Indio Saravanja interview with Australian songwriter Inga Liljestrom on inspiration and the muse
January 1, 2020
INSPIRATION
1. Why and how did you become a singer songwriter/composer?
I’m not entirely sure. I suspect that it was due to a natural progression of events and experiences in my young life as a multi-disciplinary performer, and obsessive lover of music and books that eventually alchemized into this particular focus that I was able to completely marry myself to, through thick and thin. Plus, records and movies saved my life, and songs were the glue that brought all things together. The magic for me was in the songs, as well as the safe place to escape to. It still is.
2. What inspires you to write a new song/ piece of music? Can you give some examples from your own work?
I may answer this in more than one way in your subsequent questions, but I really don’t know that there’s an ultimate answer. I worked extremely hard at one point in my life at songwriting and writing in general, through other forms such as poetry and even plays, and I kept a prolific daily journaling practice for many years until I began getting breakthroughs and found that I was doing more and more channeling or co-creating and less and less struggling to create anything on my own whatsoever. As this progressed, I began to drop my daily writing practice almost altogether and have never returned to it in any significant way. I only do that from time to time now, and it’s usually when I am upset or depressed and trying to process and work through things.
3. Where do you feel your ideas, inspiration, and creativity for your songwriting / composing comes from? Do you feel it comes from you or from somewhere else?
Songs seem to come to me when they are ready. I just leave the window open and try to relax. If and when they fly into the room, I observe, listen, and get most of it down, almost like a criminal sketch artist. I’m forming a composite drawing made out of images I see and feel that move very quickly through my space and make me move very quickly as well, leaving nothing to thought.
The mind is incredibly fast. The ego. Ego doesn’t write, it only judges and wants to edit. It doesn’t want to write. It wants to define, which is destructive. So the trick is to stay ahead of it and ignore it. You can’t turn it off but you can learn to be faster than it. Not thinking at all, just flowing and writing. This is true channeling and it’s a realization that I just have to show up and let it happen. It took me years to get there. Years of trying. Trying is all brain.
The only way of training your whole system to become this kind of receiver and develop an antenna like that is to write and write and write. You show up and get out of the way, and if you do it long enough, a voice begins to slowly appear. With time, it forms into something you can own. It’s either no-brain or too much brain and I prefer no-brain. At some point, I trained myself in stream of consciousness/automatic writing and it changed my life.
Then, after all of this, comes the forming and editing and endless polishing, but for me, this is also best done with a little help from the angels. They have flown in and out of your room and left this gold dust all over the place and if you’re able to capture 80 percent of it into a shape right there and then, you can get back to it later and it will still be there. It’s not finished, but the foundation and framing have been completed and the roof has gone into place. You can see that the house is there and know that you can fill it in later.
4. Where do you find inspiration for your songs/compositions? Do you have a process for gathering and investigating your ideas?
Like I said, I was a journal carrier for many years. I always had a pen and notepad in my shirt pocket. I just carry a pen now, so I’ve progressed! I’m also so much lazier now and busier in other areas of my life.
Inspiration has become a word that I practically abhor. Nick Cave once said that inspiration is a word used mostly by people who want to get down to work but never do. Henry Miller and Hemingway said similar things. Lou Reed’s analogy was that he was a walking transistor radio able to dial into the flow of the main transmission tower at any moment whatsoever, day or night, 24/7. Forgive my pun, but I think I’m more in tune with this idea than any other and it’s the same for me.
We can bypass any need for inspiration and just get to it. It just is, as Buddha would say, like the river. You can dip your line and hook into it at any given time. This would also be the moment that Oscar Wilde would call affixing one’s derrière to the seat. Do I really feel like doing that today? We don’t always want to. If inspiration comes, it can only come if you’re already working. Once I’m no longer someone who is trying to write and am a writer who is writing, I can do that. The rest of the time, I can tune out and not listen to the radio transmission anymore because we also need to live, right? Writers of this calibre can choose when to show up, for how long, to what end, and how much they’re willing to put into it, and that’s a whole other story.
