All You Need to Know

I was listening to an old interview with Paul McCartney the other day that had been recorded shortly after the release of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album. The interviewer sounded like a journalist of some kind, which I mention only because of the sorts of questions he was asking. Specifically, he kept wanting to know why McCartney made certain choices on the LP. Why did he write that song about the queen at the end? Why did he write a song borrowed from an old lullaby? Why did he use words that seemed out of fashion on “Because”?

In answer, McCartney would tell the story of how he found the song, how he was at his father’s house in Liverpool and saw the songbook his sister was using to learn piano, and since he couldn’t read music started playing his own version of “Golden Slumbers”. Or how he was on vacation and picked up a guitar and was plunking around on it and heard the words, “Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she doesn’t have a lot to say,” and how he liked that. Or how “Because” wasn’t his song, it was Lennon’s, but he liked the words as they weren’t used in the same way they’d had been in conversation. 

The difference between the journalist’s questions and McCartney’s answers seemed like the perfect illustration of a common divide between people who’ve spent some time creating something new – a song, or a story, or a poem – and people who haven’t. I don’t mean this as a judgment on people like the journalist. There is so much intention and focus and purpose brought to a work of art, particularly songs like the Beatles’ that were meticulously crafted, that it’s natural to assume that the artist had some greater goal in mind – whether political or societal or spiritual – as if the song were a final answer to some question that had been haunting us all forever.

Of course, sometimes artists do have such an ambition. But more often, the goal is just to write a song. An idea arrived that interested the artist and their only ambition was to complete that idea. To do so, you don’t have to see any further than the next line, the next stanza, the next paragraph. You don’t have to know what people will think of it, or how it will change society, or if will bring justice to the street. All you need to know is that you liked the last line and you’re are interested in the next one. In my experience, whenever I let that be enough, most of the questions that have haunted me seem to answer themselves.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com