Daily Inspiration Quote by John Zorn

There is a kind of brag hidden in John Zorn's humility: the flex is that he can disappear. When he says the piece starts "writing itself", he's describing flow, but also staking a claim about craft so internalized it becomes instinct. The phrase "that place" does real work here. It's deliberately vague, like musicians talking about being "in the pocket" or athletes describing the zone. Naming it too precisely would make it feel manufactured, and Zorn's whole aesthetic resists the polite idea that composition is tidy, linear problem-solving.

The subtext is less mystical than it sounds. "I'm trying not to get in the way" is an admission that the composer is both author and obstacle: taste, habit, ego, the temptation to over-explain. Zorn's music, especially across projects like Naked City and his Masada book, thrives on speed, collisions, abrupt edits, and rule-switching. That kind of writing can't survive excessive second-guessing. It needs a hand that's decisive and fast enough to keep up with the initial spark before it calcifies into something safe.

Intent matters here: Zorn is defending a method that privileges momentum over polish, intuition over justification. In a culture that loves the mythology of genius, he sidesteps the tortured-artist narrative and replaces it with a technician's ethos: get your tools sharp, then know when to stop touching the blade. The "self-writing" moment isn't magic; it's what preparation feels like when it finally pays off.