Plus, there is this whole other world of dreadful work to engage in after the writing is done that comes with the publishing or sharing of your work, and unfortunately, the more work you produce, at least at my level, the more legitimate grunt work you are going to have to do to get it out there into the world. That turns into a real job and it can begin to dictate how much time you’re actually willing or able to make yourself available to that river I mentioned before. We don’t always have time to go fishing, or only work within the areas we actually love.
For me, I have to let my writing life come to a complete close when I’m making records. I almost resent the idea of new songs on my busy horizon, so I close the door, turn off the taps and I take my bucket out of the well. Years of experience gave me that confidence. Like Lou Reed also said in the interview that contained that radio tower analogy: I could write an album of songs a week if the record companies would pay for them and put them out there. I think that I could too, if trying to make a living didn’t keep getting in the way. And I don’t have a record company, because those days are gone. In my era, we now have to do everything ourselves to get it out there. It’s a totally different paradigm, and not inspiring at all!
5. How would you describe the feeling of being inspired? How does it affect you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?
The great ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said that he wasn’t obsessed by dance, but rather, he was possessed by it. He is the dance, he’s not the thought of dance, and therefore dance is him. Do you see the difference? This may seem like a game of semantics, but it’s not. It’s like being zapped by lightning. What happens when one is struck by lighting? It’s the same with acting. Great actors understand this. Don’t act or become, no… be. An alchemical possession takes place. Does the radio dial think about where it is going when it is looking for a strong signal? No, because the radio dial is the looking itself, and I think this is what the artist is. The artist is the longing itself.
6. Can you give some examples of when and how inspiration has struck for your songwriting / composing?
The most common thing you’ll hear songwriters say is that they heard someone say a certain word or phrase in passing or saw a billboard or sign as they drove by that sparked something. It’s all just fish in the river, when you’re truly open. You have to go fishing and you may as well try to make sure you’re not fishing downstream from Bob Dylan, for one thing. Pete Seeger said that. I love that one.
CREATIVE PROCESS
7. What is your creative process for writing a new song/ composition?
I let it completely overtake me until I’m spent or have the song or whatever it is, down enough that I can take a step back or run away for a while to catch my breath. Ultimately, I also want to stay alive ok? It takes everything out of you, like your lover…the one whom you love without bounds. And it’ll never be finished. It will merely have to be abandoned at some point because there’s really no finishing of anything beyond the current version of whatever it is right now. Mallarmé said that. You have to watch your greed and perfectionism and pay attention. And learn to let it go when it tells you to. That for me, took a long time too. It really did. That was my biggest mountain, learning to finish anything I started, even if I thought it was terrible, to get into the practice of letting things go. I got that last bit of advice many years ago from my songwriter friend Ron Sexsmith.
8. How did you develop this process?
A lot of failure. I also got this advice from Neil Young: don’t leave a new song alone in a room until it’s 80 percent done or you’ll never find it again, like I mentioned before. Thank you Neil. Now there’s a man who knows how to find water in a desert.
9. Do you work with clear, precise ideas of what you are wanting to compose, or are you open to what arrives through the creative process?
No, because that is death to me. Congratulations to anybody who can work that way but I will probably not like whatever you come up with because ideas are nothing. I don’t care for them. Anybody can have an idea. It took hundreds of failed ideas for me to realize that I was deluding myself with hollow things. Gold is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. You think you’re doing one thing and another thing comes out of nowhere by surprise. You end up following the thing that initially feels like it isn’t meant to be, and it ends up that it probably is. Mallarmé also said that you don’t make a poem with ideas, but with words. I love that.
10. Are you classically trained or self-taught as a singer songwriter/ composer? Do you think this affects your approach to your creative process? If so, in what ways?
Writing can’t be taught. Genius can’t be taught. Music, on this level, can’t be taught. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to have some formal training at this point - I’d give anything to be able to have the time and sponge-like malleability of youth on my side and be able to study classical piano or jazz, but that is the paradoxical tragedy of the thing. Had I been forced into all of that, I wouldn’t have been able to arrive here. I wouldn’t have ended up with this attitude, or genie, for lack of a better word, which is mine alone.
