https://www.npr.org/2023/12/17/1219463824/he-was-creatively-dead-then-he-harnessed-the-power-of-boredom

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The man behind 'Song Exploder' felt 'creatively dead.' Then he
harnessed boredom Hrishikesh Hirway says the cause of his writer's
block was a "whirlpool of self judgment."
 
Special Series

Enlighten Me with Rachel Martin

Conversations about what it takes to build a life of meaning

He felt 'creatively dead.' Then he harnessed the power of boredom

December 17, 20236:00 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
RM, 2022

Rachel Martin

He felt 'creatively dead.' Then he harnessed the power of boredom

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Hrishikesh Hirway says the cause of his writer's block was a
"whirlpool of self judgment." Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for VOX
Media hide caption

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Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for VOX Media

Hrishikesh Hirway says the cause of his writer's block was a
"whirlpool of self judgment."

Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for VOX Media

We are in it right now, aren't we? The holiday season and all the
parties that come with it. You've got your office parties. Your
family feasts. Your neighborhood potlucks. And maybe you're good at
these. You float around from corner to corner making appropriate
small talk -- deploying witty aphorisms like it's your J-O-B. You love
this. You're the queen of the party. The sommelier of small talk.

This used to be me. I don't know exactly what happened -- COVID,
interviewing people for a living for a long time, age. Whatever. But
it's not me anymore. Now, all I want to do is cut the talk about
holiday plans or work drama and go right for the jugular. I want to
ask the BIG existential questions and I want to ask them right from
the get go. Yes, I know this is not so cool to do at parties.
Luckily, I get to do that here!

I have been a fan of Hrishikesh Hirway for a long time. I listened to
his hilarious dissection of the West Wing, and his podcast Song
Exploder (which will soon turn 10) has become regular listening for
me and my family on road trips. Hirway is a talented musician in his
own right and every episode he breaks down one song with the artist
who created it. And they often go to deep places. Which is why I knew
he'd be game for a different kind of conversation where we skip most
of the small talk and just get into the muck. The good kind -- the
existential kind.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Rachel Martin: In preparation for this conversation, I actually went
back and I listened to the conversation that you and I had right when
you were releasing the video version of Song Exploder on Netflix. So
this was like October 2020.

Hrishikesh Hirway: Yeah.

Martin: And it was interesting because in the first couple of minutes
of the conversation, you said the word "intimacy" three times.

Hirway: [Laughs]

Martin: Everybody has a sense of what that word means, but I wondered
if you would indulge me and put some more words to that definition;
like, if you could unpack that. What does that word mean to you in
the context of conversation?

Hirway: I think it means that you get to a place where you feel
comfortable being vulnerable with someone else. It's sort of a shared
environment that gets created between both people, where everyone
involved in the conversation can say, yeah, I'm going to let down my
guard. I'm going to reveal something true about myself or I have the
potential to reveal something true about myself. And I'm going to
actively seek out some of those things, you know -- we're going to dig
past small talk and get into the real stuff.

Rick Rubin on taking communion with Johnny Cash and not rushing
creativity

Enlighten Me with Rachel Martin

Rick Rubin on taking communion with Johnny Cash and not rushing
creativity

Martin: So to that end, will you be game to do something with me,
conversationally speaking?

Hirway: OK.

Martin: You're like: I don't know, what is it? I'm just gonna ask you
questions. But, I've thought about these questions. And these are a
few questions that I think are just like a main line to intimacy,
right? They're the big ones and I feel like you're gonna be up for
it.

So, to start, when have you felt most afraid?

Hirway: Well, this might be recency bias, but a few weeks ago my
sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and she's my best friend. She
is my older sister and is so important to just forming who I am.

Martin: And is it just the two of you?

Hirway: It's just the two of us, yeah. And there was a moment where
we didn't know much yet, you know, there had been a biopsy, there had
been confirmation that there was a tumor that was malignant. So I
went on a walk with my wife and I just decided to allow myself to ask
all the horrible potential questions.

Just ask everything and face everything that I was scared of, to try
not to keep it off to the side. Because there were things that I felt
like I needed to prepare myself for and things that I was going to
need to have to deal with. Things that I would have to be able to
deal with in order to be helpful to her and her family. She has three
young kids and she lives on the other side of the country.

Martin: Is the fear the unknown or is the fear losing your sister?

Hirway: The fear is losing my sister. My mom passed away in 2020. We
had another health scare last year when my dad had a fall. And now my
sister has this cancer diagnosis. I don't have any kids and I think
the fear is how unmoored it would be to be alone like that.

