“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” – Robert Henri
Painter Robert Henri said this over a century ago, but it might be the most useful thing a songwriter could read today. Not because it’s poetic. Because it’s true, and because most of us have been going about this completely backwards.
What Henri Was Actually Saying
At first glance, the quote sounds a bit mystical. But strip it back and the idea is straightforward: the song is a byproduct.
What’s important is the state you’re in before and during the writing. Get that right, and the work takes care of itself.
Henri wasn’t saying craft doesn’t matter. He wasn’t telling you to wait around for the muse to show up. He was pointing at something more specific, that the act of trying to make something great often prevents greatness from happening. That the target gets in the way of the shot.
The word “inevitable” is the key. When you’re in the right state, open, present, genuinely curious, songs don’t feel manufactured. They feel like they were already there and you just happened to be in the right place to find them.
That’s a very different experience from sitting down at 9am because it’s “writing time” and grinding until something acceptable appears.
Why Songwriters Get This Backwards
Think about how most songwriters approach a session. They sit down with intent. They want to write something good. Maybe they need a verse, or a chorus hook, or something for a specific project.
There’s a goal. There’s pressure attached to the goal. And immediately, something changes.
The self-consciousness kicks in. There’s now an invisible critic in the room, evaluating everything before it’s even finished. You write a line and before you’ve got to the end of it, part of your brain has already decided it’s not good enough.
You’re not writing now but performing to an audience of one, and a harsh audience at that. This is the pressure trap, and it destroys the very openness that good writing requires.
Here’s the thing about creative blocks: they’re rarely about running out of ideas. The ideas are still there. The tap hasn’t dried up.
The block is more often a refusal to be present, a decision, conscious or not, to not fully engage with what’s available. When we feel creatively stuck, we’ve usually built the wall ourselves, brick by brick, with overthinking and over-evaluation.
The harder you chase the song, the further it runs away from you.
What the State Actually Looks Like
So what is Henri’s “wonderful state”? It’s not some mystical trance. It’s actually pretty recognizable when you’ve been in it.
It’s curiosity without an agenda.
You’re interested in what happens next rather than controlling what happens next. It’s play without stakes, you’re noodling, exploring, following a thread because it’s interesting, not because it might turn into something commercially viable.
It’s full presence, where you’re actually inside the music rather than watching yourself make it.
The opposite is equally recognisable. You’re monitoring yourself. You’re thinking about how the finished song will sound rather than listening to what’s happening right now.
You’ve stopped being a songwriter and started being a songwriter’s manager, assessing output, judging performance and making unnecessary decisions and judgements about a songs viability.
Presence is the doorway out of that.
When you’re truly in the moment with the work, not worrying about where it’s going, not comparing it to your last thing, not thinking about who’s going to hear it, something different becomes possible.
You stop interfering with your own process.
This is also why some of your best ideas arrive when you’re not trying to write. In the shower. On a walk. At 2am when you should be asleep. Your brain has slipped out of evaluation mode and into reception mode.
Henri’s state isn’t exotic, it’s just what happens when you get your critical mind out of the way of the songwriting process.
How to Get Into the State (Practically)
This is where it gets useful, because the state isn’t something you can force but you can absolutely create the conditions for it.
Lower the stakes before you start. Tell yourself this session isn’t for anything. You’re not writing a song. You’re just playing and the stuff you make doesn’t have to go anywhere.
Permission to make something bad is one of the most underrated songwriting tools there is. When there’s no right or wrong, no good or bad, and it’s just free play with no rules, it’s much easier to fully engage with the process.
Use rituals to shift your mental state. A lot of productive songwriters have pre-writing rituals that have nothing to do with writing. Maybe a specific playlist they listen to, a walk, coffee in a particular spot, journaling.
These aren’t superstitions though, they’re how you move from whatever mode your brain was in before (problem-solving, task-completing, planning) into a more receptive, open state.
Work without editing. One of the fastest ways to kill a creative session is to evaluate what you’re making while you’re making it. The writing brain and the editing brain are different. They don’t cooperate well.
