How to be creatively inspired (w/ Hrishikesh Hirway)

Creative inspiration, for Hrishikesh Hirway, is not a lightning bolt that strikes from nowhere. It is a force that is already hovering inside you, waiting for the right conditions to be channeled. On this episode of How to Be a Better Human, host Chris Duffy talks with the musician and creator of the Song Exploder podcast about how he has navigated long stretches of writer’s block, why he chose to record his new album in a risky, live-off-the-floor style, and what he has learned about decoupling the work from its reception. Hirway’s insights are grounded in decades of making art and in hundreds of conversations with other artists about how their songs actually got made.

The prompt as a way to bypass your own brain

When Hirway was preparing for a weeklong songwriting residency at Blue Rock Studio in Texas, he was afraid that his creativity would dry up the moment he arrived. He had been emerging from years of writer’s block, and he felt a creeping fear that the block could return at any second. So he did something practical: he asked other people for songwriting prompts. He wrote to Sam Beam of Iron and Wine, whom he had met at the same studio the year before, and asked for ideas. Beam sent several, and one of them was this: “Describe the street you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog.”