Hoagy Carmichael and the Flow of Stardust

In a previous post, I referred to a quote by the author and actor Robert Benchley, who said: “It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by then I was too famous.”

In that post, I connected the quote to the topics of strengths-based development and flow, observing that our best work tends to emerge when we lose ourselves in our labors. When we operate from a position of our own unique strengths, we often experience the phenomenon of looking up from our field of effortless focus to behold what we’ve just created.

My thoughts returned to this post during a recent sojourn to Bloomington, Indiana, site of my alma mater Indiana University. As part of my pilgrimage I visited the Gables, a building which now houses a sandwich restaurant but which used to be the site of the Book Nook, a hangout for IU students in the Roaring Twenties. The Book Nook is renowned as the spot where Bloomington native Hoagy Carmichael composed “Stardust,” one of the most enduring songs in popular music.

I’m a long-time Hoagy buff because, like him, music and Indiana are two of the bedrocks of my life (plus, like him, I have an IU law degree). So I was quite intrigued to run across a YouTube clip of Bob Dylan ruminating on the mystery of creativity, centering his musings on Hoagy’s reminiscences about the process of composing “Stardust.” Dylan quotes Hoagy’s reaction the first time he heard a recording of his song:

“This melody was bigger than me. Maybe I hadn’t written it at all. The recollection of how, when, and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, ‘Maybe I didn’t write you, but I found you!’”

“Maybe I hadn’t written it at all.” Of course Hoagy preceded the concepts of “strengths-based development” and “flow” by decades, but I can’t think of a more trenchant description of the way that our best (and dare I say transcendent) works flow naturally and almost imperceptibly from the application of our strengths.

Hoagy Carmichael. Yes, Bob, when I’m playing at my best in my own areas of strength, I too know just what he meant.