Intuition and artists -- your thoughts

[skysaw]

Hello all, I am writing a book about music composition and the subconscious. I'd like some thoughts and opinions from anyone regarding the following question: Assuming an artist is well-versed in the theory and craft of their art, what is the role of intuition when he or she creates? Can intuition take one beyond the confines of one's own knowledge, or is this just experimental play? Any thoughts on this at all would be appreciated.

[Tornado Joe]

I think inspiration is more like a state of mind which allows the 'artist' to tune into a particular something that's already in existence. One becomes inspired to create a piece regarding a certain subject, topic, or feeling - so that particular feeling starts 'picking up' the signals that are floating around us, unseen, undetected, untouchable. Like a radio wave, it's all 'out there' waiting for a receiver (us) to pull in and translate the signal through the medium (music, poetry, visual art, etc). The receiver's talent, skill level, past experience, and uniqueness is what eventually shapes the creation and sets it apart from another's creation of the exact same subject. -or maybe it's just magic

[Howie]

There are fundamentals to learning music art literature and the like. Those can be taught and learned by almost anyone. Then it branches out further into abilities. I can learn composition but may never have the ability within myself to ever create at a level that someone else may be able to. Add variables like someones drive and passion, their upbringing and environment, etc, etc. All those make up what details our individuality to some extent. I think when the fundamentals are learned and you put yourself in the position to create, what unfolds can be remarkable. No effort needs to go towards what now is instinctive, instead the effort can pour out onto a canvas, a note pad, through music or what have you. right brain /left brain

[O'nus]

May I suggest a brief read of Tolstoy's "What is Art?"? http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r14.html ~

[pj]

