The question in the lagoon this month has been: What’s the one thing you cannot write without?

We’ve had a plethora of fabulous answers from writers all over the world. Today’s answer comes from Alethea’s favorite Troubadorious Noise Maker: Adam Ezra

The Adam Ezra Group released TWO live CDs this month. You can get both albums, signed by the band, by clicking this link right here. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

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Alethea and Adam, 2011

My answer is “honesty.”

This answer may seem ironic, because simply put, it’s not true.

I can write a good lie as well as the next guy…

But for me…in order to be the kind of writer I want to be, I think it requires me to be brutally honest in the words I share with the people who receive the art I create.  I want to write from the place that is embarrassed by the way I look, and smell, and act sometimes.  I want to write from the place that is so very proud of the person I’m trying to be.  I want to write from the place in me that continues to fail.

I believe that all people are connected through the things we want, and need, and feel, and are ashamed of.  Whether I’m writing from first-person, or through another character’s eyes, I want to know them honestly.  I want to connect to some place of depth and determination inside of them, even when the story is light…even when I hate the person I’m writing about….especially when the person I’m writing about and hating is me…

I think it’s this process that pushes me to really understand my own struggles and helps me connect as powerfully as I can with my audience.

It is a process that can be both brutal and inspiring to me everyday.

Hells yeah…bring it on.

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The Adam Ezra Group (AEG) is not just a band; they are a force to be reckoned with musically, personally and socially. Selling records and tickets is important to AEG, but they are committed to changing the world with their songs and their actions along the way. Ezra and his band are activists and community leaders as much as they are musicians and songwriters. Ezra has spent time living out of a van, farming in Canada, volunteering for the relief effort in Kosovo, and practicing environmental geography in South Africa. Whether as a kitchen hand or carpenter, teacher, athlete, or traveler, Ezra crams it all into the music, always challenging our perspective and often teetering somewhere between the ballsy rocker and sensitive poet. Through their non profit organization, RallySound, AEG helps people organize live music events that inspire communities and encourage grassroots activism.

And Alethea loves every single one of them.