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.
Theme by nostrich.
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How “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came together
Cobain did not begin to write “Smells Like Teen Spirit” until a few weeks before recording started on Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, in 1991. When he first presented the song to his bandmates, it comprised just the main riff and the chorus vocal melody,which bassist Krist Novoselic dismissed at the time as “ridiculous.” In response, Cobain made the band play the riff for “an hour and a half.” In a 2001 interview, Novoselic recalled that after playing the riff repeatedly, he thought, “‘Wait a minute. Why don’t we just kind of slow this down a bit?’ So I started playing the verse part. And Dave [started] playing a drum beat.” As a result, it is the only song on Nevermind to credit all three band members as authors.
