Meandering

Photo: Red-winged Blackbird at Biidaasige Park, Toronto, August 2026. If you live in the Toronto area, I hope you’ll be able to visit this absolutely wonderful new public space at the foot of the Don River. The name is pronounced bee-daw-sih-geh and comes from the Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin language meaning “sunlight shining toward us.”

Aimless creative exploration—what’s the point of it?

What’s more, can we actually afford it? Aren’t there more important things we’re supposed to be doing? In this age of AI, aren’t we supposed to be finding answers as fast as humanly (and non-humanly) possible?

The other day I found myself recalling Mary Oliver’s timeless poem The Summer Day while I spent a considerable amount of time learning to play a little riff on the guitar and making up a song to go with it. I hope Mary would have approved…so I included a few clear allusions to her poem in tribute to her. (While working on this post, I also enjoyed the new documentary Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, which I found on Apple+. Another song of mine, Lucky Star, was partially inspired by her poem “Why I Wake Early.”)

Back in 1937, creative writing instructor Brenda Ueland recommended what she called “moodling.”

“Our idea that we must always be energetic and active is all wrong. […] The imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. […] If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down the little ideas however insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude.” 1

We all need periods of seemingly aimless wandering-about to create enough space for intuition and wisdom to emerge. Continual striving (fed by today’s overgrowth of instant answers) clogs up the channel from which Spirit flows. Without meandering (in thought, in conversation, in prayer, in doodling, in humming, in experimenting) we lose touch with our creative soul.

Honouring times of meandering, wherever we find them, may be the one thing that brings us back to centre…to the stable place of exactly where we are.

When (or where) have you ‘meandered’ lately? What was it like for you?

What was I supposed to do today? / What important role was mine to play? / Something good I could prepare and bring / if it weren’t for my meandering / Meandering…

Time is running out, I’m sure you’ve heard / Wasting it is surely for the birds / So why’m I watching them up on the wing? / Them and me, only meandering / Meandering…

Yes everything will die and much too soon / How’d it get to be late afternoon? / I’ve been trying to sort out all these silver strings / They only add up to meandering / Meandering…

So tell me, what was I supposed to do? / Someone has the answers, maybe you / What could be the wild and precious thing / still to find in my meandering / Meandering.

I’m celebrating fifty years of songwriting this fall. (Yes, that is a lot of meandering!) You can find all my formally recorded songs, in seven albums, here on Bandcamp (where you can purchase if you wish, or listen for free). Right now, I’m working on a new recording that includes many of the songs I’ve posted first here on Substack since January, 2025. Also, you can find my book of reflections on creativity Songwriting as Soul Work: Songs and the Inner Life available online and through many independent bookstores. Thank you so much for listening and for being here.

Share