Fearless Creativity!

In Praise of Beginners (part 1)

2012-05-17T15:52:17Z

I have never regretted choosing music as my main creative idiom. There are so many reasons I think it’s the best thing I could have chosen to dedicate my creative life to. I’m not saying it’s ‘better’ than any other art form, but for me personally, I figure it has just about everything.

Music is infinitely deep and vast. It’s always going to be ‘bigger than me’ by orders of magnitude and I will never run out of amazing things to learn and discover about it. It’s the perfect marriage of mathematics and emotion. It combines the joys of physical technique and mastery of tools with those of storytelling, of spinning a narrative in an eloquent non-verbal (and verbal, if you lean that way) language.

Music moves people. I know of no other art form that can get so deep under peoples’ skin and cause them to tap their toes, bob their heads, clap or drum along, play air guitar or dance around the room. We don’t put it in museums and go to look at it while talking in whispers. Even dance, as an art form, does not often make other people want to dance; we tend to sit still and watch other people do it. Music makes us move.

Music is highly portable. You can play or practise all alone, for no-one but yourself, and get endless pleasure from it – or you can use it as a medium for profound connection and/or collaboration. Music connects people like little else. People define their whole identities around music that speaks to them or for them in a powerful way.

Music can express absolutely anything. It can be beautiful, light, airy, dark, angry, sensitive, aggressive, contemplative, meditative, virtuosic, stunningly complex or sublimely simple. And because it can be very simple, it can be made by nearly anyone. It’s this last point that I want to talk about today.

throw away the manual

Here’s the thing: some of the most amazing, powerful, brilliant music in history, and many pieces or albums that have touched me deeply and influenced my life and my own creative work, have been made by relative beginners. Not all, of course; much great music is still made by people who have spent many years developing sophisticated technique and a nuanced command of music theory, and there’s much to be said for those things.

But it happens again and again: people take the simplest tools – 3 or 4 chords and a guitar or two, a drum loop, a synth preset, two turntables and a microphone, an iPhone app… and make magic. Not just a cool song or dance track, but innovative, lasting, transcendent beauty.

You don’t have to study for 20 years before you can possibly have anything really important to say in music. There are countless examples of young, raw or uneducated musicians writing songs that are simply so overwhemingly good that you can’t get them out of your head, you sing them to yourself in the shower, and you remember them for years or maybe even for the rest of your life.

I don’t know if that’s true of any other art form. Maybe it is, maybe not, but I know it’s true in music. And not surprisingly, a lot of people who have dedicated a considerable part of their lives to building and nurturing the deep skillset of a professional musician find this threatening. I know this because I am such a person, and I have felt that way in the past.

But I’ve changed my mind about it. Now I think it’s fantastic. I’m thrilled, for example, that music software has become so easy to use that people can start producing tracks right away. Because that means that someone who might never have been able to do so before, can now make the next out-of-left-field bit of unexpected genius. And I can’t wait to hear it.

start from scratch

This notion has been percolating around in my head for a while now, as I’ve been too busy performing to do much in the way of writing here, and it struck me that there’s more to this story than just the fact that inexperienced people can often produce remarkably powerful music. I think there’s something very important about being at the beginning of something.

Discovering things for the first time in the course of creative work seems to bring an energy and intensity that is hard to replicate through formula. Indeed, when artists or musicians become to stuck in a pattern that has worked for them in the past, we tend to talk disparagingly of their work having become ‘formulaic’. They know exactly where they’re going and therefore there’s no sense of adventure, no risk, no fun. They’re going through the motions. They don’t have the spark anymore.

So what’s the spark? The spark is being a beginner at something – not necessarily something completely new but some new unexplored aspect of your work, a new style, a new tool or technique. It’s the thrill of discovery. I have come to realize in my own work that I’m happiest, most engaged and yes, most creative when I’m playing with a new toy, in one sense or another.

And I believe it’s perfectly possible to keep doing this for your whole creative life, while continuing to learn and evolve and acquire more sophisticated knowledge and technique. We just have to keep looking for new things to be a beginner at.

keep looking…

Like I said at the start, I’ve always felt lucky that I chose music (or that it chose me!) because I am pretty sure I’ll never run out of things to learn and discover. The more I learn, the more I understand how much there is to know. Every door I open for the first time leads to another maze of passages to explore, with countless more waiting behind it. Far from getting harder to keep ‘being a beginner’, it gets easier – because the thing I’m exploring just keeps getting bigger, exponentially, every time I look at it.

I have no doubt that other art forms or creative idioms have just as much ‘room’ to grow and learn and keep discovering new things to ‘be a beginner’ at for a whole lifetime, as music does. We just have to stay curious about what’s behind that door, or under that rock, or behind that curtain. We have to be open enough to spot the new challenge and courageous enough to move towards it, to find out where it leads, what it might teach us or what hidden gem it might conceal.

I’ve written about this obliquely a few times before, in posts on Fearless Problem-solving and Lego Spaceships - the importance of having the wrong tools for the job. It’s also, I guess, at the heart of my theory of Creating like a Toddler - when everything is new, you have no choice but to be a beginner!

But the more I think about it, the more I think this is really the key to sustaining the passion and fascination required to do really creative work over the long haul: we have to find ways to keep jumping off of new cliffs (on which, more soon!).

