This Fall we hosted Composer, Bradley Thomas Turner, at Postcard Cabins Talladega Valley in Alabama for a full month so he escape the noise and focus on writing a new album in nature. Here’s what he had to say after week three of his artist fellowship.
As far as my creative process goes, I felt like I hit a wall at the start of the third week of my fellowship. The realization of my time being half way over hit me hard, and for a couple of days, the self-inflicted stress of wanting to have a finished product by the end of my stay put me into a mindset where I worked hard, almost toiled and stopped allowing myself to exist in the experience.
Funny enough, the efforts were not fruitful. It seems obvious now, but for those two days, despite physically being at the cabin, I was mentally not allowing myself to be present. I wasn’t sitting outside and listening. I wasn’t being still and experiencing things outside myself. It’s really not enough to be there in nature if your intentions have strayed, and you’re not making some kind of effort to be in the moment.
My mind returned to the discoveries of the first week of my fellowship. At that time, I felt like the experience was dictating ideas to me. I was trying to work with whatever came to me and relishing in the small details of what I experienced. I decided to let go of the worry of what the final result of my fellowship would be in terms of musical output. Instead, I would focus on capturing those small ideas, developing what was there, regardless of how long these ideas ended up being, or how many there were, or how any of it fit into a grand scheme of a final album.
I realized I was writing metaphorical postcards to my future self about these experiences and the feelings these moments conjured. Not only so I would remember, but also so I’d be inspired to put myself in situations to have these types of experiences again.
It’s really easy to overlook the tiny, magical details. It’s so easy for our consciousness to be anywhere but where we physically are. I’m always stunned (and disturbed) by experiences I’ve had or trips I’ve been on where I can recall the large, overarching gist of what happened, but none of the unique specifics. For example, I went to the Grand Canyon once in the middle of a road trip. I was in a rush, and it felt like I was only doing it to say I did it. I don’t remember anything specific about it other than that I went. It’s like I remember it in third-person, like it’s something that happened to someone else, instead of a first-person point of view.
I’m determined to have a different relationship with my experiences now. I don’t want to do things only to be able to say I did them. I want to live life in first-person. It may sound trite because we’ve all heard these types of statements about being present repeated ad nauseam. It’s not unique to feel disconnected and detached from the moment in the age of omnipresent internet connectivity.
But it doesn’t change the truth of it, that there is something really magical about being connected to what’s happening physically right in front of you at this moment.
You can listen to the full album Bradley created at Postcard Cabins here.