By Zac Taylor
Managing Editor

Kate Chadbourne

Lauren Passarelli and her friend and colleague Kate Chadbourne treated the Red Room attendees to an inspiring clinic on coaxing out your muse last Tuesday, February 23. Passarelli, a professor in the guitar department, and Chadbourne, a songwriter, pianist and harpist, unabashedly revealed personal strategies about their respective writing processes with regards to creative islands of time as well as stubborn droughts that any creative person is bound to experience.

“I love listening to bootlegs of my heroes,” said Passarelli. “You get to see how great of editors these artists were. They’re just like us.” The discussion eventually included questions and responses from people in the audience, many of whom were students and faculty. “If you can muck around, you can make music,” Chadbourne said.

The discussion veered into the often fickle territory of the creative process. “Give yourself music like you give yourself vitamins,” Chadbourne said, who also teaches at Harvard. She encourages her students to push the envelope with regards to what they consume on the literary side of things, including children’s books, scholarly articles, newspapers, and lyrics. “Coast, and then push,” she said.

Lauren Passarelli

The two songwriters played only snippets of their songs in an effort to save some time and to point out certain aspects of roadblocks they encountered, and how they broke through them. “Don’t let anyone ever make your instrument into your enemy,” Passarelli said. “If someone gives you advice that makes you feel like writing more,” Chadbourne chimed in, “then it’s good advice. If it makes you feel like shutting down and curling up into a little ball, then it’s bad advice.” The two mentors bid good afternoon to the fellow creators in the room with a duet entitled “What Does the Wind Say?,” with Chadbourne on harp and Passarelli on guitar.