The Creative Closet

Creativity. Big subject. Lots of articles and books and studies (I was recently a subject in one.) I've written that those who try to explain creativity certainly are missing the point.  Oops. Oh well, this is my stab at blogging on Creativity and Imagination!

Creativity hides itself away from time to time. Certainly everybody has heard of "writer's block", though they may not have experienced it. I prefer to think of it less as a "block" and more as a dark room or big closet, that I sometimes can't find or access. Like in the Harry Potter novels. You know, the "room of requirement" that appears whenever Harry needs a place to hide something, or a group of students. Creativity, if thusly personified, knows I need it from time to time, but it sequesters itself in a room and, sadly, doesn't tell me where the fuck it went.

Then all of a sudden, I'm walking along a hallway in my mind and a door presents itself. I open it and walk in. Creativity smiles again, announcing its presence!

Creativity, as defined by Wikipedia (our go to source for all information nowadays it seems) sounds as if it is flourishing everywhere:

"Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed, such as an idea, a scientific theory, an invention, a literary work, a painting, a musical composition, a joke, etc."

Forming new and valuable things is quite common, though. It happens all the time; as defined above, creativity is as prevalent in the world as the common cold, ants, sand on the beach, nitrogen, or sunlight.

But we all know it isn't that common. In fact, creativity could be in danger of being lost along with its companion and partner in crime, imagination. The reason I think it is in danger lives beneath and beyond my fingers as I type this blog: computerization, the internet, social media, digital media, yada, yada, yada. Maybe, maybe not. That is, I venture to guess, a different blog.

For now, I'd like to write about creating creativity in our everyday lives as well as writing a bit about creativity in singers, as well as in the pianists who play for singers.

I'll start with the latter.

It is not enough to sing or play what is on the page. If this is a point of contention with you, or if you are creating music with someone - either a collaborator or a mentor or a coach - and their dictum is "just do what's on the page" then y'all are just missing the point and there's nothing much I can write, say, or do that might change your mind. Be content that your artistic masturbation will be seen and heard by some as "profound" or "deep" but in fact you've chosen the artistic coward's route and what you're really presenting to the public is not just fraud, but a sad and ultimately boring performance.

Harsh words, perhaps. However even in contemporary music where a composer has put as much as possible onto the page in order for their music to be correctly presented, there still is room - LOTS OF ROOM - for a creative approach to the text and music. The reverse is true of music where there's not a lot put onto the page beyond text and music (like so much of the 18th and 19th century repertoire.)

Creativity starts with questioning every note, every measure, every bit of text; EVERYTHING.

For both singers and pianists, a creative approach to any score begins with thinking about the relationship between text and music. Why do you think the composer wrote those notes on those syllables? Why do you think the markings - dynamics and expressive - were put in certain places but not others? Would you write it differently? Are there markings that might be missing? If you had the composer in the room with you, what questions would be the first ones you'd ask about the piece?

Then you move on to think about the composer's life right when the piece was written. Why did they write this piece? Who was it written for? When and where was it first performed? What have the performance practices evolved into since the first performance? And, most importantly, what does your imagination have to say about the piece? I'm not talking emotional response, I'm talking about your intuitive imagination - that piece of you that can see elephants in clouds, that can ascertain if someone doesn't like you shoes, that can hear donkeys braying in a Puccini orchestration, that can feel a phrase should speed up just because it feels right.

Imagination is key. Playing outdoors with little kids instantly tells you if you have lost your ability to access it or not. I don't know how anyone can sing a recital, rehearse an opera, or perform for the public without spending time at play with little kids. Go out and find them. Your nieces, your friends' kids, they're everywhere. Offer to babysit, for free, and sit down in their rooms with their toys and go to town. Freely accessing your imagination with an Imagination Black Belt Master next to you (the Master is the kid, fyi) is a better use of your time than surfing Youtube for Auger performances of the Schubert song you are trying to get under your belt.

