Memoir Inspiration from Noah Kahan

(copied from our Tuesday email for the Embodied Writing Experience email list)

Ever since I watched Noah Kahan's new documentary on Netflix last weekend, I've been planning to record an Instagram reel about my takeaways related to memoir writing...but I realized I had more to say than could fit into a reel.

Noah Kahan is a singer-songwriter from Vermont with radio-played hits like Stick Season, Forever, and Northern Attitude. I've loved his music for a while. My daughter and I kept Forever on replay for a while earlier this year. I was excited about the chance to get a "behind the scenes" look at this emotional lyricist and how his creativity works.

Core Message

The first takeaway I want to highlight is the beautiful way that the documentary mirrors memoir in that there was a core message underneath the story telling of Noah's rise to popularity and struggle to create a follow-up album as popular and captivating as his chart-topping album, Stick Season.

The documentary does an amazing job of weaving all of Noah's career decisions through the concept of his sense of belonging and home, the core message. He wrote Stick Season while living back home in Vermont during the pandemic, and we watch him wrestle with the fear that he won't be able to recreate the magic of that album again unless he's back in Vermont.

As Stick Season blows up and his popularity skyrockets, he buys a large house in Nashville with his partner. He's trying to keep up with the pace of being a huge headliner and all the travel required with years of non-stop touring. But he's very forthcoming about the difficulty of tapping into his creativity in those environments. By the end of the documentary, we see how he's come to terms with his sense of home and made chooses in alignment with those realizations. It's the classic belief shift characteristic of a core message.

Specifics Are Universal

We talked a bit about this at our recent Memoir Summit (recordings available for anyone who missed it), and it's beautifully modeled in this documentary. Noah's parents got divorced after his dad suffered a traumatic brain injury resulting in personality shifts. Noah pulls directly from his lived experiences in his writing of the songs on the Stick Season album. His mom highlights how specific and personal the details are that Noah chooses to include, being able to recall distinct memories from the lyrics he writes.

At one point, Noah's mom is asked about whether she feels like Noah overshared their personal details, and while she admits that she was shocked at first, she gets to see at his live shows how much the audience resonates with his lyrics and how it evokes their own memories of their own experiences.

That's how I feel too, listening to his lyrics. They are incredibly specific so I don't necessarily relate to the details but he beautifully captures an essence that is universal. Many of his songs relate to the elusiveness of a sense of home and how we spend much of our adult lives seeking the very thing we took for granted as children. And this is exactly why I encourage memoir writers to use the specifics in their writing and what they choose to share.

And this lyric from is song, Forever, always brings a tear to my eye and makes me think of multiple key relationships I hold dearly in my life.

And, the edges of your soul, I haven't seen yet
And I'm glad I get forever to see where you end

- Forever lyrics, Noah Kahan

The Challenge of Doing it Again

Another big theme in the documentary is the pressure Noah feels to top the success of Stick Season with a follow-up album. This is a pressure many writers can relate to. We put our hearts and souls into our creative works. And many of us doubt whether we have the skills to do it again, regardless of the level of success we've realized from our first efforts.

Watching Noah torture himself over this and highlight that he put himself in a dark mental state over this anguish, it reminds me as a writer to be kind to myself. I'm getting ready to publish my debut memoir, Lonely Girl, in June. I have an idea for my second memoir already but I'm still living it so I won't start writing it immediately.

But there is a common doubt that creeps in as writers begin to contemplate writing the next thing. How will I tap into that source of creativity again? Do I actually have skill and talent or did I get lucky the first time in finding something that resonated with readers?

Amie McNee, author of We Need Your Art, posted a reel on Instagram this week in response to the anguish she witnessed Noah go through on the screen in this documentary.

If I ever have a massive culture changing book, my next book I'm going to intentionally make it be pretty average.

They (creatives) have huge, successful pieces of art and their next piece of art is their tormenter.

-Amie McNee

I highly recommend you give Noah Kahan's documentary a watch, especially as a memoir writer. It's beautiful and captivating and will resonate deeply with your own writing experience.

Elizabeth Wilson