At the very core of learning, growing, developing, evolving as creators – and certainly at the heart of Fearless Creativity – is this wonderful little irony: to do it right, we need to figure out how to always be a beginner.

Can you begin something new today?

Have We Been Taking the Wrong Approach?

2012-03-09T14:00:34Z

photo credit: CarbonNYC

What makes people different? What makes creative people, create differently?

When we speak of someone having a particular style, or a unique approach to what they do, what does that mean?

In the case of music or art, how can two people who work in the same medium or idiom, play the same instrument, and perhaps even have the same influences, do what they do so differently? Or if the differences are subtle, how can they change the experience for the listener or viewer so profoundly? What is that difference made of?

I’ve been thinking about these questions quite a lot lately, partly because we’ve had some substitutes playing in the band at the show I’ve been working for these past few months.

Now, we maintain a pretty high standard of musicianship – the core players are all very accomplished and versatile players, and when we ‘sub out’ we try to make sure we hire replacements of the same calibre. Luckily Berlin is well-stocked with fantastic musicians, and we’re fairly well connected with the community. So it’s not hard to bring in players that are up to the challenge.

However, it changes the music and the experience dramatically. For us, for our non-musical colleagues in the show, and for the audience, though they may be unaware of it.

I suppose through a certain lens this is all very unsurprising, but I started to ponder it a little and it began to strike me as a deeper and more subtle thing than it might seem at first glance. And, well, I’m all about exploring deep and subtle questions that might otherwise be overlooked…

hitting things with sticks

Take our drummers, for example. We’ve had 2 different subs this year, both top-notch, highly experienced and sophisticated players just like our main guy. They are playing, up to a point, from charts, and they have recordings of the core band to draw from. They’re playing the same drums, the same songs, the same beats; in some cases even the fills are scripted.

So how can they sound so completely different? How can hitting things with a stick sound completely different from person to person? I don’t mean to belittle the art and science of drumming, which I hold in high regard. But on the surface, hitting something with a stick would seem to be, pretty much, hitting it with a stick. However, the fact remains: something in the approach these players take to the kit makes the experience radically different. And that’s a wonderful thing!

In the piano world we talk a lot about touch – the subtle differences in the way we caress (or pound) the keys that determine the quality of sound we get from the instrument. But again, we’re pressing down on levers – how can it sound so completely different? I’m not even talking about what is being played, which is something else again, but just in terms of how the instrument is being played, or how the brush strokes the canvas… there is far more going on here than simply pressing harder or softer.

I guess what I’m getting at here is the physicality of creativity.

let’s get physical

It strikes me that books, blogs, essays, conversations and courses about creativity tend to focus almost entirely on the mental, cerebral side of things. Certainly this blog has had that focus, by and large. Perhaps it’s just easier to talk about, I don’t know, but the conscious, cognitive aspects of creative work tend to get a lot more play.

However, recently I’ve begun to wonder if we haven’t got it a bit backwards. Maybe it’s all a bit of a smoke-screen for the fact that we don’t really understand the physical side of creativity all that well. Or maybe we don’t have the tools to understand it.

Now obviously some fields are far more overtly physical than others; dance springs to mind. I don’t have much of a window onto that world so I can’t comment directly, but I assume that if you talked to a dancer about this stuff, or perhaps read Twyla Tharpe’s books, you might find less focus on the work of the mind and more on the work of the body (not to say, of course, that there isn’t considerable mental work involved in dance).

But I think generally we tend to overemphasize the mental work of creativity and downplay the role of the body’s equal-but-different intelligence. Playing in a show that demanded less of me technically, or at least theoretically, than I’m accustomed to – but far more on the subtle level of groove and feel – has been an interesting reminder that often most of what’s really beautiful or profound in creative work comes from that physical intelligence.

Coming in for a landing

photo credit: outofsocks

In one sense, you could say that the mind’s work is conceptual (duh) but the body’s job is execution. Delivering the goods. Following through with the finesse and gesture that turns good ideas into great work.

But I think it is more than that, or at least it can be and probably should be, if we’re to produce creative work that is organic and intuitive, not ponderous and overwrought as it so easily can be if we allow our conscious minds to take over too much of the process. Which, of course, they are often dangerously willing and eager to do.

Our unique, personal approach to our creative work has more to do, I think, with this subtle physical intelligence than with our conscious mind and its relentless stream of ideas (or, on not-so-good days, the frustrating lack of them). I have a suspicion that most of the really good stuff, the stuff we should be celebrating and focusing on, takes place below the level of consciousness.

flying blind

On occasion I have performed fully improvised piano concerts. I walk onstage with literally no idea at all what I’m going to play, sit down at the piano and look for a friendly-looking note. Several times in this context I have had the peculiar sensation of floating for a few seconds out of my body and looking down at my hands from above, with this thought arising: “that’s pretty wild, I have no idea how I’m doing that”.

But here’s the thing: my hands know. What’s happening in that moment is that I’m managing to quiet down the hyperactive conscious creative brain and let the body do its thing for a while, and just observe. It’s a nice feeling and one I wish I could summon more easily, and I believe there are ways to cultivate that. Regardless, I’m certainly happy to accept these fleeting moments when they do happen.

Because it is in those moments, I think, that I am most authentically and uniquely my own creative self. Obviously my brain is still in control of the fingers, on some level, and the years of theory and conscious practice are contributing to the choice of notes I’m playing. I wouldn’t want to eliminate those factors entirely, even if that were possible.

