Ceative Insights

[Rob06]

This journal is meant for gathering and sharing my thoughts, insights, and contemplations on creative work. It will be an intersection of self-actualization, creativity, carreer success (and failure), and spirituallity. As a creator, struggling to make a full time income and trying to actualize his potential and life purpose, quite some insights and experiences come up. I like to structure all of these thoughts, experiences, and insights and share them. This deepens my own understanding of what I'm doing, and motivates me to contimplate the topics and questions that naturally interest me. Hopefully, it will be of value to you too.

[Rob06]

 

How to get out of your own way as a creative?

Check out this video:

The first time I heard this piece in this particular YouTube video, I was 16 years old. From that day onward, I grasped the power and magic of music. Every time I watch this video of Wilhelm Kempff performing this amazing piece, it reconnects me to the intrinsic beauty of existence, and a plethora of emotions runs through my being. I am talking about the 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven.

A wave of energy surges through my spine as I listen. I guess yoga folks would call that energy kundalini, tai chi people chi, taoists call it the great tao, christians spirit or soul, atheists just call it energy. Whatever it is, I intuite that this creative energy gives birth to the current moment, the eternal now, it does not discriminate, nor does it judge. That's something to dive into in a next post.

Look at Kempff's facial expression during this performance. This man is not in what we usually call a regular "sober" state of consciousness, operating from a linear, rational thinking state of mind. Rather, it is an elevated state of consciousness, and therefore functioning, that allows him to execute this piece with such expression, intensity and emotion. It is almost like he, along with the listeners, is just an observer, watching his hands play the music, and listening to it. His enjoyment of the music, along with the performance of it, creates a positive feedback loop.

Don't get me wrong here. Of course, thousands upon thousands of hours of practice from the regular state of consciousness was necessary to allow for this flawless execution. Scrutinizing one's own practice habits, technique, and such is still important. But when the time of performance comes, the rational left brain has to surrender and merge with the more holistic and intuitive right brain to really bring the art alive. And even during practice, one should strive to practice from that flow state. This can be hard to attain, since you can't force it. You can only create circumstances that make the possibility of flow arrising much higher. In the same way that you can make the possibility of attracting rare birds to your garden higher by planting the right trees and plants.

One of the biggest challenges of the artist or creator therefore, is to create the circumstances for flow to arrise. You have to get out of your own way, so to speak. Even though I've known this intellectually for years, it took me a long while to really start to embody this concept, and I'm still working on it now. One thing that helped me tremendously with this is the practice of meditation. Regular practice allows one to more easily surrender to what is. This might sound whoo whoo, but it really just means that you accept reality as it is, without judging it. If a problem has a solution, solve it, if it doesn't have a solution, accept it and let it be. Why does the skill of surrendering to what is help in performance, you might ask?

Let me phrase it differently. From a scientific perspective it makes sense why meditation would help with performance and creative work. I once read that scientific research shows that the regular practice of meditation actually grows the part of the brain that connects the left and right brain (the corpus callosum). Sounds crazy, right? This apparently is the case. You can find these studies for yourself. An even better way to realize that meditation has a direct impact on creative performance though, would be to start practicing it, and experience it for yourself.

Another aspect of this video that I really love is that Kempff doesn't execute this piece a 100% perfectly in terms of notes. There are quite some "mistakes" or "wrong notes" in his performance of the piece. But he doesn't seem to be bothered by that. Next to that, I have yet to find a performance of this piece that moves me in the same way Kempff's version does. I listened to other performances, played even faster, with even better technique, but without the same instensity, expression, and emotion (which is a subjective notion of course).

As in life, mistakes are unavoidable, part of life itself. It is how you contextualize them and deal with them that makes all the difference. Think about the way Kempff deals with mistakes he makes in this performance, the next time you make one. He takes responsibility for his mistake not by stopping, or by going into his head, and therefore robbing others of the gift he shares, but by continuing in the same spirit.

Talking about getting out of your own way: most of this blog post was written from a state of flow. The insights, words and phrases coming to me effortlessly. It just came from the love I have for this music, and the desire to share it. Now, at the end of writing this post I realize that my mind is starting to play tricks on me, saying things like: "Will people like this post? Will they think I'm weird? Is it good enough? How can I create a good conclusion? It has to be excellent", and so on. There's not necessarily something wrong with those questions, but I feel the creativity and flow creep away in that more rational linear state of mind. The time of critisizing your performance or creative work is after the fact. Not to judge yourself, but to improve your ability to share your creation with others even better the next time you come around to it.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Rob06
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