21/05/17

​This one is about Sticky fingers. Sticky fingers? Yes, literally. To music fans that would usually mean that famous Rolling Stones album, where they tried to rid themselves of any traces of psychedelia and get back to their beginnings and re-invent them. Which they did, since their Sticky Fingers album was probably the start of one of the greatest rock trilogy of albums that included Let It Bleed and Exile On Main Street. 


But let us put that in the writing context. Again, I have something literal in mind (in both senses of the word - if you really want or need to write anything, you should have a set of sticky fingers. It doesn’t matter whether they will be stuck in some sort of a keyboard or a pen of some kind. Preferably it will both. And that is for a very obvious reason - you never know what can become a source of inspiration, when it will strike and in which direction it will take you. If you focus on the fact that it is not coming, it won’t. The focus should be on the fact that a good idea will come, even if at that point you think you’re dotting down gibberish, and keep the sticky fingers ready.


Example? At the moment I’m sitting in “Walter Benedict”, one of my favorite cafes in town, with cozy tables and open brick walls. It is unusually warm outside, even if it’s mid-May. The cafe staff obviously have a good taste in music, they’re playing Peter Broderick’s With The Notes In My Ears from his Home album. Sitting inside, I notice the the people that occupied the outside table - the guy with green fancy moustache and a goatee with an off-kilter blue hat on his hat paying attention to every woman that passes by, a couple in their so-called ripe years having something that seems a totally inconsequential conversation and a younger couple completely immersed into their mobile tools of some sort or the other. It is just a moment, a snippet that tells you that it is good enough to be there and just soak everything in.


Ok, it is a very common situation. But do you remember when was the last time you were in a similar one that you didn’t intentionally try to remember or record in some way? Did you think how you could develop in your mind, or even better, write down a situation, a conversation that could develop into a story? That’s why those Sticky Fingers are for. So Brown Sugar and Wild Horses will reap their rewards.

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