When Ben Folds was approached to write a book about his life, he went off on a tangent and wrote about universal creativity instead. It is sort of a metaphor for his career. He started off with the successful alternative rock band The Ben Folds Five but later segued into country, a cappella, piano concertos and full symphony orchestras. He’s collaborated with such wildly diverse musical talents as William Shatner and Weird Al Yankovic.
His current outlets are all over the map, as well. Folds serves as artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. An avid photographer, his images have appeared in National Geographic, and he has appeared on more than one TV show as a fictionalized version of, well, Ben Folds.
So yes, you could say that creativity is his thing. And that thing is at the center of his first book, “A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons.” Folds explains that when he was a child growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., he had a dream that he caught a lightning bug and showed it to his friends under a tree. That dream become his analogy for the creative process — something ephemeral that’s caught and shared to delight an audience.
Folds writes evocatively about the link between music and emotion. The first time he realized he wanted to play piano was when he peeked into a music room and saw a fellow second-grader named Anna “laying down some badass” ragtime. He later married her.
With the new book, he’s hoping to inspire others to find their own lightning bugs.
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