Tuning Slide # 5.22- Building Blocks of Creativity

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.
— Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A few months ago I bookmarked a link I thought might be interesting to dig into:

Creativity and the Brain: What We Can Learn From Jazz Musicians (Link)

It was an NPR interview and story about Charles Limb, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at John’s Hopkins University. It seems that Limb was studying jazz musicians and their creativity to discover the workings of the brain when we are being creative. The article said:

Creativity may even be hardwired into human brains, an essential feature that has allowed the species to adapt repeatedly over the course of history. “Very early on there’s this need for the brain to be able to come up with something that it didn't know before, that’s not being taught to it, but to find a way to figure something out that’s creative,” Limb said. “That’s always been essential for human survival.”

Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. “The brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavors forever”…

Interestingly, the creating brain looks a lot like the dreaming brain, one of the most creative states humans can enter, but one associated with unconsciousness. Similar to what Limb observed in jazz musicians, when people dream the self-monitoring part of the brain is suppressed and the default network in the brain takes over. (Link)

While it didn’t give me any direction about how I could get more creative in my life, it did affirm two things. The first was that music, and jazz, in particular, can be a source of developing creativity. The second was that the actions of creativity, making new things happen, may actually be part of our human evolutionary survival mechanisms. Creativity is essential, if for no other reason than to keep us from being bored. Creativity makes things new, not just making new things.

Creativity, then, is one of those ideas that can apply in many different areas. I wondered what the experts of the world might say about developing creativity so I Googled the question, “How do I learn creativity?” Among the landslide of links were a number that gave specific lists.

• 9 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Creativity | Inc.com
• 17 Ways to Develop Your Creativity - Verywell Mind
• 6 tips for building creativity and innovation | Management ...
• 3 Ways To Train Yourself To Be More Creative - Fast Company
• 5 Habits for Building Creativity Into Your Team - Brightpod

Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment.
It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.
— Bruce Garrabrandt

So how then do we develop it? Looking over the web sites mentioned above, I came up with some ideas that struck me as basic. Here are some of them, with my thoughts on their importance in italics:

▪ Be Willing to Take Risks
Often the fears (see below) get in the way, or the opportunities to do something different don’t occur. When I went to my first Shell Lake Big Band Camp it was a big risk. I knew little about improvising, but I went to a safe place to try it out. It was so-so, but it was a start.

▪ Build Your Confidence
Just going to Shell Lake and playing music outside of my comfort zone did work. I found out that I might just be able to do something more with it. It was a few years before it fell into place away from the safe confines of the camp, but it has been a steady growth in confidence.

▪ Keep a Journal
Part of the way I know these things is that I have kept a journal. That is a place for me to be honest and open with no one but me! I can express what I am feeling, including my fears. I can wander in my thoughts and take note of new ideas and possibilities.

▪ Overcome Negative Attitudes that Block Creativity
By taking risks, I end up confronting that wonderfully negative inner critic that every artistic person talks about. I can document the many times that those negative attitudes have gotten in the way and then prove them wrong. This leads to new ideas and new challenges because sometimes I fail at being as creative as I want to be.

▪ Fight Your Fear of Failure
But failure is okay. If you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried- and you probably haven’t learned anything new.

▪ Ask for Advice
Be a learner, a student at all times. Other people can make a difference with a different point of view.

▪ Learn a New Skill
Sometimes it helps to find different areas to build creativity. I love photography- it is a great creativity booster since it sharpens my vision. I love putting videos together- it makes me think in a melding of sound, pictures, and motion.

Surprisingly there was very little overlap in the lists I looked at. Creativity is quite varied. But there were two items that were in more than one list. First was some variation of:

▪ Exercise.
It may be doing workouts or, as one put it, taking a walk. Exercise is a source of energy that can help boost creativity. It works with the mind to take you into new things.

The other common suggestion is even easier than that:

▪ Do nothing!
Introspection time. Be mindful. (I knew that would show up somehow to another in all this.) Take the time to let the mind wander into nothingness. Be aware, non-judgmentally of what is happening around you. In your quiet nothingness, a great deal can happen. As long as you are listening to the inner voice, the creative muse.

