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.
Text
Malkmus as non-singer
I was walking in to work and Stephen Malkmus’s “Jenny and the Ess-Dog” came up on shuffle. Why, I wondered, is there such a unique and forceful quality to Malkmus’s vocals? Here’s an excerpt from a New York rock blog interview circa 1999:
**
Malkmus: (Laughs) I don’t even think my voice is really good.
NY Rock: That’s an odd statement coming from a singer…
Malkmus: A good voice isn’t so important. It’s more important to sound really unique. We need more singers like PJ Harvey or Shirley Manson, Dylan or Lou Reed. They really got their own cool style. I believe everybody can sing. You just need to find a way to make your voice correspond with the song. Basically, that’s it.
Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can’t really sing, who speak their songs.
NY Rock: They’re usually the voices that really grip you…
Malkmus: That’s right. If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don’t listen to the lyrics. But yeah, it took me a while to see it like that…
NY Rock: So why did you decide to sing?
Malkmus: I never decided to start singing, to be a singer. Well, yeah, I sang to some songs on the radio or in the shower. When I started to play in bands they needed a singer, so I sang and became a singer. I really do think everybody can sing.
**
And here’s the video of that song I was telling you about.
