This is a blog about the creative process. It features anecdotes and links and other glimpses into the act of creating things.
Creativity is beautiful and blinding and painful and the most human thing we do. Let's look at it some more. It matters.
Things I otherwise write or have written:
A book.
Items in many anthologies.
Plays of varying lengths.
Video games.
Commercials.
Radio stories on a broad range of topics for various national public radio programs.
Assorted blogs.
A Twitter feed (@johnmoe).
Book reviews.
Other creative things I've done:
Hosted public radio shows of the national and local varieties.
Sung in rock bands.
Acted in many stage plays and commercials.
Ran an electronic greeting cards site, poorly.
Edited Amazon.com's toy store site.
Parented.
I've also worked as a file clerk for a law firm that represented Exxon in the Valdez spill.
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The Postal Service
One of my favorite bands is barely a band at all. Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Jimmy Tamborello who performs and records as Dntel formed The Postal Service after the former recorded some vocals for the latter’s record in 2001. They barely knew each other and lived in different cities but thought there was something going on creatively between them. So what they did was record separate song parts and mail them back and forth through the US Postal Service (thus the name). Read more.
In December 2001, Gibbard started receiving CD-Rs from Tamborello filled with beatsy electronic music, which he manipulated in his computer before writing melodies and lyrics and recording vocals. He also added some guitar, drums and keyboards — much of which was recorded by Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla at his Hall of Justice studio — and then sent the demo back to L.A. Gibbard had to run his changes past Tamborello, but he more or less had the freedom to alter the songs to his liking.
“It was really great to get a little package every month or two — ‘Two new songs!’” says Gibbard. “Sometimes I’d say, ‘I want to move that part and this part,’ and it was really fun to have such autonomy in the writing; I could pretty much do whatever I wanted.”
Though Tamborello (also known for his work in Strictly Ballroom and Figurine) is no stranger to collaboration — everyone from Beachwood Sparks’ Chris Gunst to That Dog’s Rachel Haden to Slint/The For Carnation’s Brian McMahan appeared on Life Is Full of Possibilities — this was the first time he had attempted a project with a relative stranger.
“It was like having to work on the album and make friends at the same time,” admits Tamborello. “In the beginning I was probably a little nervous about not wanting to say I didn’t like something ’cause I didn’t know him. But in the end it didn’t end up ever being an issue. It seemed like I was always excited with what he did.”
The final product was a masterpiece called “Give Up”. Gibbard and Tamborello report that there will probably never be a second Postal Service album. They did it. It’s done.
