I Only Listen to the Screams

Back when I still wanted to be a musician, I watched a workshop with Steve Rennie (band manager for Incubus) – which I found to be quite insightful.

There was a story he told about a piece of ‘wisdom’ that was passed down to him in the early days of his career by a music biz veteran who was trying to teach him how to spot musical talent that had real promise. He told him: ‘Steve, a lot of things in life are going to whisper to you, but I only listen to the screams’.

Sounds harmless enough as far as advice goes, but I personally find that the ‘whispers’ tend to hold more promise and be the better course of action for me to take 9 times out of 10.

I can’t give you any hard data or robust explanations for why this is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that intuition – which is what I assume he was talking about – generally leads in a very subtle and quiet kind of way.

Intuition, to me, is a feeling, not a sound.

And it is usually vying for attention and competing against the cacophony of noise in our minds made up of reactions to our external environment and reflections on our inner one.

Often, your intuition can only be heard in the very quiet spaces in between– immediately upon waking, or during quiet contemplation.

And though it comes in many forms, it commonly feels like a gentle leading or a quite nudge in a particular direction.

That said, I have had many instances where whole, finished, completely conceptualised pieces of work arrive in my minds eye in one go, but my latest project arrived as a series of many different gentle nudges in a particular direction. 

I was a couple of weeks in before I realised the full scale of the project and what it wanted to turn into, but if I had not quietly listened to (and obediently followed) the 20+ tiny whispers in the beginning, it would never have had the opportunity to grow into the amazing thing it turned into.

Rick Rubin said something similar in a podcast I can’t find now (sorry), but it was something to the effect of, when you’re creating magic, you don’t know it’s happening at the time, it’s only afterwards when you reflect on the thing you just made that you realise the significance of it.

So to the OP I would say that actually intuition and magic are more likely to come in quiet forms, sometimes when you least expect it rather than decisive, ultra certain, black and white shouting.

So a better piece of advice I think is to just pay attention, learn to read your own discernment cues and give every idea the space and room it needs to blossom into what it wants to become. You’ll find out soon enough if you’re on to a winner or not.

Stay classy ✌🏻