Try giving yourself a window (even say, 20 minutes is enough) where nothing gets deleted, nothing gets judged, and you just keep going regardless of quality.
Play before you write. Noodling on the guitar with no intent, improvising melody over a random chord, singing nonsense syllables over a track are often where the real stuff happens. You’re getting into the state through play rather than trying to enter the state through willpower.
Remember, none of this is procrastination. All of it is the work.
The Lightning Bolt vs. The Conditions Around It
There’s a certain type of songwriter who lives as a storm chaser, waiting for inspiration to strike, then riding it when it does. They’ll tell you their best songs came in 20 minutes when the lightning hit.
That’s real but at the end of the day, it’s not a real strategy.
The smarter approach is to stop fixating on the lightning bolt and start focusing on the conditions around it because lightning doesn’t strike randomly. There are preconditions that make it more or less likely and there’s a window after it arrives where you either capture it or lose it.
The space before the lightning: this is about creating conditions that make inspiration more likely. Consistent practice, being genuinely curious about your life and the world, exposing yourself to music and stories and experiences that move you, showing up to write even when the bolt isn’t striking.
Artists are ultimately craftspeople and sometimes the ideas come through lightning, other times only through showing up and doing the work, and discovering connections through the doing itself.
The space after the lightning: if inspiration arrives, you have to be ready to receive it and stay with it. This means having enough stillness in your life that you actually notice when something is happening.
It means not being so distracted or so frantic that the quiet signal of a good idea gets drowned out.
And when the lightning doesn’t come? You show up anyway. You work without it and you do it because consistency is what ultimately keeps the ideas receiving channel open.
Releasing Attachment to the Outcome
This is probably the hardest part, and it’s where most songwriters tie themselves in knots.
The moment you start writing for a reaction, you know, imagining how listeners will respond, how it’ll perform, whether it measures up to your last thing, you’ve left the state. You’re now managing a product rather than making something alive.
There’s a useful reframe here: every song you write is just a snapshot. A diary entry from this particular moment in your development as a writer.
It’s not your definitive statement. It’s not your legacy. It’s today’s version of you, doing your best with what you have. An album is only a diary entry of a moment in time, a snapshot reflection of who you are for that period.
No single diary entry is your life story.
When you hold it that way, loosely, as one chapter among many, something relaxes. The song stops being the most important thing you’ll ever make. It becomes something you’re exploring, something you’re curious about, something you’re following to see where it goes.
Releasing attachment to the outcome isn’t being indifferent to quality, it’s actually the prerequisite for that quality
This is because when you’re not trying to protect the song’s potential commercial value, or prove something with it, or make up for the last one that didn’t land the way you hoped, you can actually write what wants to be written.
And of course, that honesty is what connects with people.
The Real Job Description
So here’s the reframe Henri’s quote is pointing toward.
The job of a songwriter isn’t just to write songs. It’s to become someone who regularly inhabits the state where songs arrive naturally. To build a life and a practice that creates those conditions repeatedly and reliably.
Powerful stuff indeed.
That means caring about what you put in as much as what comes out. The books you read, the music you listen to, the conversations you have, the experiences you let yourself feel fully rather than observing from a safe distance.
It means protecting space for play and wandering and apparent uselessness, because that’s where a lot of the actual work is happening.
As Tolkien once famously wrote in The Fellowship Of The Ring – “Not all those who wander are lost.” It means getting curious about your own rituals and rhythms, when do you write best? What puts you in the state? What takes you out of it?
Most working songwriters have figured this out through trial and error, even if they can’t articulate it cleanly.
And it also means making peace with the fact that you can’t control the quality of every session.
Some days the lightning comes. Some days you just show up and lay bricks. Both are part of the same practice. The showing up is what keeps you available for the lightning.
Robert Henri wasn’t writing about songwriting, he was writing about painting but the state he’s describing is the same state every songwriter knows from their best sessions, that feeling of being genuinely in it, where time disappears and the work is coming through you rather than being extracted from you against its will.
That state is available to you more often than you probably think. You just have to stop chasing the song long enough to let it find you.
So: what’s one thing you could change about how you show up before you even pick up the guitar?
Start there and see what happens.