I've written a lot on this subject over the years. At the risk of overloading you, I'll post a couple of those missiles here, in separate posts. Feel free to use what you wish. -- The Flow (Written on July 3, 2007) It seems appropriate to piggyback these thoughts onto a document sitting on my computer's desktop titled "The Flow." It is a convenient set of lyrics - convenient because it's easier to just open this document and pre-pend it rather than going through the ritual of selecting a writing program and titling a new file. Quality laziness requires creativity, effort and a certain openness to opportunity. We are on vacation, a great time to exercise such skills. The wife and girls headed further north this morning to enjoy a couple days in Indian River, participating in the 4th of July parade and watching the fireworks. Our son and I stayed behind. It is very quiet, a different kind of quiet than when the dog and I come up here by ourselves. My son is a gracious young man, always cautious to respect my space and trying to avoid interrupting my thoughts. It is a respectful though artificial quiet, not at all uncomfortable or tense. Right now, he is quietly reading. I'm doing what I do, which is a combination of playing guitar, contemplating, meditating, puttering and now writing about the contemplating and meditating. I heard from the wife a little while ago. It was odd to be briefly interrupted by that very different world just a hundred miles north of here, as I sat outside by my small fire thinking about the parallel universes we live in and travel through. She is in one of those alternate realities while I remain here in another, enjoying the end of an amazing day on the edge of this quirky valley. Back downstate are many more worlds we move in and out of; the worlds of family, business, friends and neighbors, and the world of the very real life I lead on the internet - a uniquely odd frontier devoid of the usual physical and logistical boundaries, but also devoid of physical interaction. The fire pit is on the edge of the valley, which changes dramatically as I watch. It has changed dramatically from this morning's dawn glow to the now rapidly settling evening. It changes from Spring to Winter, from clear to overcast, from dry to rain, from calm to storm. These are cyclic changes, yet it also advances; inch by inch, encompassing everything in its path,moving forward ceaselessly. The Valley of Desolation, that once seemingly permanent wreckage left in the wake of The Tornado, is almost gone now. A dense, thick lawn of spruce, tamarack, balsam, oak, cherry and popul rises through and over the remains of that horriffic storm, obscuring the dense tangle of flora corpses helping to feed the advance. The tallest trees on this side of the river are now well above my line of sight to the ridge beyond. The far ridge is mostly obscured by the cedar and pine forest on the far side of the river, which has regrown tall enough in the last few years to have completely changed the vista. Beneath it all, the real but invisible earth waters and nourishes and supports it all. As the Valley changes, change also comes to the communities of this area with preparations for a major theme park being built twenty miles to the west. This world will never be the same because of it, regardless of whether it is actually completed or becomes successful. To those whose lives are rooted here, the very ground beneath their feet seems to be shifting. The communities prepare and hope for something magical and wonderful - something that could break the cycle of mundane existence in the face of economic vacuum. Those who have stubbornly remained here are themselves the soil in which these seeds of new opportunity could germinate and grow. They are also that which the creeping roots of whatever comes will forever alter. We humans contemplate and worry and ponder and prepare for these inevitable changes, doing all within our meager capability to build structure and control into the seemingly chaotic wildernesses where we carve our lives. We build houses and communities with real enough physical structure and infrastructure, while the constructs of reason and thought gain substance as homes, towns, cities, states and nations. We weave it all together with power and control mechanisms existing only because we believe they do, as we carefully teach our children to do the same. The chaos of nature is only chaotic when we attempt to evaluate it through these invented standards. The greater Reality is far bigger and far more real than anything humans will ever invent. Our imaginary societal structures will never control or change one jot or tittle of the laws of physics and nature governing this planet, solar system, galaxy or universe. But to what or whom do we leave all of that? We are creatures who yearn for an comprehensible structure, who crave the comfort of understanding and the control and predictability that usually follows. Consciousness itself begs for an answer to how it can exist. We humans have an innate understanding that the eternal is real and cannot be confined in any physical way. It follows quite naturally, (though paradoxically if approached through reason,) that we cannot comprehend a finite universe with nothing beyond while at the same time we cannot fathom infinity. Like simple division, which is what we humans use when dissecting a problem to gain understanding, science and reason fail at both nothing and infinity. In contemplating these places where the established functions of reason fail, the rational asymptotes of infinity and eternity are actually easier to accept than some place or time where it just all ends with nothing beyond. We can and will always wonder what lies past the next boundary, while the concept of "Nothing" is just too absurd to grasp. We struggle mightily to reconcile that inborn sense of the infinite with the physical world and our objective experience, constructing experiment after experiment to move reason ever forward, in the naive hope of eventually encompassing everything in its path. But then we fall asleep and dream. We wake up and love. We mourn and long and enjoy and hope. Some among us fail to repress that irrational knowledge of the greater Reality and end up creating art, music, poetry and prose in an effort to express the frustration and awe that recognition brings. Science and reason fail in providing a means to explore or convey these matters. How could they, when the very paths of reason and science rest upon and are supported by this greater Reality? The asymptotes are failures in our invented tools and methods, not in Reality. Reason is of creation, as the Creator needs no such artifices. Reason will never define the spirit of which it is born. Nor will rational, objective humans ever reason their way to understanding the Spirit of which we are born. The created cannot comprehend the Creator, and yet there are those who hold that truth up as evidence that no Creator exists. Reason will never bring us to a place where we can view that greater Reality encompassing all, that Reality which is the Creator Himself. The utterly rational man uses reason to deny the Creator, while most of the experiences uniquely identifying us as human deny and defy rationality and reason. "I am" is God's simple and complete answer to our effort to reason our way to Him. So much for philosophy. The Flow Peter J. Celano 1994 dragonflies dancing on the breeze eagle's head shining in the sun kingfisher resting in the trees as i sit and watch the river run lilies gently swaying in the breeze basking in the bright warm glow hammock strung between convenient trees where i lay and watch the river flow the river flows whether i watch or turn away the river flows whether i live or waste the day wondering where it goes the river flows. brown trout jumping for a fly the line goes tight and disappears below the music of our son's delighted cry he keeps growing as we watch the river flow watch our daughter chase a butterfly picking flowers and laughing in the sun bubbling joy as boundless as the sky transforming as we watch the river run the river flows whether i watch or turn away the river flows whether i live or waste the day wondering where it goes the river flows. a mug of fresh hot coffee and a smile your eyes reflect the sunsets glow won't you come sit with me for a while and hold me as we watch our children grow the children grow whether we watch or turn away the river flows whether we live or waste the day wondering where it goes the river flows.

