Creativity: A two-way street

Songwriter Edward Knowles reflects on his relationship with creativity.

By Ed Knowles, songwriter, and Groov contributing writer

When I was a young boy, I spent a lot of time thinking about the queen of rock and roll, Tina Turner. As we lived on Auckland's North Shore in the 1990s, it was a prerequisite that my mother owned a copy of 'Simply the Best' on CD. Perhaps you know the one?

While I was only a five-year-old boy with a bowl cut, I could feel Tina's pain. I loved her voice and listened attentively to her lyrics. But nevertheless, I always struggled to understand one aspect – how were these songs written? Where did they come from? How could a song not exist one moment and then suddenly exist the next? Surely people couldn't produce the impeccable, sultry wonderment of 'I Can't Stand the Rain.'

As you can see, the creative process confused me as a child. Despite having co-written five albums myself, it remains a mysterious backwater through which I blindly wade.

My name is Edward Knowles, and I'm an Auckland-based songwriter. For the last 20 years, I've been subject to the curious and cryptic terms of creativity. Through my time with The Checks, and now with Racing, the main thing I've learned about my own creative process is that creativity is a two-way street. It's give and take. So if I want to get the good stuff out of my head, I need to put good stuff in.

Reading fiction was the first method I discovered. Reading took my imagination into unfamiliar territories and suspended my everyday thoughts – which I now believe is essential. I can't imagine Jim Morrison was considering renewing his car insurance while formulating 'Riders on the Storm.' One needs to free themselves from the mundane, to give themselves some distance, a little room to operate. And while Jim Morrison and I potentially differ in our approach, the goal is the same – escapism.

The tricky part is, in this day and age, it's much easier to scroll on your phone than read a book. Unfortunately, excessive screen time has the opposite effect. It drives me further into my regular thought patterns and suffocates my curiosity. You'd think unlimited access to information would increase creative output, not shrink it. I shudder to think how many great ideas the world has missed out on due to people watching '10 Things You Can Fix with a Paper Clip' on YouTube.

While my creative process mainly focuses on my inner world, there's also a physical element – exercise. For example, if I go for a run before writing, I'm far more likely to come up with something worth keeping. Liam Gallagher once said of his own running habit, "It shuffles the deck." To me, this made total sense. My mind is all too capable of dealing out the same hand of cards, over and over again, until I force it to deal new ones. I've been using exercise to this effect for the last few years, and it now plays a central role in both my creative process and life in general.

Swimming in the sea is another essential part of my creative process. Whether it's the cold temperature or the magnesium, it works wonders. Diving under the surface sends a feeling of shock through my nervous system and somehow resets my mind. Maybe the cold water does for the body what reading does for the brain? It forces something unexpected and unfamiliar. If I were ever asked to produce a band, the first thing I would do is make them jump off the wharf.

While creativity is a two-way street, and I do what I can to encourage good results, I also know that rules are made to be broken. Creativity is tricky; you can do all the right things and get the wrong results or all the wrong things and get the right results. There are no guarantees. This reminds me of a phrase that sat above my mother's CD player all those years ago, "Man plans, and God laughs." So perhaps, at the end of the day, the fundamental role of a creative process is less about production and more about preparation. It keeps you ready, poised to pounce should a wild moment of brilliance come your way.