A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

by Ben Folds

MUSIC FEELS LIKE THE FRAME on which I’ve hung nearly every recollection, giving me access to large files of childhood memories.

MUSIC FEELS LIKE THE FRAME on which I’ve hung nearly every recollection, giving me access to large files of childhood memories.

Neurologists and music therapists are increasingly convinced of the effect of music on the brain. A music therapist friend of mine likes to say that “Music lights up the brain like a Christmas tree.” She’s referring to the large regions of brain scans that light up when stimulated by music. Other important functions, like speech, activate far smaller areas. In fact, there is an observable physical difference between a musician’s brain and everyone else’s.

A music therapist friend of mine likes to say that “Music lights up the brain like a Christmas tree.” She’s referring to the large regions of brain scans that light up when stimulated by music. Other important functions, like speech, activate far smaller areas. In fact, there is an observable physical difference between a musician’s brain and everyone else’s.

At its most basic, making art is about following what’s luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others.

At its most basic, making art is about following what’s luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others.

Here you go. A melody. See? I found it. It’s always been right there. That’s why it’s so familiar. Maybe it was in the rhythm of the washing machine, the awkward pause in a conversation, or the random collision of two radio stations blasting from two different cars and how it reminded you of your parents trying to be heard over one another. Remove a note, one flicker, and it’s the sound of the door closing for the last time and her footsteps fading into the first silence in forever. But wait…nope, the silence wasn’t really silence after all. You just weren’t paying attention. There’s always sound beneath the sound you hear. Or something else to see when your eyes adjust. It turns out there was also the sound of children playing outside your window and, below that, the buzz of a ceiling fan. That’s a sound you’d overlooked before, but now it’s all you can hear. We all see different flickers in a busy sky. That’s where the melodies live. What do you notice that glows beneath the silence? Can that glow be bottled, or framed? From time to time, we all catch a split-second glance of a stranger in a storefront window before realizing it’s our own reflection. A songwriter’s job is to see that guy, not the one posing straight on in the bathroom mirror. As we speed past moments in a day, we want to give form to what we feel, what was obvious but got lost in the shuffle. We want to know that someone else noticed that shape we suspected was hovering just beyond our periphery. And we ...

Here you go. A melody. See? I found it. It’s always been right there. That’s why it’s so familiar. Maybe it was in the rhythm of the washing machine, the awkward pause in a conversation, or the random collision of two radio stations blasting from two different cars and how it reminded you of your parents trying to be heard over one another. Remove a note, one flicker, and it’s the sound of the door closing for the last time and her footsteps fading into the first silence in forever. But wait…nope, the silence wasn’t really silence after all. You just weren’t paying attention. There’s always sound beneath the sound you hear. Or something else to see when your eyes adjust. It turns out there was also the sound of children ...

That’s where the melodies live. What do you notice that glows beneath the silence? Can that glow be bottled, or framed? From time to time, we all catch a split-second glance of a stranger in a storefront window before realizing it’s our own reflection. A songwriter’s job i...

As we speed past moments in a day, we want to give form to what we feel, what was obvious but got lost in the shuffle. We want to know that someone else noticed that shape we suspected was hovering just beyond our periphery. And we want that shape, that flicker of shared life experience, captured in a bottle, playing up on a big screen, gracing our living room wall, or singing to us ...

But I’d like to think that most artists have had some kind of dream beneath the drive, whether they remember it or not.

I’d like to think that most artists have had some kind of dream beneath the drive, whether they remember it or not.

What all those artists have in common is that they point out things that were always there, always dotting the sky. Now we can take it in and live what we missed.

It reminds me that my job is to see what’s blinking out of the darkness and to sharpen the skill required to put it in a jar for others to see.

Making songs is something I do here and now. Because light captured is just a moment, a flicker. Like any musical performance, it’s not repeatable, but there is always another. As each of my thousands of gigs has let out, the crowds have gone their separate ways. The lid opens, the sun comes up, and the lightning bugs disappear into the light of day. Invisible again. Well after I’m gone, some kid will be chasing the flickering lights through the backyard in his dreams, joy at his heels.

By dignifying even the most despicable character as a human being, by offering them what empathy we can manage, we also hold them accountable for their choices.

