ReZoom

When Dire Straits sang "that ain't workin'," I sang along with them. In my late-20s, their single "Money for Nothing" was probably my favorite song. It wasn't that I agreed with the characters in it who complain that musicians (and by implication other creative people) aren't really working. I already knew that doing what you love requires work. Walt Whitman may have loafed and invited his soul, but eventually he had to get up off his loafing ass and write about it.

My preoccupation with the song, it seems to me now, was about finding my own definition of work. In the tiny town of Crossville, Tennessee, I worked the late shift at a bus station and convenience market. I would go home at midnight wondering what it might feel like to get paid to do work I enjoyed.

Already I agreed with Mark Twain. "Work," said that quotable curmudgeon, "consists of what a body is obliged to do. Play consists of what a body is not obliged to do." If it thrills you to play soccer, what a terrible chore to practice the piano instead. But if you're drawn to the piano as a creative outlet, practicing it becomes as essential a part of your everyday life as food.

The problem is that once you commit to what you excitedly conceive of as an advanced form of play, you are then obliged to do what it takes to make it all come together. By Twain's definition, you have turned it into work. Have you seen the incredible shadow-puppet performance by Raymond Crowe that's making the rounds on the internet? Crowe's hands become Louis Armstrong's profile as he sings "Wonderful World," then metamorphose into a rabbit, a swan, a baby. No one obliged Crowe to practice making shadow puppets, but there's no question that all his practice was work.

Although we have to be a little skeptical about its simplicity, I like
the way that the great Swiss painter Paul Klee described his drawing
process: "I take a line out for a walk." Joseph Epstein, the American
essayist, applied this lovely image to his way of composing essays.
Perhaps this method is how Paul Simon wrote the rambling unrhymed lines of his immortal song "America" ("Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike ..."). Simon was undoubtedly working when he sat down with his guitar and created this song. But he was also playing, following the character and the melody. He took an idea out for a walk. Or did he walk the melody and come home with the images?

"Money for Nothing" first appeared in 1985, on the Dire Straits album
Brothers in Arms. Perhaps it's no coincidence that I started taking writing seriously along about the same time. Now and then, on those rare days when the work goes really well and I sit at my desk tapping the keys as if happily playing a piano, I remember that Rodin defined artists as people who take pleasure in their work. And I say aloud another line from the song: "That's the way you do it."