[pj]

Re-orienting with Simple Truths November 18, 2006 It has been an amazing week. Not a blockbuster week. Not even a terribly busy week overall, but an amazing week. In the "real world," Milton Friedman and Bo Schembechler have passed. The new Speaker of the House's first power move was a failure. The northeast has seen terrible flooding again, and with it my friend David's hometown. Again. In my world, the week was full of stunning beauty and a lot of meditation. I saw eagles flying over my head, a cougar, and the November northern woods laden with white snow as heavy as butter-cream icing. A persistent gray misty fog shrouded the whole world in black and white, permitting only an occasional surprising burst of color to peek through. I thought about my life and my music. A lot. And I've come to some conclusions. People who do not fear failure are the ones who most often succeed. I have spent my life fearing failure. That is the root conclusion about my life. There are reasons for it - perfectly rational reasons involving responsibility to people who depend on me, but the fact remains. Our business is about to turn 20 years old. That's enough time to have built another Microsoft, yet we have Celano Precision Manufacturing - a part-time endeavor that still seems to be more about getting by than thriving. It has not failed. Whoopee. In music as well, fear of failure has been an unrecognized motivating factor. The fear is in playing badly, leaving a bad impression, leaving those around me not wanting to continue playing with me. The result of all of this is a stifling set of restrictions on my playing and creativity. I stay within a zone of competence when I think it matters. Expanding that zone has been happening painfully slowly, through disciplined practice effort. To that end, that's probably how it should be. But why is it that when I get up north, by myself, I can wail? Why can I improvise, slip into a "zone" and just let music flow through me? Why is the music I write created mostly in solitude? The answer - the simple answer - is fear of failure. There are no consequences when I'm by myself... nobody to impress, nobody to worry about chasing away. A wrong note that brings a cringing reaction when others are listening becomes a curiosity and an opportunity to explore when I'm alone. A mistake becomes an adventure... but mistakes rarely seem to happen! The Zone... that surreal place of incredible focus and loss of time awareness... where I can quite literally step aside and watch myself as music is played through me. It is only then that it all becomes what it should be - true worship. Instead of playing for me or for you or for God, the music is played TO God. My music becomes worship, as my mind is freed from the fear and the litany of structure, form, rote memorization and theory. It just IS. I am no longer a "musician." I am a creation of the Living God, using the voice He gave me it a way that suddenly seems truly pleasing to Him.

[skysaw]

May I suggest a brief read of Tolstoy's "What is Art?"? http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r14.html ~ Thanks O'nus, but I was really looking for *your* input on this. I am interested in Tolstoy's I suppose, but doubt I can get to it any time this year. I have quite a stack of "to-read"s at the moment.

[skysaw]

Thanks for posting your thoughts, PJ. I am very interested, but will have to spend some time sifting through it.

[O'nus]

Thanks O'nus, but I was really looking for *your* input on this. I am interested in Tolstoy's I suppose, but doubt I can get to it any time this year. I have quite a stack of "to-read"s at the moment. Honestly, my opinion is greatly reflected by Tolstoy's when regarding art. In short: - A form of communication between perceiver and author - Depiction of an emotion The subconscious, or unconscious (as whichever you may want to treat) will affect how the art is depicted as it formulates incidental manipulations of how you convey your emotions. Just like my choice of words, there are reasons and psychological derivatives that cause me to believe that these words are the best choice of words I could give to convey/depict my point/thought. What do you think..? PS. Tolstoy's excerpt is short. Consider it, will you? ~

[pj]