So I suppose this is really about keeping perspective and balance with regards what’s really important in our creative work. Great ideas are a wonderful thing, but they are not the be-all-and-end-all of creativity. They are only half the package, and in some ways the less interesting half – perhaps precisely because they are easier to talk about. Understanding our bodies’ contribution to creative work is, I think, in some ways the deeper and more rewarding challenge.

The ideas I work with are not, I think, so special. I get a good one now and again but for the most part I don’t try to fool myself into believing that they are utterly original, or that no-one else in the world could stumble on them.

But no-one else plays quite like me, for better or for worse. And I think that’s worth building on.

So how about you? How does your creative work involve the body’s subtle intelligence? If you could train someone to do exactly what you do, and give them a script for executing your ideas, do you think the results would be different? Subtly or profoundly (or both)? Comments are, as always welcome below!

are you good enough?

2012-02-27T23:35:45Z

photo credit: kanu101

I had a good night at work last night. Not a perfect night, mind you, just a good night. And while riding home through quiet streets (I’m a pretty devoted bicycle commuter) I started to think about what made it a good night.

Now regular readers will recall that my current ‘job’ is playing piano and keyboards (and a bit of trumpet) for a crazy circus/cabaret/dinner theatre show called Palazzo. So when I say I had a good night, it means I was happy with my playing, and with how I presented myself and contributed to the music and the show.

So I got to thinking, what goes into that? In a nutshell, I need to feel that I’m basically ‘good enough’ for the job I’m paid to do, or the project I’ve taken on. Maybe a bit more than good enough, but at least that. I am not the kind of person that is able to be happy with myself or my work if I feel like I’m struggling and not really delivering the goods.

Since I grew up around a lot of scientists and generally like to systematize things, let’s break it down. What are the specific requirements of ‘good enough’ – or of ‘feeling successful’, as a wise colleague used to call it?

Well, I’ve come up with four which seem to determine it for me in my current line of work, and as usual I suspect they may apply more broadly…

making the grade

First, on a basic, mechanical, technical level, I like to feel like I’m cutting the mustard. In fact, I like to have a bit of breathing room… not that I don’t like being challenged by my work, far from it, but I like to be fundamentally up for those challenges. I don’t get a lot of calls to play Rachmaninoff concertos with major orchestras, but if I did I would probably turn them down, as I don’t like to feel like I’m way out of my depth.

However, for my current gig I have to say I do meet at least the minimum requirements, and last night I was playing pretty solidly. On a really good night I’m probably overdelivering, which is even better, but here’s the thing: it’s not only your best days that count, and we can’t always be in top form, no matter how hard we may try. And on a rough day, you have to maintain a bottom line that is still ‘good enough’.

spicing the sauce

What’s ingredient number two? For me, it’s bringing something else to the table, something more intuitive, organic, sometimes even inspired. Of course, this is harder to quantify, but it’s tremendously important to my feeling of well-being in my work. Being technically, mechanically ‘good enough’, while essential, is not sufficient in and of itself. I have to be finding at least a little magic here and there.

How much magic is ‘good enough’? I guess this depends on the gig; my current work does not strictly speaking demand that much, and they’ve certainly had bands that don’t deliver much on this level at all. However, I think (and my bandmates happily seem to agree) that overdelivering on this is the way to go, because a) we’re in the entertainment business, and energy is what translates and makes people happy and excited and happy to tell their friends; and b) magic is its own reward.

Did I weave enough magic on the keys last night to make myself and the audience my colleagues and fellow musicians happy? I think I did. So that’s good.

being impeccable

Third up is professionalism. This is an area where, for me, there can be no compromises. I like to add an adjective: consummate. In an odd way, I think it’s a beautiful concept: consummate professionalism. Not just solid, reliable, dependable, but something more: impeccable.

There’s not so much to say about this, as I figure everyone knows what it means, more or less – and if you have to ask, you’ll probably never know. Every job or gig or project has its own subtly different professional requirements, but meeting them impeccably is a requirement for me to feel like I’m doing well and having a good night. Only impeccable is ‘good enough’ here.

not being a jerk

Finally, within all of that, there’s a final requirement: While meeting the technical and professional standards I’ve set myself, while bringing a bit of magic to the table, I also need to be relaxed, social, team-spirited, and above all to have fun. I think it’s probably possible to meet the first three requirements without this, but for myself I know it wouldn’t be worth it if it weren’t fun.

Of course it can be a bit of a delicate balancing act at times, and sometimes there are stresses and strains that make finding that balance difficult. We can’t perfectly control our environment or ourselves. We can’t be perfect, and striving for perfection will only make us crazy, and/or bitter, and/or exhausted, and/or boring. Not my cup of tea!

However, I believe that trying to make sure we’re ‘good enough’ with regards to these Four Requirements will count for a lot in any group or work environment, especially (given that this is mostly what I have experience with and what this blog is about) a creative or entertainment-oriented one.

So, did I miss any? What makes you feel like you’ve had a good day or night at your work? Please leave your thoughts in the comments area below…

p.s. here’s a picture I snapped on my ride home – film buffs might recognize the site…

Creative Energy

2012-02-21T09:32:39Z

photo credit: Krassy Can Do It

I enjoy explaining things, which is a good thing, since I have an almost-five-year-old who likes to ask questions. I suppose this is not unusual, but I’ve always viewed it as an interesting challenge to give him answers that are clear but comprehensible. And as time goes by, his questions get more and more interesting and perceptive.

