[image from crypto.]

I really enjoyed ‘It Might Get Loud,’ the documentary that follows Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White as they talk about how they put together their music, and I’ve very much looking forward to ‘Soul Power.’ James Brown! Bill Withers! The Spinners! … And the young Muhammed Ali. The impossible cool.

Want more? Check out Flavorwire’s 10 great free music documentaries.

[via largehearted boy]

[via it's nice that.]

There’s not much consensus on process — even on basic questions like, “do you write every day or wait until inspiration hits?” — but there’s a great many ideas on how one might go about it.

What is your perfect writing environment?

All different places.  I’ll go to a nightclub like the Hotel Cafe, get there late at night when they are closing and hang out with the staff.  I’ll  go up on the stage where there is a piano, the place is almost empty, and that’s where I like to write.  There are still people milling around, but I can concentrate.  It’s very inspiring. I can soak up the atmosphere and turn it into music.  It gets me in the mood.  The mood is important to me.  If I am at the beach, and its a nice night at the sun is setting, I’ll whip out my harmonica or my iPhone and just start playing or singing.  I’ll get something different than if I were in a room with no windows. [Jack Tempchin, writer of the Eagles' 'Peaceful Easy Feeling'.]

Second, here’s a very impressive display of humans acting as pixels in a stadium. (Take the ‘wave,’ and then really, really run with it…) After you enjoy it, consider imagining and choreographing this madness:  [from ze frank]

Robert Root-Bernstein, Ph.D., a professor of physiology at Michigan State University, recently compared the hobbies of 134 Nobel laureates in chemistry to the hobbies of a control group of scientists in the Sigma Xi society. Root-Bernstein found that the Nobelists were highly accomplished outside the lab. More than half had at least one artistic avocation, and almost all had an enduring hobby, from chess to insect collecting. One-quarter of the Nobelists were musicians, and 18 percent practiced visual arts such as drawing or painting.

And also:

The Root-Bernsteins maintain that the key is not to just slave away at the piano or the easel, but to “find the links between everything in your life, the connections that others miss.” You may not unlock the origins of the universe, but you’ll see the world in a different way.

via swiss miss.

He has interesting things to say about boredom, waiting, and finding your voice.

“I was always very conscious that the deepest human desire is a desire for the narrative.”

“Black Wings” by Tom Waits

Not surprisingly, I’m inclined to favor the mordant sounds of Tom Waits, poet of things closing and of hopelessness, and certainly Erased is about things shutting down, as well as opening onto unexpected vistas. This cut also makes me think of a time back in my youth where one night during an open poetry workshop we were visited by an improbably scruffy (even compared to us), odd-sounding guy. He read his poem, and afterwards I opined that it was good, but maybe not quite complicated enough to stand alone. “Maybe you should try writing song lyrics,” I told him. Waits looked me up and down, considering. “Well, man,” he rasped. “I’m working on it.”