The Natalie Rule

Published: Thu, 01/20/22

I've written enough songs, magazine articles and ad demos on deadline that I don't officially believe in writer's block. Creeping perfectionism, however, is another story altogether. Having knocked off this newsletter for a couple weeks around the holidays, it's been hard getting back on the pony. I suppose writer's block mostly amounts to the feeling that if you haven't written for a while, you'd better come up with something really amazing to justify the delay. (That certainly about sums up how I handle my email.) Also, I was just following the old "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Not that I had anything rotten to say about anything that wanted piping down about. I just wasn't feeling particularly effervescent on any particular subject, at least not about anything I haven't already effervesced about here at length at one point or another.

However, as Natalie Goldberg observes in Writing Down The Bones, "talking is the practice for writing," or something like that. The seasonal slowdown did provide me the chance to catch up with one old friend in particular. He expressed sufficient curiosity about the things I was teaching that we got into it at some length, and it was not unlike when the Spinal Tap boys roll up to Elvis Presley's grave site in Memphis only to discover just how much it put everything in perspective. In this case, there wasn't "too much f*cking perspective," just enough of it to make me really think.

I generally take as my starting point that I'm talking with people already predisposed to roots music generally and fingerstyle guitar in particular. But talking with my friend, I had to sort of explain the whole thing from scratch. I tend to describe how I teach in terms of what else is out there: that I'm less concerned with playing prewar blues arrangements note-for-note than with things like playing solo guitar with a solid groove, learning to improvise and how to put a repertoire of tunes together. But the details of how I think you should get there only mean anything once you're already inside the conversation.

My friend, who is not all that concerned with parsing the difference between how Robert Johnson played "Come On In My Kitchen" and how I teach "Sitting On Top Of The World," had a much more visceral response to all this: "Wait a minute. You can show me, a guy who doesn't like to sing and isn't going to get together with other people to jam, how to play something cool all by myself? Why didn't you lead with that?"

He's got a point. Next week, I'll spend some time elaborating on this idea. In the meantime, if you're still here, happy New Year and thanks for sticking around.

More soon,

David

P.S. If you too are someone who doesn't like to sing and isn't going to get together with other people to jam, drop me a line and tell me what seems to be standing between you and being able to play something cool all by yourself.