I’ve noticed a trend in our explaining-things conversations: my answers tend to inevitably progress towards more basic underlying concepts, usually with a single fundamental tenet at the end: entropy and the laws of thermal dynamics, basic evolutionary theory and genetics, or often, the idea of energy. (I realize that these are fairly abstract concepts for a small child, but my philosophy is to be honest and clear and try to give examples that relate to familiar things).

making waves

‘Energy’ is one of those words with a lot of definitions, like ‘time’ or ‘spring’ or ‘clear’. It’s a rich and subtle concept and underlies a lot of our relationship with the world. Everything we do, indeed everything in the universe, can be expressed and understood as an exchange or a transformation of energy.

Creativity is, of course, no exception. While creating ‘something out of nothing’ is a nice turn of phrase, under the surface nothing new is ever really created, we just move things around and reorganize them into new patterns. That’s still a lot, and making new patterns is a profound and transformational thing to do! But here’s the thing: it takes energy.

And in my own life, energy has been at something of a premium for the last few months…

working for the weekend

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll lay it out again here: like many other people who like to do creative work, I also have to make a living.

In my case, I don’t have a ‘day-job’ that is completely disconnected from my creative work; the job that is currently paying most of my bills is, viewed through most lenses, a pretty fun and creative one. I play piano and keyboards in a dinner show that combines circus, cabaret, music and theatre, alongside a 4-course gourmet dinner. It’s work, but it’s also a blast much of the time.

And it takes quite a lot of energy. Not just physical energy – it’s a very dynamic show and does take it out of me some nights; not just mental energy – I have a lot of cues to remember and try to execute with precise timing, not to mention the basic demands of playing an instrument; but creative energy too.

What does that mean?

Well, one of the things it means is that when I’m in the thick of a performance season, my other creative work (such as this blog, or the Sound Fascination project) tends to fall by the wayside. I find it really difficult to spend the limited free time I have engaged in creative work, because I have learned over the years that I actually do need a bit of real downtime to recharge the batteries.

Sometimes I have something specific in mind that I’d really like to focus on, such as this blog post which I’ve had percolating for weeks; sometimes I just feel that I’d really like to sit down and let some directionless play coalesce into something, à la Sound Fascination. But it never seems to happen, and that has me thinking about energy supply.

lines in the sand

Now I’m a believer in the saying ”if you want something done, give it to a busy person” – just beneath the surface of this quirky turn of phrase is something we intuitively know to be true: some people are just generally able to get more done in a day. They are more efficient, more focused, they have better productivity habits, whatever. It seems that the more they take on, the more energy they have to take on more, whereas for most of us it’s just the opposite.

However, there has to be a limit. No-one is ‘on’ all the time. If we try to push ourselves too far past these boundaries, we are bound to crash eventually, even if we surprise ourselves a little along the way with just how much is possible…

Or perhaps we won’t hit the wall in a spectacular fashion, but will simply find that the quality of our work suffers eventually, or our capacity to enjoy it. That’s not a happy place to end up either.

While I’m not going to try to position myself as an expert on dealing with this particular issue (for that you should probably turn to the delightful Michael Noobs of Sustainably Creative, who has literally written the book on the subject – well, several actually), I have come up a few tricks for helping myself deal with it.

Some of these are drawn from a perennially fertile metaphor, long distance running: we can transfer many lessons about pacing, training, hyperfocus and rest, building endurance over time, and so on from one sphere of activity to another.

However, what I want to talk about today is something altogether different, and perhaps a bit simpler…

don’t have a cow, man!

Basically, I’ve just learned to relax about it, not beat myself up because I had to take a hiatus from one kind of creative work to focus on another. If being truly involved in my performance work means that I have to put down the other projects for a couple of months, so be it. It’s better in the long run, I believe, than being half-involved in too many things and doing none of them well. I’d rather make sure I really deliver on one thing at a time.

I suppose this is a luxurious choice to be able to make, since many people are struggling with trying to find the mental or physical energy to do any creative work at all, but it’s my particular cross to bear and I can assure you that if I let it, it can be just as frustrating.

So arriving at a place where I can simply give myself permission to dig deep into performing-creativity, even if it means a lapse in composing-creativity and writing-creativity, is definitely progress.

patience, grasshopper…

Finally, I can try to remember that the particular richness of experience that having many interests and many outlets allows, even with all the limitations that come along with it, has another deep long-term benefit: the extraordinary cross-pollination that can occur between different aspects of your work.

I like to think this is a kind of cousin to the kind of creative fertilization that can occur when we collaborate with others, or when we plant our creative seeds in a rich bed of influences. I know that some of what I am doing now will percolate and combine and mutate subconsciously and will come out in myriad unpredictable forms later on when I do get back to my other projects.

And that’s what’s helping me get through what in earlier years I might have experienced as an uncomfortable creative dry spell.

What works for you? How do you handle it when one kind of work or one project suffers at the expense of another? Your thoughts, as always, are welcome in the comments just below…

The First Time…

2012-02-21T09:32:09Z

photo credit: Daniel Flower

Note: this is a slightly edited re-post from the first ‘version’ of this blog, and functions as a bit of a teaser for the now basically finished and nearly release-ready ‘Cliffjump Manifesto’ that I’ve been talking about here for far too long…

About six or seven years ago I spent some time in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a stunning medieval walled city on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Some good friends/colleagues and I had the good fortune to have a ‘working holiday’ arrangement there for a couple of summers, whereby we would play music – basically whatever we felt like playing, but nominally jazz – in exchange for lodgings and food at a cool local taverna called the Sesame. Nice place, recommended if it’s still there!