I had to learn all of my instruments by ear and learned from vinyl records. I’m an autodidact. I watched people’s hands. I stalked musicians as a young teenager who practically lived on the streets and when I couldn’t get into the clubs to see them play I’d wait outside for them to come out and ask them the right questions. That sounds a little crazy now but it’s true. I put in the tens of thousands of hours that way, not the other way. It’s just as valid, and to me, more exciting, but then, I never expected to win any contests with these hands.
It’s a shame that it’s largely such an either/or type thing but music and genius are frequently stolen from people in their youth, and that’s a terrible crime. I recently took my 10 year old daughter out of piano lessons for this very reason because she had stopped coming up with her own songs. The joy and hunger was leaving her. The learning of musical theory before one has the correct side of the brain working in proper relationship with it is putting the cart before the horse. Musicians like Paco de Lucia, Al Dimeola, and John Lennon have all said similar things. Joe Pass said you should almost be a virtuoso first. Maybe it’s the same with writing. For me.
RITUALS
11. Do you have rituals that you practice in your creative process? What are your rituals? How did you develop these rituals? How do these rituals affect you and the way you work?
Not really. I’m sure that I’ve tried it all at some point, but it’s always changing. I’m a highly addictive creature of habit, but my habits change monthly and sometimes weekly, so the answer is no. And for me, there’s no discipline beyond discipleship. The only true ritual would be the humble realization that my work isn’t ultimately really mine, and feels sacred to me, and that whatever state I am entering is my holy church. I’m not always conscious of this, but I try to invite the gods to the table, because as Jung said so well, invited or not, the gods will come, you know? It reminds me of that old quote that artists who aren’t making art begin to make drama in their lives. I mean, working at your art is the ultimate saviour. When we’re not working, we tend to start spinning ourselves up into all kinds of knots.
12. Have you been in an altered state of consciousness when writing songs/ composing music? (meditation, chemical enhancement, incense, breath work). Did this affect your creative process, and if so, how?
I studied various things like vipassana meditation, but that was to save my life. For years I studied alcohol, also to save my life I thought, until it didn’t. With drugs, I tried them all but it wasn’t my thing. Acid was good and fun, but you can’t live there. No, there’s nothing. I really like good coffee. I like to burn sweetgrass or palo santo and I like essential oils but that’s just stuff to clear the air. I don’t need anything to help me write. I like the beauty of the female form. Being in love is a massive motivator. And losing it, well, that’s a gold mine isn’t it? But I’ve mined more than enough from that vein.
I love to walk a lot. Ambulando Salvatore. It’s latin for it is solved by walking. It’s good to see the horizon everyday if you can. And be with nature and get fully inside her in a quiet way so you can begin to listen. I also love great conversation, when the company is good, and I try to surround myself with people and things of quality. My old man’s thing was you aren’t only what you eat, but you become who and what you hang out with including what you wear, think, and say. I know that some people like to stay stoned 24/7 but I’m kind of already there and always have been so I don’t lean on those kinds of things. My kind of trouble is that I have spent a lifetime just trying to be ok here, and I guess that’s the kind of artist I am. It informs everything I do. Resistance and vulnerability.
13. Do you ever experience writer’s block?
Yes, for years until I discovered it was a myth and trap as big as inspiration itself. Inspiration means to breathe in. Writer’s block means the well is empty and the camera is out of film and the cure is to go get busy doing something else. You let your image bank and well get filled up again and that takes trust, faith, and patience.
Also, I don’t make things up. I don’t need to. On some level I wait until there’s something to say. Why lie? Write what you know and have lived. There’s already so much false and negative mediocrity in the air around you at all times, so why add to it? The more you live and grow and tell your story truthfully, the more you’ll have to share.
In the end, you will not be the decider of what your ultimate contribution to others will be and that hurts, but you have to come to terms with that. You may only have the one great novel in you, or the three albums instead of thirty. You may not live a long life. You may get sick or run out of things to say. You might get hit by a bus, or by a hit song that makes you so rich and successful that you lose your soul or feel that you have and can never write again. There are a lot of possibilities. That’s why it’s best to stay humble and grateful and not take anything for granted. So-called writer’s block can come from worrying about these kinds of things and more.
