(i) creativity, music, writing

(sunday, early morning, the birds are crazy)

i’ve tried to observe my own creative process many times, and it always ends up increasing the mystery rather than solve it.

for most of my life, and with the exception of the last few years, my creative endeavors were more or less equally divided between writing and music. at the same time, i always considered music to be my most important pursuit, in part because, again until the last few years, i did not write fiction, or when i did it was not very good and not very intentionally. (this was only intensified with university, which maimed not only my ability to write fiction, but to read it. i am still in recovery). regardless of the reason, most of my early observations on the creative process regard music, rather than words. now i think they aren’t that different, at least for me. so maybe i write like a music composer, or i compose music like a writer. i have no idea, but if i had to guess i’d say it’s more the first than the second, since for me writing is an auditory experience. i have read other people’s thoughts on creative processes, and there are certainly more types than i can count. but i barely understand my own, as i’ve said.

in my own experience, there seemed to be two ways in which a piece of music came to be. the first is that it appears in the mind first, unprompted, and in a way complete, even though it’s sequential. maybe completeness is not the correct way to put it, but rather that one grasps the totality of the piece of music, its purpose almost. then of course there is the trouble of translating it to the physical world so it can be heard, or read, or experienced, by someone else. i would venture that, not just in my own creations, but in all of them, it is rare for an idea to be perfectly translated, in part because there seems to be an element of this completion that requires a perceiver, a reader, a listener, and not just the creator as creator.

even though i spent half my life, from twelve to thirty, give or take, creating music and i’ve recorded or otherwise produced hours upon hours of it, the truth is the vast majority of that music came from another method, and on the other hand the vast majority of the music i heard in my head, more hours upon hours, never made it to the external world. i still regularly hear music in my mind, especially as i am falling asleep, but i make no effort to record it anymore. and of course, the less time i dedicate to recording this mental music, the less i am able to do it successfully. i simply shifted this effort to the recording of stories, but the process is not that different.

the other way to produce music is hands on, literally. it can be called the ‘tease method’, and every creative field has its own version. in music it consists in playing around with an instrument. the fingers play a note, or several, at the same time or in sequence, and then the mind uses that prompt and continues it. most of the music i recorded over the years came from this method, and not the purely mental one, and i can think of two reasons why. first, when the music happens only in the mind, it tends to involve a scenario that is not conducive to translation to the physical world. it requires great focused effort but also a physical state of relaxation, with the body either at rest (like laying down with eyes closed) or engaged in repetitive tasks (like washing dishes or taking a walk). because of this, and especially for a lengthy piece of music, it’s harder to take what one imagined and put it out simply because the means to do it, the translation tools, are not at one’s fingertips. of course, had i made more of an effort to properly learn how to write sheet music it would be as simple as picking up a pen to write this sentence, but i never did, and so i always had to resort to physical instruments or digital interfaces to translate my musical ideas. and both because i am only moderately proficient in either activity, the translation takes time and often the idea gets lost, or sufficiently modified to be something else than what i originally heard in my head. with the instrument already in hand there is less of a gap between idea and execution.

at the same time i also think that it’s fair to describe the music that happens in my mind as a product of the same type of prompt. instead of playing a chord or a string of notes with my fingers, i generate them inside my mind, and then i just need to continue from there, much like after playing a chord on the guitar or the piano. i was unaware of this until i discovered jazz improvisation. when improvising over a vamp or a progression one is in fact doing the same thing as a composer, except at a much faster pace and without the ability to go back and correct bad notes. this is interesting because it basically means that one must turn those random notes that originated from a mistake into the springboard for a new progression or phrase. this can be a good exercise also for slower composition, and for creative writing, though there it probably needs to be applied in a different way. in any case, many times i have no idea why a certain word appeared in a story, much like an off key note in an improvisation, but it can and indeed is often used to pivot the whole composition or story.

one important aspect of all this is that in some sense the idea, much like the bad note, comes from somewhere that is outside, it was not willed. it just appears, although it requires conscious or semi conscious interpretation. a certain chord, much like an unexpected note in a sequence or a twist in a story, may mean nothing at all, and it takes a creative mind to understand that it is something, that it leads somewhere. This recognition in turn implies something else that is observable and undeniable as far as i’m concerned. again, in some hard to define sense, from that one chord or idea, what comes next is not random but in a way it already exists, there is one or a few correct follow ups to the prompt, and a million of wrong ones. after the chord or the sentence or the prologue or whatever prompt, there is a natural progression and creation is really more, or at least equally, a discovery, as if the artist is a medium trying to convey a message from another world, or at least a hidden part of the same one.

i can imagine the same is true for painting and poetry, and all the other arts, though i am no painter nor poet and much less the other things which i’ve never tried, like sculpture. i had a technical sort of talent as a child for drawing, but it was always an unconscious activity, which is why when i became fully myself at twelve i more or less gave it up completely, except as a past time, not a serious pursuit. this remains the case. as for poetry, i was always terrible. the same is true for lyrics when i made songs. i simply have no talent for it, and i wisely gave it up. this is partly a cause of, and partly causes, my difficulty in understanding poetry, though i certainly am sensitive to poetic expression, as Barfield defines it. but this raises another question. one can be creative not just from the inside out but the outside in. what i mean is one can be a creative reader, listener, observer.

i think this happened when i was in my mid twenties. i had the alarm clock set to turn on the radio and one day i was gently awakened by a song which had a profound impact on me. when the song finished i was no longer asleep in any sense, but i was not normally awake, i was in a trance. (i wrote to the station trying to describe the song and eventually they came back to me and it was Babylon Sisters by Steely Dan, still one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands). when i listened to it some time later for the second time i no longer felt it as intensely, but i could recall that the first time around, in part because of the half awake state, i had heard more than was there in the song, properly speaking. i was able to listen to the implied notes and orchestration. my mind had more or less grasped the song in its fullness, more than the sum of its parts. only after this accidental occurrence did i realize that i did this consciously too whenever i listened with intent and attention, laying down with headphones and eyes closed. i listened creatively, i expanded the music, read between the lines, so to speak. and with time i came to understand that this happens, selectively, with other things as well, in fact, with all things. one can be a genius at perceiving, in short.

(a swallow just came in through the window, i had to go help her out, i think it was a she. this is as good a place and time as any to finish this.)