The word [music] derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses”)…. In classical Greece, [the term "music" refers to] any art in which the Muses presided, but especially music and lyric poetry." (Wikipedia)

Listen to your muse. Play your music. Be creative. You will come up with something that no one has ever done before. Then go ahead, and do it some more.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
— Maya Angelou

Tuning Slide: Letting Go

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The key to change... is to let go of fear.

-Rosanne Cash

Letting go means taking risks.
Letting go is taking action, not resisting
Controlling comes from fear - if I am not in charge, things will fall apart.

From Bill Ferguson's Mastery of Life:

Fear is a state of mind and is created by resisting a future event. For example, if you have a fear of losing someone, you are resisting the future event called, “losing the person.” The more you resist losing the person, the bigger your fear. The bigger your fear, the more you feel threatened. The more you feel threatened, the more you hang on and push the person away. By resisting the future event, you tend to make the fear come true.(How to let go and flow with life)

In a business organization book, Yes to the Mess, Frank J. Barrett relates being part of a jazz combo to successful business practices. Letting go is part of it:

Jazz musicians... often speak of letting go of deliberation and control. They employ deliberate, conscious attention in their practice, but at the moment when they are called upon to play, this conscious striving becomes an obstacle. Too much regulation and control restricts the emergence of fresh ideas. To get jazz right, musicians must surrender their conscious striving...

We're back to the practice room again. A natural place to start the process of letting go. We strive in practice and let go in performance. He is of course talking about improvising, but for most of us this letting go begins with any public performance.

In the words of saxophonist Ken Peplowski, "You carry along all the scales and all the chords you learned, and then you take an intuitive leap into the music. Once you take that leap, you forget all about those tools. You just sit back and let divine intervention take over."

I'm not sure about "divine intervention" in my trumpet playing. I'm not sure that God cares that much about what I play. My interpretation is that when I get in touch with the "spiritual" aspect of playing music, I can more easily let go and allow the music to flow.

But there is another aspect of all this letting go. Unless we are in a solo recital, we do not play alone in public performance. Whether it is a duo or trio, a combo or a wind band, our music has to fit into what the others are playing. Hence the statement I saw on Facebook one day:

Practice is to learn your part;
Rehearsal is to learn the other parts
and how your part fits in.

Wisdom.

But the letting go is really in the next step, the actual public performance. The time when nerves and stage fright, performance anxiety and just plain old "blanking out" takes over.

Here I have to make a confession: I have a very difficult time practicing what I preach when I get into a solo performance. I know I have talked about this before, but it has raised its ugly countenance again. I had some pieces down cold- in my practice room. I got to rehearsal psyched to play- and it was like I had never seen the piece before.

Damn!

Now, to be good to myself, I have made progress. I can play in the quintet and not get that fear. I can play in the concert band and, for the most part, allow my part to sing out. But the solos are still bugging me.

I do know that the techniques of letting go work. They have worked for me. I know from from experience that letting go can move me to new places. I also know that what Frank Barrett talks about above are the problems:

• Striving-
    which means working hard instead of relaxing
• Regulation and control-
  wanting to remain in charge and not trust the flow of the music
• Tense muscles-
  caused by the inner tension and growing unceretainty
• Shallow breathing-
  when we are tense we don't take the time to deeply breathe. We react and the fear cycle of fight or flight kicks in.
• Losing attention-
  and then we are in full time crisis mode.

I have talked about all these things in the past. But they bear repeating and relearning. The need to "Let Go" at those moments is essential. Taking a deep breath, realigning yourself (easier to do if you're not in the middle of a solo!), focus on what is in front of you.

This is simple. I wish it were as easy!

With time, it may be.

From the movie Frozen:

It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me I'm free!

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry!

Here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let the storm rage on!

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(Sidenote: I know when all this started for me and I'm going to tell that story in a Tuning Slide extra next Monday. By telling the story I may be able to do some exorcising of that demon instead of continually exercising it.)