What comes first? The music or the muse?

Music is in our souls. I believe we tune in to music not just for the art, but in the secret hope of your own creative passions and talents being awakened through some kind of energy exchange. The allure of musical performance is as much about the seer as the doer. We don’t want to be them or possess them as much as we want to be own creative selves.

If you want to know more about the creative process, watch and listen to Jack White. I relished his 2007 documentary, Under Great White Northern Lights. As the White Stripes trekked across Canada, we are given clues to this “strange and dirty work” and allowed a peek into a creative process where “passion and desperation” are everything. Still, Mr. White insists that “creativity and work ethic walk side by side” and sometimes you have to simply go in and do the work.

The documentary release last August of It Might Get Loud blurs the lines between work, play, passion and talent as three musical artists bring their stories together - Jack White, Jimmy Page and The Edge. These men all eat creativity for breakfast, but it’s younger Jack that appears to approach the entire process with “aggression and attitude”, saying that playing the guitar is a battle between the man and the instrument, one in which the musician must emerge victorious.

Fight for your creativity. Your soul could depend on it.