14. Have you any strategies that help you push through writer’s block?
Once you get tired of shadow boxing and constantly swinging your arms in the air like a silly madman you start to feel better and you start to look better and think better. We all know what someone who is punching the air all of the time feels like to be around. It’s a terrible thing and that kind of archetypal cliche of the tortured genius is a literal hell for everyone around you. You have to let that go and take it down a few notches. Nobody needs that.
15. Do you have periods where ideas come much easier, where you feel you are in the flow when writing songs? If so, how do you characterize these periods, how does this flow state feel for you?
Yes, and it’s glorious and fleeting and often gone just as fast as it appeared. It feels like heaven on earth to feel the flow or Tao or Holy Spirit in things for sure, because it’s The Force. It’s a miracle to be thankful for because I may never be here or ever feel that again. It’s a visitation.
16. If you experience the state of creative flow sometimes but not all the time, what do you think was different that made that flow state occur?
Things that distress or annoy me that are out of my control. A lack of love, or too much sin, which just means missing the mark in general, and not enough atonement. Too much ego and white knuckling of the steering wheel, you know…but everything comes down to this, doesn’t it? Every single thing in your life. Are you able to let something bigger than you take the wheel or not? There was a band called God Is My Co-Pilot making some waves when I first lived in NYC in the early 90’s. They were a very cool band with a really cool name. Years later I heard Marianne Williamson say, in reference to something else… co-pilot? CO-PILOT?! Why not God is my pilot and leave it at that!?
BELIEFS AND EXPERIENCES
17. What is your understanding of the concept of the Muse and what does it personally mean to you?
I probably put Muse, God, and Goddess all under the same banner but I don’t think about concepts like that very much. Jesus, Buddha, the Supreme Commander…it’s all only one source and for me it’s that G word again. So do I follow the Goddess? Yeah, sure I do, as a part of everything I just mentioned. I think I have a lot of woman in me, and maybe I know how to pray. I try to remember to as often as I can.
I’ve spent a lifetime trying to learn to receive and I’m still learning that dance. It’s probably best when She tells me what to do. When She says when, and I say how. All that yin yang stuff. That’s life on this earth.
Lately everybody is talking about the secret believing that they manifest every single thing they see before them but I really have my doubts. If it were really as simple as that we would’ve blown up a long time ago. As my father once said to me, son, it’s no fucking secret, remember the bible I bought you? it said ask and ye shall receive. Do we actually know how to receive? It’s not like it’s a shopping list we hand up to the man in the sky. Not for me. That’s just total insanity.
Some of us are so broken and almost destroyed by our childhoods, or maybe most of us, that it takes us a lifetime in many cases just to dare learn to ask. That’s how little we think of ourselves. And some of us eventually heal and grow enough to learn to receive. And some of us absolutely have to make art or die. And for some of us, it even goes beyond that into prayer. These last two types of artists are the ones I pay attention to.
18. Do you have a Muse? If so, what role does the Muse play in your own songwriting / composing process?
It’s probably not my business to know or reveal, but I think I just did. All I know is, She finds me when She wants to. I don’t have to look for her. All I know for sure is that so far, within my body of work or looking back at this ‘career’ or whatever it is, I can see a staunch refusal to enter her into the arena and a desire to protect her at any cost. This is the reason I don’t enter the contests or dog and pony award shows. I just don’t want to insult the deal, you know? I’m that kind of artist, and maybe there’s only two kinds in the end… the political kind, and the other. I don’t know, but for me, some things, many things, are just not for sale.
19. Are you aware of the Muses of ancient Greece and how artists would invoke the Muses to assist them in their craft? Do you feel there is anything you do in your own practice that is similar to this?
I pray and worship in my own way and I don’t concern myself much with idols or altars but I do try to get down on my knees as often as I can, and frankly, life has a way of keeping me there anyway, to be honest. Everything always seems to go back to if it be thy will Lord God. What can I do for you? You know? You have given me so much. And just as often or much more often… something more like help me please!
