just want to move on to something new.
There is even a boring part of writing poetry. I usually write in metre, which means the poems have a regular rhythm, iambic pentameter or trochaic tetrameter or whatever. And there’s a point where I need to go through each poem with a fine-toothed comb and check the metrical pattern for mistakes and infelicities.
It’s not too bad for a short poem, but my Chaucer translation is currently over 1,000 lines, and I was seeing double by the time I had checked all that…
So sometimes, there’s a difficult and boring task to be done, and it needs to be done by someone like you, with high levels of artistic skill and knowledge and taste. And on those days, you need to grind it out.
It’s not exciting. It doesn’t fit the popular Romantic image of creativity. But this willingness to go the extra mile, to obsess over getting all details right, helps you filter out imperfections. And sometimes it can add an indefinable touch of magic to the finished work.
When you’re facing a task like this, first check: Can this be outsourced? Is there someone else who can do it as well or better than me?
If not, then it’s time to put the kettle on, roll up your sleeves, and grind it out…
And make sure you give yourself a nice reward afterwards!
Special thanks to Arsalan Mohammed for letting me use the clip from his interview with Donny McCaslin.
If you are a Bowie fan you should definitely check out his podcast DavidBowie: AlbumtoAlbum, he gets amazing guests like Reeves Gabrels and Tony Plati and Sterling Campbell and Nicholas Pegg talking about Bowie’s work, it’s an absolute treasure trove.
You can hear an audio version of this article in this episode of The 21st Century Creative podcast.