David Francey on Creativity
Chapter from Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind regarding my interview of the Canadian four-time Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter
I once had the honour of interviewing David Francey :
David has won four Juno Awards, and has been nominated for four others. His Skating Rink is the theme song for Hockey Day in Canada. His songs are simple, precise, elegant, powerful and exquisitely well written.
The following is a new chapter from my book Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind discussing the interview. It is drawn from the part of this book that deals with creativity:
David Francey on Creativity
One of the pleasures of writing this book has been the opportunity to revisit conversations that have stayed with me for years. In July 2013, I interviewed Canadian singer-songwriter David Francey while he was at the Mission Folk Music Festival. At the time, my intention was simply to publish the interview. Looking back more than a decade later, however, I realize that a synopsis of our conversation belongs in this book because it illuminates a question that has occupied me for much of my career: What actually happens in the mind of someone who creates?
David and I approach that question from opposite directions. I came to it as a cognitive scientist interested in expertise, learning, emotion, and motivation. David came to it as someone who had spent decades writing songs—first while working construction, and later as one of Canada’s most celebrated folk musicians. What struck me throughout our conversation was not simply the quality of his songwriting but the clarity with which he understood his own creative process. Although he repeatedly insisted that he “just does it,” his descriptions reveal principles that resonate strongly with what psychologists have learned about creativity.
One theme emerged almost immediately. David does not begin by looking for songs. Songs begin by finding him.
When we discussed Things They Do, he described hearing a CBC radio report about two fourteen-year-old girls who had died by suicide by stepping in front of a train. The story stayed with him while he worked throughout the day. As he continued roofing, another memory resurfaced: a close friend who had struggled with severe depression and had eventually taken his own life. The two experiences became intertwined until he felt compelled to write.
Listening to David describe this process, I was reminded of the theory of perturbance, which has pervaded my thinking about mental life. According to that theory, certain thoughts and motivators become insistent, meaning they repeatedly interrupt our thinking, sometimes because they remain unresolved. Love, grief, guilt, fear, and anger all have this quality. They refuse to stay politely in the background. David never used this language, but he described exactly this phenomenon. Certain experiences simply would not leave him alone until they had found expression in song.
Perhaps the most revealing part of our conversation came when I asked why he writes at all. His answer had nothing to do with audiences, albums, or even music. He explained that writing helped him understand what was happening inside himself. If something troubled him, he would brood over it for days. His wife would eventually tell him that she hoped he finished the song soon because he had become unbearable to live with. Then he added something that immediately caught my attention: once the song was written, he felt better. Writing was not merely the production of art; it was a way of making sense of experience.
Psychologists today speak of expressive writing and narrative construction as ways of organizing emotional experience. David arrived at essentially the same conclusion through lived experience. His songs were not simply expressions of emotion. They were tools for thinking.
Another aspect of his creative process that impressed me was his extraordinary patience. He rejected the idea that every creative problem should be solved immediately. Sometimes a song emerged almost effortlessly, but often he would write a promising first line and then wait. If the next word took two years to arrive, then so be it. He had no interest in forcing the process. Instead, he trusted that his mind continued working on the problem even when he was consciously occupied with something else. To explain this, he compared songwriting to doing a crossword puzzle. You can struggle unsuccessfully with several clues before going to bed, only to discover that the answers seem obvious the next evening. Something has happened in the meantime, even though you were not consciously thinking about the puzzle. His account is one of the clearest descriptions of creative incubation I have encountered from an artist.
David also made an observation that particularly interested me because it connects creativity with the physical environment. Many of his songs were composed while he was in motion—driving to work, travelling on trains, or spending long days roofing houses. Roofing eventually became so familiar that much of it required little deliberate thought, leaving his mind free to work on melodies and lyrics. He even suggested that movement itself helped ideas emerge. Looking through the windshield, seeing one image after another unfold, somehow primed the creative process. That observation resonated with research showing that changing environments and engaging in physical movement often promote creative thinking, although David reached that conclusion simply by paying attention to his own experience.
One idea surfaced repeatedly throughout our interview, regardless of the question I asked. Whether we were discussing songwriting, editing, or influences, David kept returning to the same principle: never overwrite.
He spoke admiringly of Joni Mitchell because, in his view, there is not a wasted word anywhere in her songs. He teaches aspiring songwriters the same lesson. If a line is beautiful but does not belong in the song, save it for another one. The temptation to include every good idea is one of the greatest dangers facing writers. Good songs, like good theories, achieve their power not through abundance but through economy.
That observation particularly appealed to me because it extends well beyond music. Scientists seek parsimonious theories that explain as much as possible with as little as necessary. Engineers strive for elegant designs that eliminate unnecessary complexity. Good writers remove words that do not contribute to meaning. Creativity often depends less on adding than on removing.
Looking back on our conversation today, I think that is what impressed me most about David Francey. His account of creativity contains very little mystique. Inspiration certainly matters, but it is only the beginning. The real work consists of paying close attention to experience, allowing ideas time to mature, refining them patiently, and resisting the temptation to say more than needs to be said. Those principles are as applicable to science and engineering as they are to songwriting. They also illustrate one of the central themes of this book: art provides one of our richest windows into the architecture of the human mind.
In the interview, David provides us with insights into the creation of several specific songs including:
Many productive minds have had to overcome adversity. The interview uncovers a surprising antagonist in David’s early life, someone who tried to stunt his creative development. David’s is a story of triumph!