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think that I might have, because of experiences I’ve been through, some answers to their particular sorrows.
It’s not just the sorrows. I read a quote about you today, which said that where other artists are afraid to talk about their own work, you are one of the great analyzers of the creative process. I think people want to know what you have to say. I’m conflicted about that. We’re always concerned about doing damage to our work by explaining it. I often hear that people don’t want to know — that they want their own interpretations. But the times that I have interpreted my own songs, I hope I have done it in a way that it adds something rather than takes it away. If I am a taxidermist of the creative process. But that doesn’t mean I demystify the creative process, because I can’t. The creative process is extraordinarily confounding and mystifying.
I think we all have this craving to know more about creativity, and maybe people are responding to the fact that you’re at least attempting to offer some explanation. You know, the amazing thing to me about the creative process is the distance travelled, the instantaneous distance sometimes travelled from complete despair and boredom over your work to transcendence, like you suddenly hit on something. You’ve been sitting there just fucking hating everything you’ve been writing, and it’s nothing but artistic anguish, shall we say. And then suddenly it all makes sense, and it just hits you. That’s the feeling that I chase. Those unfortunately quite rare artistic epiphanies.
Martin Amis said that as you get older, those epiphanies become rarer, but that what you lose in inspiration you gain in technique.
I don’t know about technique, but I’m in a different business. Songwriting is com- pletely different to writing a novel. When writing a novel, you have to have some sort of control over the narrative. You need technique. Whereas songwriting is not like that at all. When you eventually play the song in the studio, the smallest most inconsequential things become massively interesting. All your best efforts
to write a beautiful line end up unused on the floor of the studio. You never know with songwriting. It’s amazing. The beautiful thing about songwriting is that you're often the last to understand how wonderful something might be. You can sing a song in the studio, and walk in, and the band is sitting there floored by what you’ve done — on a good day. And you’re like, ‘Was that any good?’ You don’t know.
You’ve also written novels. You don’t find the two things remotely similar?
There’s no comparison. I just find novels easy. It may be that they’re not very good novels, but you sit down, you’ve got an idea, you write your pages, and they all come pouring out. They suggest the next page. You get into it, and it all runs along pretty well. You give it to your editor and they knock it into shape and you’ve got yourself a novel. That’s my experience writing novels. Whereas songwriting, it’s a completely abstract and mysterious form.
In the film One More Time With Feeling, you describe songwriting as a process that’s become more difficult for you with time. Is that still true, or has this return to joy helped make the process easier?
No. There’s nothing joyful about writing lyrics. It’s mostly pain. Self-loathing. You’re on your own with yourself, doing something that’s incredibly intimate and vulnerable and which you’ll ultimately be judged on, not just by other people but by yourself. It’s a very fraught position to put yourself in. I find it extremely difficult. Once I get the words, that’s a whole different thing. When I have even three or four songs, I think, ‘Right, I’ve got this.’ Once I go into the studio with the band, the whole thing changes. It’s just a pleasure to make a record with these extraordinary people.
What about when you work in other mediums? Is it all pain and self-loathing when, say, making ceramics?
[Laughs] No, no. The glazing was very difficult, but no, that was extremely good fun. I had no expectations. They looked great, you know. Mostly that was just a huge pleasure.
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