Stand in as many pairs of shoes as you can manage, even ones you consider reprehensible or repulsive—even if it’s just for a moment. If you’re going to be a tourist, be a respectful one. Observe, report, imagine, invent, have fun with, but never write “down” to a character or their point of view, because everyone is the most important person in the world—at least to that one person. And if your tourist photographs suck, maybe it’s because you’re too far away from your subjects, seeing them only as props dotting the scenery. Position yourself upon a bedrock of honesty and self-knowledge, so that your writing comes from your own unique perspective. Know where you stand and what your flaws are. Know thyself. Then you can spin all kinds of shit and all the tall tales you like. It’s art. Finally, empathy and perspective are everything, and neither should be taken for granted. After all, there’s always someone out there who thinks you’re the monster. Remember that the ground beneath your feet can always shift and that it should always be questioned. Even the things that seem still are still changing —From “Still,” Over The Hedge soundtrack, 2004

Our earliest artwork is truly original expression, shitty as it may be. We imagine first. We often draw something we want to communicate, consciously or subconsciously.

Sometimes I find it’s best to sit and stare into space, or take a walk, or drop my hands to sit in silence at the piano. And wait.

Like anyone, when I get impatient, and before I have a solid idea, I might rush straight for an instrument, hoping to stumble upon something that will lead the way. From the piano to an iPad—I can turn my brain off and just play something. That’s fun sometimes, but remember that a menu of drum loops is far more limited than your imagination. Here’s my suggestion to musicians: When you’re about to reach for whatever musical tools you use, virtual or real, guitar or computer, ask yourself if you’re doing so to save time or because you don’t feel like straining your brain. Or, more important, ask yourself if you have anything to say yet. If not, keep working (or playing) upstairs, in your brain. Sure, it’s okay to react to what happens playing with the tools—the way a chord sounds, a loop, or even an accident. But make sure you express what you wanted to say or what you have imagined. Don’t let your tools make you their bitch.

Measure twice, cut once. Resist the urge to skip steps. The limitations of the real world will soon impose themselves on your creation. Even the limits of your technique will cut your imagination down to size in time. So imagine wildly first. Or at least try to do so from time to time.

I highly recommend enforced boredom as a way to develop your imagination.

A kid can begin to gather a lot about how music works, how a song unfolds, by just listening intently and putting the clues together. Dynamics, the loud and soft sounds. Accelerandos, crescendos, indicating excitement. The long mysterious silences, the intonation. Sonic stories. —

the saddest things are often best illuminated by humor, and I’ve always felt compelled to express emotion through a comic lens. The type of laughter can indicate the height from which we fear we may fall, the depths to which we could so easily plummet, and the effort required to retain composure

But a story is a story, in any era. And the best ones, I’ve always thought, develop from mysteries you want to solve. You just have to take the trip to find out, following a simple line with some clues along the way. I like to think of songs that way. The sequence of the music is like the line in the snow, or the groove in a record. You put your head down, or you put the needle down, and ride it from beginning to end. But something has to propel you forward. A song, like any story, has to hold your interest with clues that are musically paced and poetically ambiguous enough to spark the imagination.

Whether it’s a sprint or a crawl, we’re always following something. Something simple. A line and some clues. We don’t have to know where it might lead. In fact, your song may end up a question mark, an unsolved mystery.

I have a jazz musician’s view of mistakes. If you play a wrong note, you can always make the same mistake again on purpose and make it sound right.

THERE’S THIS MODE I GO into from time to time. You may do it too. It begins with visualizing a seemingly impossible accomplishment as if it has already come to be. A trance ensues, mountains are moved, and soon it is so. When I can ‘see’ it, when I can just about touch it, a confident calm comes over me because I know it’s as good as done. All I need to do now is put one foot in front of the other.

When I’m under the spell and direction of a creative visualization, I grow all kinds of courage I didn’t have before. I experience sudden deafness to the word “no” and I pity the ignorance of those who utter it. I can power through embarrassment and shame. Why should I care what they think? Blindness to roadblocks sets in. Those roadblocks were Fig Newtons of my imagination in the first place! It’s a little like this: The audition has been won. I only need to practice and show up. The book has been written. I just have to plant my ass at the typewriter and watch my fingers move. It’s like seeing it all in reverse. I wish I could summon this state at will. I wish I could squint my eyes, imagine something, and make it so. But only a true believer can fall under the spell of creative visualization. You can make believe, but you can’t make yourself believe. Creative visualization happens to me. I don’t summon it. The greatest sincerity of desire will not alone make a thing come true.