It feels a little bit like there's a gravitational pull that keeps me
on earth, and that is these three people. One of them's already gone.
Without the other ones, I feel like I'll just careen off the side of
the planet.

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Listen to All Things Considered each day here or on your local member
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Martin: Do you believe in some kind of God or divine power?

Hirway: I don't think so. Not in the way that I think anybody else
would use that word. I believe in some kind of secular magic, I
guess, in the world. I think there are really magical things that
happen sometimes. They get labeled as coincidence, they get labeled
as like, I don't know, cathartic experience or transcendent
experience. I think there are really incredible things that are part
of human existence. And there are things that are beyond the realm of
one person's knowing. And I'm fine with that.

Talking about God, there are all kinds of attributes that get
attached to that, that I think just end up feeling scary and are ways
of creating divisions between people.

I see religion as a sort of organizing principle for a few important
things in a society and in a culture. To provide some kind of
framework for all these things that feel beyond our understanding of
life and death. And these wonderful things that happen in between. I
think it's also a way to structure morality. And it's also a way to
organize a community through ritual and tradition and things that a
society needs.

I just happened to feel like I have access to those things, or I was
able to find my own way to that kind of wonder and morality and my
own version of traditions and rituals apart from a religious
institution.

Martin: What do you think happens when we die? Secular magic?

Hirway: I mean, it's secular magic in that we decompose and our cells
turn into something else.

Martin: Well, I guess that is magical, you're right. It is.

Hirway: Yeah, it is. I mean, the fact that a tree could grow out of
what used to be a person is pretty magical.

How do you make peace with your shortcomings? This man has an answer

Enlighten Me with Rachel Martin

How do you make peace with your shortcomings? This man has an answer

Martin: At what point in your life have you felt the most creatively
alive?

Hirway: Well, Song Exploder came out of a time in my life when I felt
the opposite of that, where I felt creatively dead, I'd say. People
call it writer's block. That's what I called it for a long time.

Martin: "Creatively dead" has a much bigger impact rhetorically than
"writer's block."

Hirway: Yeah. And I realize now that what that's really about is
judgment.

The reason why I wasn't able to make anything was because I was just
in this whirlpool of self judgment. I was sort of telling myself
stories about my own worth as an artist or lack thereof. So I kind of
put music aside for a while

Martin: Because you weren't musically where you thought you were
supposed to be in terms of a professional career arc?

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on religion, music -- and the Dolly Parton song he
dislikes

Enlighten Me with Rachel Martin

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on religion, music -- and the Dolly Parton song he
dislikes

Hirway: Something like that, yeah. I was in my early thirties, I put
out four albums, and I hadn't had a career that broke out into
something really extraordinary. I mean, it was extraordinary enough
to have a career in music at all, right? But that's not how I saw it,
you know. It felt like what I had achieved wasn't enough, and it
didn't feel like I could see a path of how I was going to get there.

So I kind of put it aside for a second and I started doing Song
Exploder as a kind of distraction, you know, a little side hobby idea
that could also be a way to hopefully give myself a day job in
between tours and making records and things like that.

And then it ended up taking up a lot of my time and it also ended up
reinforcing a lot of the judgment that I had for myself. Because
while talking to some of the huge names and people that I just really
admired, I felt even more convinced that there was sort of no need
for me to keep making music. Because what's the point?

Martin: OK, that doesn't seem like a very healthy mental place to
have been.

Hirway: No, it wasn't great, which is why I felt quite creatively
dead.

Martin: Even as you were making this thing that has become so
amazing, Song Exploder. Even in the midst of that success you were
feeling even more vulnerable and sad?

Hirway: Yeah, I think it took a while for that to set in. I didn't
realize it at first, but after a few years I started to realize how
much I missed making music. And so in 2021 I created this schedule
for myself, where one day a week, on Fridays, I would do nothing but
music. I would only work on music.

"Cascade" by Hrishikesh Hirway.

YouTube

I would set everything else aside. I wouldn't look at my emails. I
wouldn't have any meetings. I wouldn't do anything for the podcast.
Just music. It allowed some space for my brain to get bored. A thing
that I learned was how much boredom was like an essential part of
creativity. Maybe boredom is too strong of a word for it

Martin: No, I like it. I get it.

Hirway: It's some kind of idleness to let a kind of alchemical
reaction happen in your brain molecules. If they're constantly
occupied by something else, it's never gonna happen. But if you go on
a walk or you go on a drive or something where you're leaving 80% of
your brain unoccupied, that's when I found new ideas could come out
or I could sort of metabolize things that have been stirring in me
for a while.

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Listen to All Things Considered each day here or on your local member
station for more interviews like this.

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Conversations about what it takes to build a life of meaning

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