During the daytime we could pretty much do whatever we wanted, which was naturally walking, exploring, swimming, and generally hanging out. Dubrovnik has incredibly thick and ancient stone walls, which in many places stand right on the water. In a number of spots there are narrow passages through the wall to little enclaves on the outside, often small cafés or restaurant. One of these, which we never really knew the name of but which we called ‘the Lav’ for reasons that will shortly become clear, was a favorite haunt in the late afternoon.

Everybody’s doing it…

Now ‘Lav’ in Croation (I am told) means ‘lion’, and the reason we called it that was this: next to the restaurants zone there was a kind of high rock terrace overlooking the water, and at the lip of this was a large rock on which someone had written this word, ‘Lav’. This was where people jumped from. I don’t really know how high it actually was, perhaps 15 meters (50 feet) or so. High enough to be daunting, but then lots of people were doing it; you could swim right underneath, the water was very clear and you could see that the shore dropped off very steeply and there was lots of uninterrupted water of great depth to jump into.

Nevertheless, it was a kind of test of courage, which built up over days and days while I built up my resolve to try this thing. I’m not a kid anymore and I don’t take these things as lightly as I used to, but I also haven’t completely outgrown the urge for a physical rush. So I have a very clear memory of standing up there on the rock on the day that I had decided I was going to do this thing, and taking deep breaths and telling myself that it was going to be OK, people were doing this all the time.. and fighting the biological imperative we all have built in that tells us to NOT JUMP OFF OF VERY HIGH THINGS, EVEN IF EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT….

And then the jump, and the airtime, and the flailing arms, the racing heart and the kind of quick ripping sound of entry… and the confused moments underwater when you can’t completely remember which way is up… and then the exhilerated kick up towards the surface, the gasping for air with which to form these words: Oh, yeah, I’m definitely going to have to do that again!

Can’t Buy A Thrill

Well of course I did do it again, a few more times in fact, but the rush was never the same as the first time, when even though you basically know you’re going to be OK… you don’t, quite, not with the certainty of experience that you have the second time. The first time is always the best, the most intense, the most thrilling, crazy, hilarious.

I think this is a good thing to remember, because when we forget what that feels like, and stop looking for it, even in smaller safer doses, we lose something important. I believe that the creative instinct is driven at some level by that primal urge to find a new experience, a thrill we haven’t had yet. Craft and meticulous care can come later, but this spark of curiosity has to be in there somewhere, at least for me, or else the whole thing feels very lacklustre. And I’m kind of all about the lustre…

How about you? Are you a creative thrillseeker? Comments are, as ever, welcome!

More on this subject very soon in the Cliffjump Manifesto!

Creative Mastery

2011-10-14T08:48:16Z

photo credit: Wonderlane

Today we’re going to talk about mastery. Thats right, you heard me. Mastery. Not ‘being pretty good at something’ or ‘knowing more or less what you’re doing’ or even ‘being in the zone’ or ‘feeling the flow’. Mastery. Being a master of whatever it is that you do. You in? Good. Buckle up…

So. I have a few piano students these days, and while the lessons are largely focused on practical pianistic things, I try to teach from the same kind of holistic perspective and approach that informs my composition and performance work – and of course, this blog. So from time to time some of the more abstract and philosophical stuff does find its way into the lessons.

Recently I found myself trying to convey something which has become very central to my whole thinking about music and piano-playing, in a kind of subconscious way, and I think it applies to creative work more broadly. It concerns, as you may have guessed already, the concept of mastery.

I suspect that many creative people tend to have a vague idea of mastery as something unattainable, or at least attainable only by an elite and supremely gifted few. Something for the rest of us to strive towards, perhaps, but never attain. And what would it feel like to attain it, anyway, since we never really sit down and define exactly what it means? How would we know that we’ve arrived?

Some of us are even uncomfortable with the whole idea, mistrusting perhaps the elitist overtones… And yet there are masters, undeniably – those whose abilities seem to transcend normal limitations, whose confidence and poise match their technical command, who make it seem easy.

I believe that coming to terms with this word, and what it means to us, can have a profound impact on our approach to creative work. So I’m going to try to get very specific about what it means to me (and as always, you’re heartily invited to join me with your comments at the end!)…

Master of what?

Before I get into it, I should probably give credit where credit is due: the germ of what I’m about to say comes from a wonderful book called ‘Effortless Mastery’ by Kenny Werner, a jazz pianist, composer and educator who I hold in very high regard (as do many others – he recently won a Guggenheim Fellowship). However, it’s filtered through my own philosophy, and my experience over the 12 years or so since I read the book.

OK, so what is mastery? When we think of someone as having ‘mastered’ their craft or their art, what does it mean? A standard answer might be that they can do anything they want within that field, perfectly and consistently, with profound and sublime expression. OK, but does that actually mean anything at all, concretely? And if so, is that all there is to it?

I think it’s kind of self-evident that all ‘mastery’ is limited. For example, is it possible to have absolute mastery, in the sense proposed above, of, say, playing the piano?

