Warming up

Before I play anything that matters, I play a lot of things that don't. Slow scales, a few chords with no song attached, the same two bars of whatever my hands feel like doing. It's not impressive to watch. It sounds like somebody clearing their throat.

It took me years to see how much of the music happens in that part. The songs don't show up when I sit down and demand them. They show up sideways, somewhere in the middle of the clearing-my-throat stretch, when I'm not paying attention and a little turn of phrase slides out of my fingers like it was waiting by the door.

So I've stopped treating the warm-up as a delay. It's the front porch of the whole process. You sit there a while, you let your hands remember what they know, and eventually something walks up the steps.

If you've got something you've been wanting to start, a song, a letter, a garden, try that. Don't aim at the finished thing. Just warm up near it, and see who comes by.