A writer can help a musician sequence songs by focusing on the "narrative arc," while a musician can improve prose by analyzing the "rhythm" of a sentence. This exchange of disciplinary lenses, exemplified by Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste, leads to novel creative insights.
Partners can overcome communication barriers by writing letters to each other in a shared journal. This asynchronous practice, used by Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad, creates a deliberate lag time that allows for more considered, subconscious, and unsaid thoughts to emerge than in verbal conversations.
Musician Jon Batiste workshops ideas with many people not for their direct input, but to test what he "actually believes." This process of defending ideas against many opinions solidifies his own convictions, while he reserves deep listening for a few trusted sources whose feedback is unfiltered by superficial concerns.
To break through a creative block, engage in a low-stakes activity like journaling, which Suleika Jaouad calls "the writing that doesn't count." This removes the pressure of an audience, allowing unedited thoughts to surface. A useful prompt is to start by writing, "I don't want to write about…"
During profound challenges like illness, viewing survival as a creative endeavor can be empowering. This mindset encourages tapping into imagination to overcome physical or emotional confinement, as when Jon Batiste composed daily lullabies for Suleika Jaouad during her hospitalization to envelop her with his presence.
Jon Batiste suggests music's power in movements like the Civil Rights era extends beyond entertainment. It functions as a spiritual practice, emitting an "energy frequency" that plants intentions in the subconscious. These seeds then grow into conscious ideas and, ultimately, collective action and social change.