Let’s take two of the greatest ‘masters’ of the piano in the last century: Vladimir Horowitz and Art Tatum. Both virtuosos of the highest order, almost unbelievably great. And yet, Horowitz certainly couldn’t play everything Tatum could play, and vice versa.

Can we say that Tatum was the ‘grand master’ of jazz piano, then, and Horowitz of classical? No, for there were and are many other ‘masters’ in each field, each with their particular voice, their own version of transcendent brilliance.

There is no such thing as ‘absolute’ mastery, then; there is only mastery of your art, your craft.

So what does that mean, and how do we get at it, or at least get closer to it? Can it ever be more than a vague and unexamined carrot we dangle in front of ourselves while we plod along?

Diamonds are forever

In Kenny Werner’s book, he offers a little technique called the Practice Diamond. At first it seems innocent enough, a handy system for breaking things down into chunks in order to get better at them more efficiently. However, I have come to think that, in a quiet and unassuming way, this method encapsulates a perfect definition of mastery, a clear way to approach it, and a profound and empowering artistic philosophy.

Here’s what it looks like (as usual, I don’t have the book in front of me and I’m working from memory, so apologies to all concerned if I’ve deviated from the original terms and format):

If the image is not coming through, imagine a diamond with four corners, each representing an aspect of how we play what we are trying to play (or paint or dance or sing, and so on – while this relates most specifically to musical practice, the underlying idea will translate to other arenas. We’ll get to that shortly, but for the moment please bear with the piano practise context).

The four corners are: a) play the whole example; b) play it at the ‘correct’ (or desired) tempo; c) play it perfectly, i.e. without technical errors; and d) play it effortlessly, without strain or anger or self-criticism. I tend to add to the last one ‘with good technique’, which of course incorporates many things – but the one that’s key, to my way of thinking, is relaxation.

The idea is that when practising something, a skill or a piece (or part of a piece) or a technique we want to learn – to achieve mastery of – we need to leave out one or more of these things in order to refine our focus. But the one we never leave out is the last one. Everything depends on coming from that effortless attitude all of the time.

We want to be in that space whenever we are at our work, whether we are creating or performing or ‘just’ practicing. Because doing our work from that place of effortless non-judgement is what we are really practicing - and the more we do it consciously, the easier it will be, until it is second nature, automatic. Effortlessness becomes effortless.

Leave something out

So again, we’re leaving out one thing at a time in order to concentrate on the others. We might leave out a), which means that we’re playing very short segments of whatever we’re working on, but at speed and without mistakes. We might leave out b), so we’re playing the whole thing without mistakes but very slowly. We might leave out c), so we’re playing the whole thing at speed but not worrying about mistakes – useful for getting the ‘feel’ of something, and also for getting used to not beating ourselves up about mistakes. But we never leave out d) – it’s the essential part of the equation that makes the next bit work.

The specific terms might be different in different creative idioms, but the idea is universal. In marathon training, for example, the most efficient way to progress is to work on one thing at a time – so when you’re building endurance, you go slower than you could, and when you’re doing speed work you don’t put it in the middle of a long run, or incorporate hills.

So you may have to change the specifics of the model in order to make it appropriate to your particular creative work, but the underlying concept still applies, and more importantly, the premise that whatever we are ‘leaving out’ and whatever we are ‘focusing on’, it’s always essential to maintain that effortless, non-judgmental attitude and mindset. That’s a big part of what we’re practising, because it’s a very big part of mastery.

Are you experienced?

Mastery, then, is what happens when you can put all four corners together. When you can do the whole thing perfectly, at speed, without mistakes, effortlessly, every time. Like a concert pianist, or a circus performer doing the seemingly impossible and making it look easy…

And it bears repeating that this does not mean you’ve achieved total mastery of, say, playing the piano. It just applies to whatever specific thing you were working on. This could be as simple as a short piece, or a short segment of a piece, or a C major scale, or a particular chord progression or voicing, or a dance step, or a move on the turntables, or a tricky Photoshop technique…

Or, coming back to the piano again: it can be as simple as a single note. Yes, it is possible – no, scratch that, it’s essential – to achieve mastery of playing a single note. This is a big thing, and actually the crux of what I’m talking about. Break things down to their smallest components, and achieve mastery of those tiny things.

It’s not necessarily easy, because it has to come from that attitude of effortlessness, of total commitment, that peculiar mix of confidence and humility (let’s call it ‘gracefulness’, shall we?) that seems to characterize so many of the masters we revere.

And that can take a lot of work to find and to allow ourselves to feel. It’s a lot easier said than done (it’s taken me 40 years to get as close to it as I have, and I have much more to learn). But it’s achievable.

And that’s really what we’re practicing, more than the specific skill we’re focusing on. We’re practicing mastery, and we can practise it within the space of a single note, or brush stroke, or dance step.

It’s mastery, by a real and measurable definition, and it’s achievable, approachable, not unattainable or reserved for the preternaturally gifted. We can experience it.

Baby steps

When we do this, when we ‘get it’, a funny thing happens, and a very important one: we know what mastery feels like. We have a definition of it, and we can experience it, albeit in a very small package. We can sink into the beauty of that single note, or single brush stroke, or whatever, and we can say, yes, I can play that or do that perfectly, consistently, effortlessly, with complete commitment and confidence and humility and presence. I can master that very small thing, and I know what it feels like.

