A New Hobby or Two

There is a Jordan Peterson clip where he deflates the "everyone is creative" balloon by saying quite forthrightly that, no, very few people are really creative. However, I will provisionally place myself in that group.

Lately I have gotten frustrated with so much digital stuff and, oddly, inspired by fooling around with digital drawing on my iPad, I decided I wanted to get involved with more tactile creativity. In past years I usually had a fountain pen and used it from time to time, but quite a while ago, perhaps when I moved to Mexico, that was one of the things I didn't bring with me, having to trim all the non-essentials from my baggage, if not from my life. But I realized a little while ago that I missed the fountain pen, so I picked up a couple from Amazon. Oh my goodness, how lovely they feel compared to the horrible utilitarian ballpoints I have been scratching my signature out with for years and years. I also got some green ink, which I particularly like, along with the more usual blue and black. This, of course, has inspired me to start journaling again, something else I haven't done for a long time.

As an extension of that, I tried sketching a couple of things and though the results were quite remarkably horrible, I thought I would give it more of a try and got a little case of drawing materials. I found a good basic course at YouTube and did the first couple of lessons. I know you won't credit this, but after trying a few simple shapes, plus my lamp, I attempted to sketch my hand. And it actually looks like a hand!! Astonishing, I know, because previously I was fairly certain that I had no abilities in that direction. It turns out however, that the important skill is openness to experience and the ability to learn.

I learned, or confirmed, perhaps, something important in this first sketching exercise: there is a similar kind of mental state you have to adopt whether you are drawing or composing. You have to let go of what artists call "symbol images," that is the conventional abstract images you have in your head of trees, mountains and so on. You have to let that go and just look at what there is. Many years ago I read a book on the California artist Robert Irwin called "Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing You See" which is from a poem by, oh, I forget. He practiced this to an extreme degree. When I sit down to compose as well, I may make some general decisions about mood or structure, but then everything that follows has to come, not from some abstraction (and now let's have a nice C scale), but rather from forgetting what you are supposed to be doing and just letting the notes flow out (or in?) from somewhere. Maybe there is just a metaphorical relationship, but I was struck by the similarity.

Just a few musings, now let's have some music. This is, appropriately, a cover of (or rather an obbligato over) "Less I know the better" by Towa Bird, the original is by Tame Impala.

And this is "Heidenröslein" by Schubert sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau accompanied by Gerald Moore. The is the only lieder I have ever performed in public where I was the singer. It was the product of a vocal techniques course. In a lot of those courses you don't learn a great deal, much like "critical studies" classes in the humanities. But we had a really good teacher and I learned a lot about phrasing.

UPDATE: I was very lucky with that vocal techniques teacher. She was an actual accomplished singer married to a professor in the English department. At this great remove in time--this was when I was in first year undergrad--I realize that she should have been teaching in the music department as I suspect she was a more accomplished artist than the person who was teaching. The incumbent voice professor was married to the chairman of the department so you see how that goes. Music departments can be small, inbred communities with a lot of one-hand-washing-the-other going on. Anyway, the teacher of the vocal techniques course which was actually in the Music Education department, not in the School of Music proper, which is why she got the job, was seriously overqualified. For our final exam in the one semester course, we had to perform a Schubert lieder, from memory, in a public concert. Way more than would usually be expected. But as a result, I learned a lot and it sticks in my mind as one of a few outstanding educational experiences. Demand more, you get more. When I was teaching a course for non-music majors that was a follow-up to an introductory music theory course, I actually taught them species counterpoint and they loved it. That's probably never been done before or since! Demand more, you get more.