I’m in love with Phillip Phillip’s new song, Gone, Gone Gone. So much so, that when I have time to just sit for a few moments, I click it on my playlist on Spotify or You Tube and listen to it over and over again, and then one more time, and okay, I admit it, a few more times after that. There is just something so upbeat and fun about his tone and energy that it gets me all happy and smiling. And his video! Oh my, who doesn’t want to watch images that hearken back to simpler times, smiling faces that remind us of our childhood. And Pogo sticks! Remember Pogo sticks?!
I’m all smiles.
Even though the subject of the song is a little sad if you pay attention.
“When enemies are at your door, I’ll carry you away from war, if you need help, if you need help, your hope dangling by a string, I’ll share in your suffering to make you well.”
“And I would do it for you, Baby, I’m not moving on, I’ll love you long after you’re gone, for you, for you, you will never sleep alone, I will love you long after you go, oh long after you go, go go.”
“You’re my back bone, you’re my cornerstone. You’re my crutch when my legs stop moving. You’re my headstart, you’re my rugged heart. You’re the post that I’ve always needed. Like a drum baby don’t stop beating. Like a drum baby don’t stop beating.. Like a drum baby don’t stop beating. Like a drum my heart never stops beating…”
Click here to view the embedded video.
Now I am certain that Phillip never meant for the song to be about creative projects, creative businesses or in my case, fictional characters from our fiction series, who live inside my head, but around the hundredth time I listened to the song, I started thinking about the book series that Deb Dorchak and I have written, Bonds of Blood and Spirit. Two of the books are published and the other two are in the editing stages and on their way to publication. Suddenly, I realized that the way he sung about this mystery person who needed his help to survive, who needed his help to breathe hope into her life, needed his faith and support to pull through the difficulties and sufferings, was the same way we felt about the relationship we had about this project, and the characters we had fallen in love with inside our books.
Oh hell yes, I have felt exactly like that writing these books, knowing these characters, holding their hands, breathing them to life. And I will love them with all of my heart, long after they are gone, gone, gone.
And yes, I have slept with them at night, shared my deepest dreams with them, and like a drum they have been beating in every heart beat I have taken, been in my every thought, shaped my creative breathe and been the cornerstone of my creative dreams. The books we always knew we were meant to write.
And yes… there were many times it would have been easy to quit when the going got hard, when the words wouldn’t come, when it would have been easier to move on to an easier project that wouldn’t take five years. Something that could give us instant gratification and perhaps….instant cash as well.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
But love takes commitment. True creative investment takes time. Process. Love of the journey. Digging in deep and being willing to stick with it for the hard parts and the sickness and the darkness and the fear, the enemies of doubt, the whispers that tell us we don’t have what it takes, we aren’t the real thing. We are frauds.
And like a beating drum, baby, don’t stop beating, like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating…”
You can never stop beating if you want to see success. Creative art….and creative business isn’t for the ones who are in for the short game. It is an ALL IN proposition. It is a commitment, a marriage to your art, and to your business.
Like a drum, baby, never stop beating.
Don’t worry Phillip, we won’t.