Finding the Song

Alchemy 1-23-2022

“It sounds like he found the song.”

- Famed British record producer Clive Langer on hearing a reworked version of the song The Deportees Club, by Elvis Costello.

I think about this quote a lot. What it means to find the song. How the creative process can happen so quickly and other times be elusive, demand patience, and feel like torture.  Creativity can happen in 15 minutes or take the incredible planning, persistence, and the sweet serendipity of collaborators falling into line like a long con. Both are slow, require commitment to the idea and you never truly know they will work out until the very end. A risk.  And one that creatives take over and over again. 

Similarly, the therapeutic process can often feel like finding the song. Intervention after intervention, until finally there is harmony and insight is found. Perhaps a different kind of creative collaboration than a song, but similarly ripe with work and refinement along the way. 

The above quote is from an episode of Revisionist History with Malcom Gladwell. This particular episode, linked in the LEARN button above and below, discusses the long and not so linear trajectory of two well known songs. The voyage of The Deportees Club to the later The Deportees, a song by Elvis Costello based upon the earlier version that sounds quite different but needed the original to get there, and the many incarnations of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. The episode starts there and goes to so many wonderful places. 

Enjoy

xxx

LAS