Kids are open and creative, naturally. Until someone tells them to colour within the lines or that the box is not a space ship, they live in a world that artists get to live in and touch throughout our performing and rehearsing lives (at least, hopefully live there from time to time!)

Creativity starts in that same child-like open space, mentally and emotionally. I find the most open spaces I end up seeking have everything to do with water: Long steamy showers. Walks in nature, preferably near streams or lakes. Floating in the ocean. Swimming in a pool doing laps. Driving in the rain, or watching a thunderstorm from the safety of a living room window. This past winter I found open space in front of our fire place (something I hadn't been able to experience since leaving Ithaca, New York over a decade ago.)

Water and Fire. Nature. Earth. I think creativity is linked to an elemental force in humans.

At some point in our collective history, we didn't communicate via email. We didn't have language. But I think (yet certainly can't prove) that before language, we had imagination that brought forth language.

What was causing the world to tremble? What caused the water to freeze or disappear? Why could fire burst from the sky in a rainstorm but be lost by the rain itself?

I believe that accessing your imagination reconnects you to a more primitive self. Most of us know that music hits people on a variety of levels: emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual. All of us musicians know that, for reasons too difficult to explain, music can move humans in an elemental, primitive way.

Music itself springs from imagination. Singing does as well. How does one phonate? You imagine a tone, a pitch and a vowel and then out comes a vocal line.

I've been asked many times about where my "creative ideas" come from. I've been told that my playing is extremely "musical". I've received comments that my ideas and way of working with others are "inspirational". I think creative ideas, musicality, and being inspiring all flow from an open space, a natural space, where Imagination lives.

Living within an imaginative state is dangerous, exciting, and can lead you to insights completely unlooked for or unknown. But you have to give up a few things to do it.

The first is correctness. Trying to be correct and at the same time trying to be a creative artist is just not something that is easily doable, if at all possible. Give it up. Stop trying to please others. Stop thinking that if there aren't any markings on the page, then one can not make any choices. Start thinking that even if there are markings on the page saying "slow down" you don't have to slow down!

The second is understanding that you are not borrowing the music and the text. You are not renting it. You own it. You must own it for it to be yours. Yes, I know, I know, it's actually Schumann's. But is it? Really? He, like almost every other composer, wrote for the world, for others, not for themselves. Most living composers will say the same thing when confronted with a live singer and it usually goes along these lines "well, if that works better for you, then please go ahead." They want to collaborate. And through our imaginations, we can collaborate with Rossini, with Mozart, with Brahms, with Stravinsky. They can live again in our imaginations and then we can express the results of our imagined dialogues with our audiences. Thus making the piece, or the opera role, OURS.

Once you own a piece or a role, then you have something to say to others. That's how that works. When you are simply renting or dabbling or putting your toe in the water to see how hot or cold the bath might be, then you really are doing a disservice to the composer and the poet. They lived their lives creating and they want the fruits of their labours to live via performances that access truth through imagination. I feel this strongly. When a performance doesn't work, one of the reasons is because the humans performing it simply forgot to access and celebrate their humanity.

Humans are amazing. They intuit so much without sometimes knowing how or why. They can see colours in music. They can hear truth (or lying) in a singer's voice. They can see shapes, actions and/or metaphors in a blue-lit curtain cascading down onto a staircase. All music is impressionistic on some level and most, if not all, representations onstage in opera are impressionistic. None of it is "real". The minute the music is over, it is gone. The score closes and gets put back onto the shelf. Does it still sing to itself when you leave and the lights are turned off in the studio? After the set is struck, does the death scene play itself out in some way, vibrations of violence or love illuminated by the lonely onstage ghost light?

I think so.
I hope so.
Actually, I know so.
And so do you.

Creating Creativity

The Creative Process or How To Create Creativity!

Lately I've been reading up on the creative processes and work rituals of famous writers, scientists, and artists. All interesting, all common sense.

A few commonalities emerge, and of course it set my mind to thinking about my own creative process, as well as rethinking the process currently in fashion in the operatic rehearsal spaces across North America, especially my own opera lab, Wirth Opera Studio.

