Bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down... and won.

This past weekend, I stumbled on a John Prine Interview (I guess you'd have to classify his as "country folk" artist).  

In 1971 Prine's self-titled debut album was released.  I'd forgotten how great this album is.  He and friend Steve Goodman had each been active in the Chicago folk scene before being "discovered" by Kris Kristofferson (Kristofferson remarked that Prine wrote songs so good that "we'll have to break his thumbs").  The album included his signature songs "Illegal Smile," "Sam Stone," "Angel from Montgomery," "Paradise (where is mother was from)," "Hello In There," and "Far From Me", about lost love for a waitress that Prine later said was his favorite of all his songs. 

Here are a few gems I mined from the interview (and from a few other sources and lyrics):

I guess if you keep making the same mistake long enough, it becomes your style.

Bewildered, bewildered, you have no complaint. You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't.

The scientific nature of the ordinary man is to go out and do the best you can.

Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what’s not supposed to be there.

If heartaches was commercials, we'd all be on TV.

Now Jesus, he don't like killing, no matter what the reason is for, and your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore.

I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.

I guess what I always found funny was the human condition. There is a certain comedy and pathos to trouble and accidents. Like, when a driver has parked his car crookedly and then wonders why he has the bad luck of being hit.

I'm fascinated by America...it's so odd.

I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don't like it. There's no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, "Yeah, that's it." They appear before me and they fit. I don't usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don't know it. Sometimes, you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you're doing.

The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in. The beginning makes no sense whatsoever. It just, like, rhymes. And then all of a sudden I'll go into, I am an old woman named after my mother.

Write what YOU like. That way, you'll still enjoy playing it 50 years later. 

Have plenty of crazy ideas.  There's bound to be one or two gems in there.

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Have plenty of crazy ideas this week.  Amen!

Carpe diem Life,
David Kuhn