Decorating the Wheel

Hello and Good Morning!

First of all, please accept my apologies for being away from here for so long. Life is wild and unruly, as is art. Sometimes the hammer don’t strike where you think it will.

This post will be about one thing, and one thing only: ‘Originality.’

Originality is a big topic for yours truly, because I’ve always dreamed of being original. I’ll admit to it, I’d like my creative work to sing with originality. It’s a worthy goal, and a common enough one, I suppose, but aspiring to originality all the time is a lot to ask of ourselves, and probably not the best way to find joy in creativity.

To examine this further, let’s use the metaphor of a wheel.

Of course, it’s impossible to place a date on the invention of the wheel as a human tool. The oldest discovered wheels are pottery wheels from about six or seven millennia ago. Wooden chariot wheels from more recent ancient times are still in existence, but other than that, all we that have are historical references and artistic depictions. It’s certainly safe to say that we’ve used wheels as tools for a long, long, time, but what I find truly beautiful is that we seem to have had a idealist conception of the wheel-shape long before we had a material model.

We humans grew up in starlight. The sun, the moon, the transit of the constellations; each of these inscribed the yearly heavens in cycles. When the Pleiades rose above the horizon, it was time to plant. When they began to set, it was time to harvest. The big, silver, circle in the sky would tomorrow begin to wane, on its way to fullness, once again. In what otherwise would have seemed a chaotic existence, the wheel was a mode of thinking that gave physical form to an otherwise chaotic existence. Humanity was not so much a passenger on this circular track, it was a part of it. Birth, death, rebirth; we humans saw ourselves, very rightly, as embedded within the same cycles as everything else in Existence. Wheels within wheels within wheels.

The wheel is a very useful way to see the world, when you are mostly working on surviving and not dying. To stray from the circumference of such a mode of life would be absurd and dangerous — like planting your barley in frozen ground. To be original would mean breaking from established cycles, something you generally didn’t do if you were just eaking out an existence on the face of the earth.

In a world such as this, the value placed upon ‘originality’ would certainly have been different than the value we place upon it today. Take me, for instance, right at this very moment.

Right now, I’m in my local park. It’s a beautiful morning in Brooklyn, I’m not planning on hunting any giant ground sloths today, or dying of an extreme sodium deficit, so things are pretty, pretty, good. Instead of being at the mercy of Mother Nature, I’m enjoying myself with a l’il writin’ time and a blueberry muffin. The immediate effect of perilous Existence upon my life seems very small this in this sunlight. Perhaps, I think to myself, since I don’t have to wrestle any jaguars away from my family in their sleep, I should put a little extra into this writing. You know, make it really ‘original.’

This is a good seventh cup of coffee. I start casting about for something that might be really original, and already the task seems too mighty, and certainly too large for a morning. So, instead of trying to be original, what I’ll just do what I usually do. I’ll decorate my wheel. I’m going to build a wheel. In fact, im going to build a carousel.

The carousel, in this case, is the song that I’m working on. I know that it’s a basic four or five chord melody. There’ll probably be three verses, a bridge of some kind, and an instrumental for a friend of mine to play on. I can hear it already in my head. I know that it’s just a little song. It’s not going to knock down the gates of American Literature, but sitting here, in this nice, warm sunlight, drinking my eighth cup of coffee, I can feel the song begin to roll beneath me. It begins to carry me along. The chord progression is a wheel that carries my lyrics forward, while always returning the melody to its starting point. It’s a beautiful chord progression, and there are countless songs that share it. That’s fine with me. I’m decorating a wheel. I pin my own melody to the wheel, then I stick the beaded syllables up and down its spokes at regular intervals. The rhymes within the lyric are wheels as well, moving between states of rhyme and un-rhyme in combinations that have been used for hundreds of years. Try rhyming girl with anything and you’ll see what I mean.

The chords are just a wheel. They don’t have to do much but carry my voice and what I’m singing about. Like a carousel, they carry me along, through adventure, before returning me once more to the beginning of the progression. Nobody has to see me build the carousel, they just have to be willing to get on board and go through the revolutions of the song with me. There are a bazillion carousels in the world, I know. But I’m decorating mine.

A sonnet is a wheel, its spokes and roll defined by beat and line. A novel is a wheel that carries the reader along, chapter by chapter. The people that craft successfully within these forms (usually) understand that they are working within a circumference that has been pre-established. It is not the form itself that the creator is (usually) attempting to fundamentally reshape. Rather, the artist is looking to decorate within the confines and edges of that given form.

Working this way offers great advantage. Firstly, and most importantly, it allows you to love and be inspired by others. If you cannot love the wheel, you cannot appreciate the wonders of its workings. You cannot love the surety of the orbits or admire the complexity of the watchworks. You cannot see the painting of a friend or in a museum and find the joy of simple expression. This is terribly sad.

Second, the constrictions imposed by the form allow for immense opportunities for innovation within it. A song only works if it performs its magic within the societally given bounds of what a song can be. Even John Cage’s ode to the music of silence, “4:33”, pays homage to its own form in the time-bound context of its title. One can do a great deal, or very little, within the wheel that they’re working on decorating. It’s up to the artist to follow their vision.

Next time you sit down to work creatively, — painting a picture, writing a play, making dinner —, givea shot at paying respect to the wheel that you are about to decorate. It is not original, it is ancient. It has been tried and true for millennia and it will carry you along, as long as you honor its usefulness.

Now, go decorate. The love and attention that you’ve put into decorating your wheel will be all that anyone of good heart ever sees. And when you roll into town in your newly decorated wheel, look out!

Love you guys!

Josh