The Secret - To Whatever. April 25. 2007 If you've been following these blogs over the past year or so, you know that one of my aspirations is to become a proficient improviser. In other words, I want to be able to play jazz. It isn't so much that I want to BE a jazz musician, but that jazz encompasses the most lofty ideal of music as language. That's the way I want to play - the same way I talk. So I've spent the past 25 years or so looking for the secret to jazz. I've always "known" that if I could just learn that one secret scale, figure out that one secret relationship that brings it all together or learn that one secret chord form or technique that would allow me to mindlessly and effortlessly grab any conceivable chord alteration or embellishment, I'd be home free. This same mindset seems ubiquitous to human experience. Aspiring entrepreneurs look for the secret to success. The out of shape and obese look for the secret to being strong and healthy, to losing weight and keeping it off. From alchemists to inventors to gamblers, humans have always sought the secret to wealth. Every elusive discipline and state of being that humans aspire to has its contingent of secret-seekers, a market that is enthusiastically exploited by those who know the secret. What is the secret? I know it. I know it through business, music, art and life in general. After forty six years of seeking, I have found the secret - not just to jazz, but to EVERYTHING. Shall I spoil it for you? Stop reading here if you want to find out for yourself, which is probably the only way it will ever really mean anything to you anyway. I've been told the secret repeatedly throughout my life. I never wanted to believe it. You've been warned. The secret is: There is no secret. Period. That's a secret that the secret brokers don't want you to know. There is no secret. It is human nature to assume or hope that people who achieve great things have just learned some great secret which they then protect to keep others from crowding the stage. The true masters tend to make this assumption seem all the more plausible by how comfortable and easy their mastery seems to be. It is incredibly compelling to believe that easy achievement is just a matter of learning some esoteric secret. Too bad it's a fantasy. Just about everything worth pursuing in life requires persistence, discipline and work, from the arts to health to business success to spiritual awareness. There is great news in recognizing this secret; nothing is hidden or being kept from you. You are entirely capable of achieving anything you set your mind to and are willing to practice the discipline to accomplish. There is no secret. That is the secret that will set you free to do anything you dare to dream - if you are willing and able to believe the truth of the secret.

[pj]

Last one. They might not all seem relevant to your question, but they all came from asking myself that same question, over and over and over again, while puzzling over exactly what creativity IS, and the roll that skill really plays in it. It is a good question. A critical question. One I have yet to really answer. -- Massively Parallel March 23. 2007 In a recent conversation, a friend talked about how some musicians seem to achieve a sort of "split brain" consciousness when playing using some of the more unusual guitar techniques. My reply was: I don't see it as a "split brain" thing at all. Anybody who plays just about any instrument is doing different things with both hands all the time - not to mention following progressions, timing, paying attention to the ensemble and a zillion other things. To say we are multi-tasking and multi-threaded is an understatement. We are massively parallel. Taking this idea a step further, recognize that one of the big purposes of practice (practice practice) is the training of those "parallels" to be able to take care of things without conscious intervention. Imagine for a moment a beginning orchestra. There is a conductor/director, and a bunch of people with instruments. If the conductor were to walk around, directing one musician at a time, he would be extremely limited in what he could do. Each of the musicians must develop to the point where they are autonomous, so the conductor may be focused on the entire ensemble rather than individuals. That's how our consciousness is as a musician or in any other discipline. We have to "direct" our fingers to bend properly at first... to hit the right string with the correct pressure at the right spot - a lot to think about, even for playing one note at a time! Once the "parallels" take over those details, we can move on to getting a couple or few fingers working at a time - playing chords, as we consciously gain a grip, then directing our other hand to strum or pick or whatever. As time goes on, these things learn to take care of themselves. The ultimate goal is to have our "internal ensemble" all doing what it is supposed to, so that our "conductor" can focus fully on the artistic delivery. And what an ensemble it is! We have the time keeper, each of the fingers working under the hand, the ensemble tracker, the music reader or memory recaller, the dynamics controller and more. It is no wonder being even a minimally competent musician requires so much practice! Rising above the minimally competent requires continuous honest reassessment of each of those parallels, and a willingness to return again and again to fundamentals and drilling as weaknesses are recognized. We are amazingly complex beings. I often wonder how it will feel to many if and when they realize, in this life or the next, how much capability our Creator granted us... if we would but put forth the effort and discipline to train and use it. On second thought, when recognizing how poorly most human endeavors end up, perhaps it is best that the majority of us remain ignorant for now.

[O'nus]

I agree. There is no secret and believing that there is a secret implies that there is a required path to happiness. However, the mistake is believing that there is a path when each step carries infinite freedom. ~

[skysaw]

PS. Tolstoy's excerpt is short. Consider it, will you? ~ I hadn't checked the link... I assumed it was an entire book. I'll take a look a bit later.

[O'nus]

I hadn't checked the link... I assumed it was an entire book. I'll take a look a bit later. lol no worries.. it is an excerpt from the book. Really just a couple paragraphs (pj has written more than it so far, lol). However, the book is great! ~

[pj]

I agree. There is no secret and believing that there is a secret implies that there is a required path to happiness. However, the mistake is believing that there is a path when each step carries infinite freedom. ~ That would be a fine epitaph for my entire life, O'nus. Thank you.