Here's a sneak peek at Stephen Colbert's upcoming Christmas special. Andy Williams, eat your heart out. In this clip, Stephen and a friendly bear ask the musical question, "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?" Isn't that nice? The man in the bear suit, Elvis Costello, originally tossed off the song as a B-side, but it became a hit so he hastily slapped it onto the U.S. edition of Armed Forces. People think he wrote it, but the song was actually written by Nick Lowe, the British pub-rocker, New Waver, and all around nice guy. Good job, guys.
And what a good question!
Declan McManus, otherwise known as Elvis Costello, the man in the bear suit
Here Elvis Costello plays guest host and sings a rocking "Peace, Love and Understanding" for a whole new generation.
Everyday I write the book. Some days are better than others. It's been said that Balzac could knock off a novel by noon. I assume that was only the first draft. Even so, it was quite an accomplishment. Some write novels in their sleep, with one hand tied behind their back, or on the head of a pin. It takes me much longer than those circus freaks. I sweat over every word, and then rewrite what I've written. Maybe I'm a perfectionist. I can dash off emails or blog posts as if they were Post-it Notes, which I can dash off like Balzac, but send me anywhere near "important" writing and I have to use an axe to break through the ice. Sometimes it's easier and the story carries me along, but I think people who brag that "the story wrote itself" are either bald-faced liars or aren't writing deep enough, and the last thing the world needs is more formulaic crap.
What's going on in my brain? One person who might know is neurologist Alice W. Flaherty, the author of Midnight Disease: the Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain.What a wonderful, mind-boggling read. (She's on a panel discussion linked below.)
Another person who might have a clue about writing--and the creative process-- is author Francine Prose, who has written a number of novels and a book on writing, Reading Like a Writer.
Writer David Foster Wallace suffered from depression and eventually took his own life, but was extremely creative, prolific, and successful. Was his pathology somehow linked to his prodigious creative output, or was that purely circumstantial? In this interview with Le Conversazioni in 2006 he seems like a mollusk without a shell. Here he discusses failure:
The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination is devoted to exploring creativity and the imaginative process. Not long ago, they hosted Hypergraphia and Hypographia, a roundtable discussion featuring Jonathan Lethem, Alice W. Flaherty, Pedro Reyes, Francis Levy, Alan Jacobs, and Lois Oppenheim. The panel examined the neurological and psychodynamic basis for writer's block and the opposite affliction, hypergraphia, which compels the artist to write, write, write uncontrollably.
It's a fascinating discussion, and to watch it click HERE and select video.
Here's a good clip of Declan Patrick MacManus, otherwise known as Elvis Costello. There are great clips of him everyone has seen, such as the SNL performance where a skinny Elvis stops a song, switches gears, and launches into a blistering "Radio, Radio," but I wanted to find something from a few years later, and came across this great live clip from 1982, off the album Imperial Bedroom.
This is a more sophisticated Elvis than his 1977 punky debut, with a fuller, almost lush back-up, and nearly Beatle-esque production values. The lyrics are Costello at his best, a soul crushed under the wheel, broken but still full of venom, nasty literate and schoolboy clever.
Cause the high heel he used to be has been ground down And he listens for the footsteps that would follow him around
To murder my love is a crime But will you still love A man out of time
Declan McManus, otherwise known as Elvis Costello, the man in the bear suit