It feels GOOD, just in case that wasn’t clear. Luminous. Magical.

And the little secret which I suspect that all true masters know? That’s all mastery is. You just need to build on that, get better at accessing it, in bigger chunks and in more contexts. It takes practice, but it gets easier, because we know the feeling and we trust it and we know how to move towards it. Eventually, it becomes second nature – our default way of approaching our work. Voila: mastery.

I’ve certainly felt it, and I’ve gotten a lot better at locating it and moving towards it, though I can’t claim to have it all the time yet, or to always practice in this way. But I can attest to the fact that knowing this and experiencing it, in however small a package you need to start with, is like a lightning strike. It blasts open the doors of possibility. And that’s a good place to start!

* * *

I’ve been working a lot more on my Manifesto, which delves into some ways to clear out the junk that we put in the way of feeling and experiencing this, and offers a kind of blueprint for the ‘fearless creativity’ that is the focus of this blog… So, expect more on that front soon (I know I’ve said that before, but still).

In the meantime, I’d absolutely love to hear what you have to say about this whole mastery business… so please head on down to the comments area below! What does ‘mastery’ mean to you? Is it something available only to a specially gifted few, or is it something tangible that we can take definite steps towards? Have you experienced something you would call a ‘moment of mastery’?

Creating Grace

2011-09-21T17:43:42Z

photo credit: neal young.

I picked up an unusual little ebook recently, called ‘Graceful: Making a Difference in a World that Needs You‘*. It’s by the notorious Seth Godin (and if you don’t know who that is, now would be a good moment to go find out…) and it’s a tiny little thing, consisting of 30 short chapters that are very much in Seth’s trademark rapid-fire, gently provocative style. You can read it in about half an hour.

I’m not exactly sure why but it’s really gotten under my skin. It’s not long on specific, actionable content, so if that’s what you’re looking for you’re likely better off seeking elsewhere. Rather, the chapters seem to unfold like a series of Zen ‘koans’, planting little seeds here and there which quietly blossom, as the book unfolds, into something quite remarkable.

Without getting into a serious review, which could easily end up being longer than the book, I want to touch on what it’s had me thinking about…

Saying Grace

See, I think (and so, evidently, does Mr. Godin) that ‘graceful’ is a great word. It’s one of those words that manages to capture something profound, subtle and open-ended; something nebulous and yet powerfully, intuitively meaningful.

Graceful carries all sorts of associated meanings with it – courage, calm, dignity, strength, honour, integrity, beauty, self-possession. It can be applied to a person, a gesture, an act, a form, a performance, a life.

And Seth’s proposition is that it is, as the song goes, ‘what the world needs now’. I tend to agree.

I also find myself thinking that ‘Graceful’ is another way of talking about the subject of this blog, Fearless Creativity. Because that’s what I’m really trying to get at here: a way of being with our creativity that is not just about psychology, not just about getting unstuck. Fearless Creativity means more than that.

Saving Grace

It’s about finding a relationship with our creativity and ourselves and those around us that is deeper, richer, more challenging and more rewarding than I think we usually allow ourselves, or at least than the world typically seems to encourage. It’s the kind of state where we can become larger than ourselves, do more than we think we can do, really impact and improve the world we find ourselves in – in an organic, peaceful and positive way.

And that’s Graceful. That’s what I want to be in my work, in my life, in my relationships. That’s what all these essays are really trying to get at; and all this time there’s been a single word, which I’ve known the whole time, my whole life really, that sums it up perfectly.

Nice to figure that out… thanks Seth!

Anyway, that’s what this blog is really about, in case anyone’s wondering, and what my own forthcoming little book project (it’s almost finished – really!) and the hopefully much bigger Special Secret Project that will follow (on which more soon, watch this space!) are all about as well . This is my shot at being and becoming Graceful, or at least moving towards that goal… and gently encouraging others to do the same.

So, over to you… do you know what graceful is? Do you have a definition? Have you known someone that you would use that word to describe? I’d be willing to be that most of us have, at one point or another. Have you ever felt yourself to be in a graceful state? Can Gracefulness change the world?

Authentic Creativity

2011-09-04T22:49:08Z

photo credit: shawnzrossi

I did an interview recently, focused on my compositional work and approach (I’ll post a link when it goes live) and, as often happens in these things, once we’d wrapped it up and signed off I found my brain spinning with other ideas. You know, things we didn’t touch on but could have, things I wish I’d said or wish I’d said better. So it goes. I guess I just need to do more interviews…

However, one of these ‘afterthoughts’ has stuck with me, and I’d like to try to expand on it a bit here. It has to do with authenticity. Now, this is a subject I’ve touched on here before, and of course it’s also something of a buzz word in the interwebs generally and the blogosphere more specifically. We need to be more authentic, we’re told; people like authenticity, it’s generally considered to be a Good Thing.

But, ummm, what is it? What does it mean? I suppose standard answer would probably be something like “being true to yourself” – but let’s face it, that’s basically a meaningless cliché and doesn’t tell us much of anything at all. It’s an unexamined platitude.

(Quick aside: I’m generally allergic to unexamined platitudes – ideas or terms that are bantered around without anyone ever seeming to take the time to really question and define them, or find out if in fact there’s any substance to them at all. Or perhaps allergic is not the right word; I’m actually kind of attracted to these linguistic or logical black holes. I’m driven to try to figure out what, if anything, they mean – or at least, what they mean to me.)

