I write this from the road… Indianapolis, March 2025

With Martin Atkins - PPIM in Chicago, March 2025

I read Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files this morning and came across this question, which I too identify with. Nick answered it the same as I would, but this has been something I have discussed with others recently and wanted to put it down in words.

In some ways, art is no different than anything else in life. Being creative is a gift and I believe we have a duty to use all of our gifts, not using your gifts is sinful even. God has given you something to enjoy and to glorify him with and you, for your own reasons, decided you didn’t want to use it.

Now, there might be a legitimate reason for you to put it aside for a time, or forever, but these tend to be the exceptions, not the rule and it is not what I am speaking to here. Too often I am given a counterargument that is personal and anecdotal and does not adequately address my larger argument. I am not interested in those, you have to ask yourself whether what I say applies to you or not. If it does, great, let's chat about why these things happen, if not, I don’t need to hear the reasons/excuses.

Some people are given extraordinary talents and things come very easy to them. Some of us, in a category I’d put myself, are given a love of something so powerful that we work our way into the talent. This is an equal, but different gift. Learning to play an instrument is hard. I’ve been playing guitar for thirty-something years and I still struggle with the bass guitar, not to mention the piano and other instruments. However, the piano being difficult for me is a major reason why I get so much more pleasure out of it these days than I do playing the guitar. Not that I can’t still learn on the guitar, but I can pretty much do whatever I want to on it. I can’t play “Eruption” or Bach, but I don’t want to.

Perhaps the hardest thing to do, in my opinion, is to write a great song. As I always say, after years with the Beatles, Paul McCartney still wrote “Having a Wonderful Christmas Time”; being a genius even doesn’t mean everything you do is great, You still suck 99% of the time. You can never rest on your laurels, Bob Dylan says he has no idea where the songs in the 60’s came from, they just sort of appeared, and he’s spent the rest of his life trying to get back there. The pursuit of this greatness can be something you fall into no different than an addiction.

I say all that because, for a lot of us, this is a passion that burns on fuel from a tank that rarely goes empty. As I discussed with Martin Atkins recently while visiting Chicago, I struggle to focus on everything in life, except music. I can go to the basement, pick up an instrument and work non-stop until I crash from exhaustion. It would be really easy to neglect my family. Even to neglect my family in the name of my duty to my God-given gift. But, that would not glorify God, that would not serve the people I’ve promised to love and it would not ultimately serve me either.

This is where it does become a bit subjective - having an infant, or having one child, is different from someone who has a teenager or multiple children. I can’t tell you what that balance looks like, only that the balance is what you should be striving for. If you’ve put your paints and canvases or your instruments away in favor of serving your family, ask yourself why you didn’t carve out a little time for them? Too often I’ve heard, “well I wasn’t going to be famous” or some other BS. Sometimes picking up a guitar, alone in your room and cranking out one verse of “Free Fallin’” is enough to redirect the course of your day… is that not enough beauty for you?

My creative brain doesn’t ever turn off. I’ll be at my daughter’s hockey practice and think of something and get out my phone and write it down. You have to always be thinking creatively, but I am there watching her and engaging in her life and spiritually present with her. The farther we get in life, the less it’s about carving out large chunks of time and the more it’s about making the most of the little crumbs that we have. Quality over quantity. Small, frequent consistency over long, intermittent spells.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I am endlessly thinking of how to be a better writer and a better man. Nobody gets anywhere in anything by thinking you have it all figured out.

A Dedication to Your Passion Without Wrecking Your Life