As you get closer to finding your voice, you’ll feel resistance. You’ll want to retreat. It’s scary to just be you. You may notice that criticism from others starts to sting more, because now it’s personal. You’re being seen and addressed directly, not through the sunglasses you finally removed. But once you’ve relaxed, you can apply the effort to the important part—that which projects and amplifies the expression of the real you. That’s technique. And by the way, when it’s said that someone is “trying too hard,” we should take that to mean “trying too hard at the wrong thing.” Once the wrong thing, usually affectation or tension, is stripped away, by all means, please try too hard. Try as hard as you can to express what you feel, and don’t let anyone bully you otherwise.

I didn’t put enough thought into it to be nervous.

Elton John’s live record 11-17-70 is the best and perhaps only example of a whole album made by a piano rock trio that I knew of before my band, over twenty years later.

Will have to check that out, didn’t know about that

When you’re creating, make a deal with your inner editor—that judgmental but necessary part of your psyche that keeps telling you what sucks. Tell this trigger-happy editor in your mind that you need them to step out of the room while you create. You need to be free to follow all ideas, bad and good. You need to create with impunity—alone. However! The other half of the deal is that the editor gets to come back the next day—with a chain saw. Your editor will get to go to town on what you’ve written. The editor may even throw the whole song in the trash. But not now. Now you must create.

I’VE NEVER FOUND GROWING UP to be straight and linear.

Any musician will know that our perception of tempo, music’s way of keeping time, can be quite elastic. We musicians practice like hell in private with metronomes, but the moment we get excited at a show, our sense of tempo can go out the window and we’re off to the races!

So what about the middle-aged making pop music? Sure, it’s allowed. But let’s be honest about what pop, or popular, music is. It’s music for the mating age. It’s a soundtrack for that yearning, that youthful anger, those ideals and inside jokes of the teenagers and young adults as they experience the rough ride together. It fills an important need. It helps get us through to adulthood. Pop music can be a life jacket, a sexy security blanket, a hipster Hallmark card. And it communicates very real things.

I, for one, don’t feel the need to try and relate to younger music that’s not for me anymore. I appreciate it, but I don’t try to like it or relate to it. Why should I? I view pop music the way I do a children’s television show, with its cartoons and bright colors—it’s for kids. I’m no more riveted by a grumpy puppet who lives in a garbage can than I am by a horny auto-tuned journal entry edited over a lonesome computer loop. I don’t hang around playgrounds, so why, at my age, should I be wandering around Burning Man shirtless, tripping on ecstasy? Or speaking in vocal fry like middle-aged men and women I overhear every day in the coffee shop down the block?

The answer was in the dark somewhere, where it always is. After all, the dark is where we mated for the first time.

No one else’s stamp of approval can make things okay. That’s up to us.

I USED TO TELL PEOPLE that I followed my instinct when making artistic and career decisions. But these days I am more likely to say that I follow my interest.

Whatever your personal Script™, others become accustomed to, and dependent on, your following it. Veering off to follow interests can raise great concern.

it’s actually my responsibility to identify and follow my interests. Being interested is why I still have a gig at all.

surrounding myself with the people I find interesting, and who share the same interests makes me happy.

Our life together is the one glowing jar that I keep for myself.

creativity, which is inextricably tethered to life. —

But the upside of my lack of discipline is that I’ve given myself a hall pass to roam. Over fences, through open doors, creatively.

Throughout my life, each time I’ve spotted something inspiring, a beautiful flicker, an idea, or a feeling I wanted to capture, there were always bullying voices—inside, and out—suggesting it was off-limits:

Do you know what Charles Ives, one of the great celebrated American composers of the twentieth century, did in his spare time? He overhauled the insurance industry and laid the foundation for the modern practice of estate planning. Is that cool? Or is that whack? It’s cool in retrospect, but what would the Pitchfork of 1918 have thought? I doubt there’s much indie-cred for a songwriter who works at State Farm.

follow your interests and let your art speak for itself. Business is based on creativity too.

Beware of little things that can erode our creativity as we grow up. One after another. One at a time, small choices eliminated incrementally. Flickers slowly dimmed. It never ends. You have to tune those voices out because your interests, those creative flickers, are truly miraculous. They are what ...