A Quote by Courtney A. Kemp
I always like to write myself into a corner. I think the best stuff comes from only having a few ways out.
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I think that just sitting down and having casual conversation is the hardest stuff to do. But the extremes? I know what it feels like to come racing around the corner at 90 miles an hour, sliding the car sideways. I know what gear I'm hitting it in when I'm coming around the corner and where I need to downshift. So to me, that's the fun stuff.
I know that one of the things that I really did to push myself was to write more formal poems, so I could feel like I was more of a master of language than I had been before. That was challenging and gratifying in so many ways. Then with these new poems, I've gone back to free verse, because it would be easy to paint myself into a corner with form. I saw myself becoming more opaque with the formal poems than I wanted to be. It took me a long time to work back into free verse again. That was a challenge in itself. You're always having to push yourself.
I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.
I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'
Self Help is a notoriously crowded market, but I believe that I've successfully differentiated myself in a few ways. For one, most demographic data shows that millennials think/act/see the world differently, and I don't think there's much personal development stuff out there that caters to millennial attitudes and experiences very well.
When I'm at my best, I'm trying to destabilize myself and figure out new ways of approaching art as a provocation. I think I am at my best when I push myself into a place where I don't have all the answers.
I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.
When I am at peace with myself . . . then thoughts flow into me most easily and at their best. Where they come from and how - that I cannot say . . . I'd be willing to work forever and forever if I were permitted to write only such music as I want to write and can write - which I myself think good.
I like the idea of having many different ways to express myself. There is a part of me as an artist and a creator who would like to express myself in many different ways. But then at the same time I know I have limited hours in the day, and I can only do so much successfully.
I tend to write songs critiquing myself. The best way for me to deal with stuff is to write a song about it... That's not to say all my songs are like that.
One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it.
It's just like an idea, like a chorus, and then we just jam on it - it happens in loads of different ways. The best songs I find always come from the subconscious, like when you don't think. Not to be pretentious about it, but usually songs just blurt out rather than thinking about it. I never write lyrics and then do a song, I find that really hard - that's like a real skill.
Hey, if you can't remember, don't worry about it. I'm having a few memory problems myself in this place. Little things like how long I've been here, what my purpose in life is, which feet to put my shoes on. Stuff like that.
I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.
People always ask me, 'Why do you only write about heartbreak?' I think I only write when I'm broken, so that's just what happens. It makes me feel better, but having some distance helps.
My philosophy on writing a song for myself is that I always, always, always want to write a song. I always want to write a song. I realize that as a record producer or a singer or whatever I might not, if I recorded on myself or someone else, the first time out I might not give it the right treatment, so that the world or many people will accept it and it'll be a public hit, or anything like that.
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