Someone had mentioned John Cleese earlier this year (I think at recital hour?), and today I happened upon my notes where I had written down his name. What I found was a fantastic way of thinking about cultivating an environment conducive to letting creativity blossom.
Some thoughts I'm taking away as I work on my piano practicing habits are:
Trust the unconscious mind.
Time really is of the essence. Sleeping on a musical problem, or even just not thinking about it for two hours can refresh the mind with new ideas. The problem might be easier to solve when left for later than trying to hack at it with a hammer now. So how do I make the most of my time-- when are breaks good? When am I most not-sleepy, not-stressed, and eager to explore?
Guy Claxton's hare brain and tortoise mind concept, respectively "two kinds of thinking: one dependent on reason and logic, and one that’s less purposeful, it’s more playful, leisurely, and dreamy. In this [tortoise] mode, we are mulling things over, almost meditative, pondering a problem versus earnestly trying to solve it." How do I create the right space for this tortoise mind? For me, it's getting things I have to do out of the way, learning to not let my mind get distracted by impending "have-tos" for what I can't do immediately, and clearing out the unnecessary bits of my life to leave space for tortoise play.
What are your thoughts? Have any of you felt this way with your practicing? What are some ways you keep blank space in your life and keep your mind clear?
Sometimes when I go into practice I get completely invested in what I am doing and I will look at the clock and it will have been a few hours and will only feel like a half an hour. It's like a dreamy feeling of just learning and repeating and memorizing. But there are only a few days in a week (usually) when I can do this. The life of a musician is really busy and sometimes I have too much on my mind to really escape into the dreamy tortoise mind place. I try to keep blank space in my mind by staying organized so I feel like I am under control. Writing things down helps me a lot and being able to cross things off of a physical list is much more fulfilling to me.
ReplyDeleteIntentional practicing has become a great way of finding meaningful practice time. Meaningless practice is the same as busy work, and as Karl Marx put it,
ReplyDelete"Do I obey economic laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale,... — Then the political economist replies to me: You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Religion have to say about it. My political economic ethics and religion have nothing to reproach you with, but — But whom am I now to believe, political economy or ethics? — The ethics of political economy is acquisition, work, thrift, sobriety — but political economy promises to satisfy my needs. ... It stems from the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yardstick — ethics one and political economy another; for each is a specific estrangement of man and focuses attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity, and each stands in an estranged relation to the other."
Basically, my man Karl Marx is all about not doing meaningless work (even though he relates to it as humans in servitude to capitalism instead of doing music whoops). And that is important to being a musician, kids.