First, the commonalities:
1) Caffeine at the rising. Gertrude Stein was "prescribed" coffee and drank it (lovingly prepared by Alice) every morning - even though she didn't like it. So many writers rose and mentioned drinking coffee regularly. This was long before Starbucks glutted the street corners of our cities.

2) Daily scheduled secluded sessions. No matter the genre (Richard Strauss was just as methodical as Mark Twain or Monet), this seems to be THE factor in success. Waiting for the mood or muse to strike, waiting for inspiration to kiss your brow, nothing works like the habitual process. Some talked about creating every day, no matter what drivel sprang. It's the daily "practice" (as many referred to this idea) that brings the openness needed to create at any substantial, qualitative, or successful level.

3) Time. "The days are long, but the years are short" (Gretchen Rubin). Get it?  If not, think about it. It's easy to put off the creative process because there's SO much other stuff that seems important. But if you're sitting there dreaming about being an artist, a singer, a conductor, etc., you can't procrastinate giving yourself a daily routine of practice (whether this be literal practicing, or meditating, or creating, or connecting the dots about your artistry) because you'll turn around twice and the semester will be gone, the summer program will be over, and the next thing you know it's a year later...

4) Confidence. Knowing that there'll be days of total shit. Huge moments of failure to move forward in your craft, knowledge, or process are part of the creative process. I couldn't create without the confidence that my bad days are part of what make my good days really good, and sometimes, actually brilliant. Confidence and courage are linked here. The courage to move into a scene from the wrong direction, for instance, can sometimes illuminate exactly what the scene does NOT need thereby making clear as day what it does need. One can fail, one can succeed, but one should do both with confidence.

5) Breaks. Many famous folk took regularly scheduled breaks. Twain took Sundays off to spend the day, and his focus, on his family. John Crosby (founder of Santa Fe Opera) told a story that Richard Strauss stopped composing at a certain time every day, no matter where he was in his composing (I always imagine him a few bars before the climax in the Rosenkavalier trio, putting his pen down... REALLY?!) Breaks are super important to the creative process. When Vincent, Ginette, and I are designing a show (usually over a table strewn with fashion books, architecture books, intense Quebec fromage, half-eaten baguette, Alsatian wine, while watching snippets of movies) we take breaks to cook, talk about vacation fantasies, or to discuss our children. Breaks, for me, are integral to being creative. They are integral to my staging processes as well.

6) Humor. Stop taking yourself so seriously folks! Laughter is the key to getting everyone in a room relaxed. I know this after years of public speaking. Why do people tell me they love my talks? Humor. It certainly not because I'm a featured TED speaker...  It sets people at ease and makes them realize that although I'm there to talk about something nominally taken as "serious" (opera), and that I'm seen as an academic, i.e. "professorial" personality, I simply refuse to take myself seriously. It's the difference between knowing what is serious and what is solemn. Serious doesn't preclude laughing. (Frankly, solemnity shouldn't proscribe humor either.) However, I can't tell you how often young singers, young directors, and especially young conductors (!), confuse the serious and daunting task of creating within the operatic art form construct with being taken seriously by others. This is seen quickly by most as pomposity. Whether your process happens within a group (the normal operatic rehearsal) or is more of a solitary experience, humor is important. Levity. Lightness. Smiling. The great Buddhist teacher Thích Nhãt Hahn instructs his meditation students (another process almost always referred as "practice") to breathe in and think "Calm the body" and then breathe out and think "Smile". Try it next time there's anxiety about your process -- anything from struggling to sing a high Z to creating an emotional high point in a blocking rehearsal. Breathe. Exhale. Smile.

To quote my favorite movie: "Someone tell a joke."