Give The People What They Want…

A slightly better / more complete answer, then, for me – and the one I’ve been using for a while now, in various contexts – is this: Always try to be the best, most honest version of yourself, rather than being what you think people want you to be (or saying what they want to hear, and so on). It’s still pretty vague, but at least it’s something. The key here is that in fact we can’t ever know, really, what people want us to be, so it’s best not to spend a lot of time trying to reverse-engineer it.

However, I still think there’s room for improvement. And while I don’t claim to be any kind of ultimate authority on the subject, I do seem to have stumbled on something that is serving me reasonably well – for the moment at least – as a kind of guideline to help me move towards some kind of authenticity in my own life and work.

And it has to do with stew. Or goulash, gumbo, whatever, take your pick…

To hear, one must be silent…

We’ll get to the food metaphors in a moment, but first we need to talk about listening. During this interview, unsurprisingly I suppose, the question came up of ‘what kind of music do I listen to?’ And I had to answer honestly, if somewhat sheepishly, that I generally don’t listen to much music at all at this point in my journey. It’s not a conscious decision I’ve made, or anything I’ve ever really thought about, I just kind of noticed one day that I rarely ever seem to put music on anymore.

This is very strange.

See, I used to have music on all the time. I would have it on from morning to night, in the background while I was doing pretty much anything else at all – cooking, eating, washing dishes, folding laundry, reading, whatever. If possible, I would try to put in an hour or so of serious, ‘focused listening’ most days. About the only time I wasn’t listening to someone else’s music was when I was making some of my own. Or, occasionally, sleeping.

Somewhere along the line it became less urgent to me. It just kind of happened organically, without me really noticing. I still love listening to music if someone else puts some on – and I’m frequently amazed by how much brilliant innovative new stuff is still ‘out there’ (alongside an equally amazing amount of outright drivel) – but I never seem to have the impulse to do so myself. It’s been a bit of a mystery to me for the last couple of years.

The Ecstasy of Influence

I think I may have figured it out during my interview the other day, however, and it has to do with influence. See, I’m of the opinion that we make ourselves, our identities generally and our individual creative voices more specifically, out of the amazing, unique collection of influences we’ve each had throughout our lives. That’s the raw material we use when we start to create something new. I don’t really believe in ‘divine inspiration’; I believe in creative recycling.

So it figures that in the early stages of our development, we need tons of input. As much as we can get, really, and I’m certainly far from alone in having been hungry for anything I could get my ears on for a long time. My tastes were (and remain) pretty eclectic, probably, by most standards, but lots of musicians talk about listening voraciously in their younger lives. I gather it’s similar in other disciplines; it’s basically an essential part of creative growth.

I think there’s a very real dichotomy here – we need lots of input to build our unique voices out of, but the quality and power of those influences tend to make it difficult to differentiate and separate ourselves from them. How do we assimilate the extraordinary work that has gone before us, do justice to it, and yet somehow be authentically ourselves at the same time? I’ve heard this dilemma described as ‘the agony of influence’.

Food Metaphors ‘R’ Us

photo credit: balise42

However, I think the trick may well be in simply not worrying about this too much. I’ve taken to thinking of it like cooking – and here’s where the stew/goulash/gumbo stuff comes in. We need some raw ingredients to make a good meal – starting with some basics, vegetables and maybe some meat or seafood if your tastes run that way. We need some spices, some strong flavours to mix and mingle together. There’s only so much you can do with a potato and a knife, so let’s say that up to a point, the more good and interesting stuff you can put together, the better.

But only up to a point. Too many ingredients and you’re just going to get confused. Too many different spices and you won’t taste anything at all. It’s probably better to have a few really good, fresh ingredients and a few choice spices – and maybe best of all, a novel or innovative combination of them, to put together into something no-one’s ever tasted before. It doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be a famous or world-class chef, but it’s a start.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I seem to have arrived at a point where I have a decent stew going for now, and I’m managing to make some tasty dishes with it. I’m sure that at some point (at least I hope so), I’ll have exhausted what I can do with what I’ve got, and it will be time to add some new ingredients, some different flavours, to the brew.

For the moment, though, I think the best path to ‘authenticity’ is to work with what I’ve got for a while. Maybe there’s a kind of natural cyclical flow to all this, a time of expansion when we’re more receptive, more outwardly focuses, followed by a time of synthesis and integration when we need to shut off the inputs for a while and let things percolate.

Input vs. Output

Earlier in this post I used a quote from Ursula K. Leguin’s classic fantasy novel ‘A Wizard of Earthsea‘ as a section header: “To hear, one must be silent“. I’ve always thought these were very wise words, but I’m realizing that the inverse is also true – for me to stop being silent, and move into the creative and productive phase I seem to be in now, I had to stop listening. I had to turn the input-output valve around.

And in the process, I discovered that authenticity, for me, seems to depend on these ‘limited-input’ phases where I shut out the noise of the rest of the world for a while. I need to forego, for a while at least, the pleasure of digging into and absorbing the amazing work of others, in order to process what I’ve already got and let the flavours mingle.

And that’s basically how I am going about trying to ‘be the best and most honest version of myself’ these days.

Your turn: what’s your definition of authenticity? Do you think it’s better to make best stew you can out of your particular unique set of ingredients and influences, or try to reject them outright and strive for absolute originality? Does such a thing even exist?