20. Do you feel that your creative Muse assists you in bringing forth your vision, or is it the Muse that dictates the creative idea and your job is to transcribe the idea?
My vision is wrong. I have no vision. Maybe only the fool has vision because it just reeks of ego and ultimately psyche transcends all of that and does what she wants to anyway, and so will Eros. No, I have no vision. Hitler had a vision. I think that what I have is feeling. Maybe a certain sensibility and sensitivity or depth. A certain refinement or filter that comes with time. I think I know how to touch the hand and sometimes how to let it and feel it take mine. What more could anyone ask for?
21. With your own songwriting/composing, have you ever experienced phenomena where it feels like the song / piece of music is given to you / descended upon you, already formed? If so, tell me about this – how did the process feel? Where do you think inspiration for the song came from?
Yes, one hundred percent. The gift is given, and I can recognize that, and then put it back out there through many rivers until it all flows right back into the lake of dreams, right back to the source. That’s a feeling that feels like home, if and when you can get it.
BACKGROUND
22. Did you have creative people around you when you were growing up? Do you think they influenced you in regards to your own creative process, your beliefs and rituals?
I was an immigrant in my lifetime, and I was raised by very humble, hard working blue-collar people who were extremely in love with the arts, without having much chance to do anything about it but cultivate it in their children. I was strongly encouraged from a very young age to bridge that gap between them and their dreams, which turned out to be mine as well. It wasn’t always pretty or even half-conscious, and even felt like a curse for a large part of my life, but I am extremely blessed and lucky to have had the mother and father that I had. They taught us to follow our own paths and be ok with being different. How to chase a dream and stand apart… I can’t say enough about them. They were singular people and brave people. Real soul people with a lot of character, in addition to being large characters!
23. Have there been other artists, musicians, writers, who have influenced you with their process, beliefs, and rituals in relation to creativity? If so, who, and in what way?
All artists influence me, and anyone who has sincerely taken the hero’s journey has influenced me, just as I’ve likely influenced anyone who recognized that archetype working in me as well. And, as John Lennon said, if another artist he admired wore green socks, he probably would as well. We’re all in this together.
24. Do you feel like your culture, your community, your heritage, or even your bloodline have influenced your rituals and beliefs in regard to creative practice and the Muse?
I come from poor Gallic-Celtic fisherman in Spain on one side and poor Slavic farmers and Roma gypsies on the other. These were people who lived for music although I don’t think that the cultivation of real mastery was on the table for them. They were just too busy trying to survive. But singing and storytelling was probably all they really had. Look at the First Nations people here I grew up with as a kid and it’s the same thing. A drum, a voice, a fire, a god, and sky. I come from generations of people who have no interest in the accumulation of material wealth, power, or social influence whatsoever and I think that has influenced me. It feels like it’s in my bones. It has also infuriated me at times.
But yeah, people who live close to the earth and closer to their own mortality. Like in Mexico. It's a different paradigm altogether, and it's disappearing quickly in every corner of the world but I think it's going to come back just as fast. It will have to if we are going to survive. We are currently seeing a massive drop in spirit, joy, and community right before our eyes and artists have been watching and warning of this for decades. We should continue to look to them. The technology we worship and live with has made the pursuit of loneliness and isolation and public image the current under it all. It isn’t working and we should continue to resist the undertow of that kind of glamour because all that glitters is not gold and it’s time we learn this and teach this. We are literally experiencing an epidemic of desperate loneliness and we know it. And my prediction is that this will take us down before any of our other real or imaginary threats can get to us.
In the Lord’s prayer, it says give us this day, our daily bread and there are people on this planet who embody it and people who simply don’t and never will. We should stop following those people. But anyway, the prayer is for enough bread for today, so that we can get onto more important things tonight when the work is done and set aside, as well as our thoughts of tomorrow. Tonight, as we sit round the fire under great stars, sharing our guitars and stories and dreams, praising our Creator in our many ways. I think the muse I love more than any other is in there, dancing around the crackling flames. She is life itself and the only one I ever really miss. The Mother.