My creative process often involves citing or quoting or being inspired by movies like "Moonstruck". Either for character study, finding an objective, looking for a metaphor, basic connectivity stuff.  Or I'll search for ways to connect a scene by Mozart, or sometimes a whole opera,  to a piece of architecture, a painting, a film moment, or a poem. This search happens in the shower and then during my morning commute to the University. It happens while cooking dinners. It especially happens during talks with my wife, a most insightful individual. I call this "wrapping my mind around it." It's when I get that "A-Ha!" moment and things make sense.

Sometimes this moment is as simple as seeing a round lamp illuminated, or deciding that Cosi makes more sense in the context of the 60s sexual revolution, or that the nuns ARE the convent.  But it's an important process that I do not rush. I know it takes time -- days and weeks. I don't go and jump at the first idea. I've seldom, if ever, ended up using the first idea. My 60s Cosi started out with the idea of using Beach Boys' songs as an allegorical arch... Brilliant initially, but later on, not. I let the idea percolate in my mind. Sometimes I share the idea and see the reactions. I almost always share these ideas with my wife. I share them with Vincent and Ginette and Serge, also with students. Then things mutate, alter, move. Then, at some point, it's time to direct.

When it comes time to direct an opera, things change dramatically. My initial process is highly solitary. I think through every scene. Often times it's akin to choreography. I work out scenes physically. I map scenes out on a computer program (SketchUp) in 3D. I type out the flow of characters, sometimes down to the color of lights I envision for each scene. It's minutely detailed.

Then I block the scene. Where each individual goes. For a Boheme 2nd act, I decide ahead of time where every one of those choristers will be, when they will move, and to where. If you don't, it's chaos and time is wasted. Directors who can't direct chorus scenes usually fail because they haven't taken the time to think at this basic level. Time. Work.

But often times during the actual, and much more collaborative process of staging rehearsals, I become fixed in the moment and have been known to throw out all of my carefully finessed blocking in order to flow with either an inspiration, or to take into consideration a colleague's suggestion, or because sometimes the best laid plans simply aren't going to work. I find flexibility is extremely important to this collaborative process. Inflexible people often find themselves trying to be successful in creative arenas, like music. I've found that often times inflexible folk make their way into the creative arenas, dumbfounded by flexibility as a viable process, and try to force their inflexibility onto us unsuspecting artists in the room.

Inflexibility in the arts? As they say in Fargo: "You betcha"!

Nothing kills creativity as quickly as inflexibility. It is a petrifying quality in nature. Trees survive storms because they bend. Growing ferns unfurl their fiddleheads in a twirl that has as much to do with the Fibonacci sequence, as an innate ability to go with the flow. That which gathers, scatters, and vice-versa.  Youth in nature is inherently flexible. It's the old tree that breaks under stress. It's rigidity in body - and mind - that kill creativity.

So you'd think that musicians working in an art form like opera would understand this. You'd think that those nurturing our young singing ferns would refrain from methodologies that "create" inflexibility, either in analytical, theoretical fields or in the more artisanal studies involving techniques that lead to the more focused goals like the artistic pursuit of "making music", but I find they don't. In fact, a big part of teaching and mentoring  lately seems to be in making young people believe there is a method to success. A path to a career.

Yes, there is a path, but it is only clearly viewed by turning around and seeing the path you've created, not followed. It's like the trail left by a boat on a lake. You're not following a path on the lake, but your path can clearly be seen by turning around. You're hopefully headed towards a goal, seen or imagined, on the other side of the lake.

Those of us who've been around long enough can turn around to gaze on our wakes in our watered lake of life. We often do. However, I think those pursuing dreams or life goals should keep their eyes ahead, not behind. Don't worry about the past mistakes, don't get anxious about the future. Spend your time in the present.

You can do this by heading into a practice room, opening a book, spending time in a museum, working out, walking into a new part of town, experimenting with a new food or recipe, listening to music you've never focused on. The list is endless, but your time here is not.

So give yourself some space and time, some short term goals, allow yourself to fail, be confident that you will fail too, and breathe into a smile. I'm going to spend the summer thinking about how to help the flow of creativity in my personal and professional life. And I'm going to BBQ!

Peace!