7 posts tagged “creativity”
it's funny. ever since i started on trying to fix my brain a few years ago i have these random moments of revelation. while skiing i realised that my absolute terror of falling/slipping stemmed from the time i was bushwalking in the blue gum forest with my parents and slipped on casuarina needles and fell over a cliff. today's revelation relates to desks.
djeli and i have been discussing workspaces in the house because while i'd managed to achieve a setup that was working for me while he was away, the lack of space in our house means that it doesn't work when he's around. he has the whole of the spare room for his workspace while i have to take what i can find, something that isn't at all conducive to sustained work on creative things. so we've been talking about what can be done, given that the loungeroom is public space and so interruptions and laundry happen there, and the bedroom sort of likewise in that if i work on the bed i have to pack everything away entirely every night when he wants to go to bed. i can't work on till i'm ready to go to bed even, plus i find i sleep badly if i'm working on the bed all day because there's no separation of work and rest places and i feel like a slob. but the built-in desk in the bedroom is minute. it's barely wide enough for a laptop, with pretty much no elbow room. its one consolation is that it has a nice little bookshelf above it, where i keep all my music and art books, and it's a space where i can blu-tak up bits and pieces relating to what i'm working on on the wall.
i discovered when i first moved out of home that i don't like staring at a blank wall when i'm working. i like to have either a window or a large space in front of me. in lilyfield i had a room to myself that i hardly ever used for a variety of reasons. part of that was because the desk was too small and the window both too small and too high to see out of when i was at the desk.
now i'm staying with my friend in dundee and have been very taken by her tiny 1940s fold-up desk - you know, one of those ones that have storage space in them and divider-pots for pens and envelopes and things, but the desk part folds up to contain the whole thing so it takes very little room, and have been thinking about how that might be a solution, to have something like that beside the minute desk in the bedroom, so it would take up minimal space and give a little more surface space for when i need to spread out.
ANYWAY, to the point, which is the revelation. i've been wondering for years, without really thinking about it deeply, where this need for space and light in my work area comes from and this morning it just came to me in a flash and i suddenly realised that it's because i *used* to have that! when i was in high school, my mother had the clever idea of extending all the bedrooms in the house by adding bay windows to them. the bay windows in my father's study and my bedroom had desks built into them, so i had a desk that was very nearly the full width of the room, surrounded by large windows on four sides (in front, sides, plus it had a glass roof). the light in the daytime was fantastic and when thinking i could stare out into the beautiful pittosporum tree outside the window and see pictures in the leaves. when i worked there it never occurred to me that i might not want to sit at a desk, that i might want to move to the couch sometimes or otherwise shunt about the house, whereas i seem to have spent all my time since i left home doing (or wanting to do) just that in an effort to find some sort of work area where i could actually work.
the space i was using before djeli came home was the closest i've got to the ideal in the 10 years or so since i left home - we have a double-gateleg dining table that sits in a corner of a large bay-window-like niche in the loungeroom. it's a nice space but not really terribly useful so it tends to get used for drying the laundry because it's close to the kitchen/laundry, near self-contained so it doesn't seem to intrude into the living room, has plenty of light and a heater for the winter. i fold out one side only of the table, so there's still not a vast amount of desk space, but i just love being by the window. it makes concentrating so much easier and enjoyable. so i think there's a lesson learned here. let's just hope i can put it to good use and find a space i can set up properly and get some work done in!
the past few days have been freakin' aMAzing. i can't quite believe it. from the restless mess i was 4 days ago - couldn't settle to anything, brain malfunctioning, grumpy and pretty over everything, all has finally come good. i've now written actual music for each of the past three days and today. real live notes, i tell you! (well, today was real live note (singular) but hey, it's a weekend!) i'm not sure yet whether any of it is worth making a real fuss about, but there were actual ideas begging me to write them down. and then more ideas! and i didn't have to force any of them at all - they just lined up for me. i can't even remember the last time that happened. certainly i haven't produced anything of even the tiniest compositional interest since last year and not a single note has flowed from my pencil since february, so i'm pretty gosh-darned happy with this.
the knitting has been going well too - the scarf i am knitting for my mama (who is languishing in a chillier-than-usual sydney winter) is 3/4 done and should be finished entirely in the next couple of days. i'm pretty pleased with it too. my friend lis has lent me the pattern and humungous (15mm) needles to make a chunky-wool beanie too. she knitted hers up in 1/2 hour so looking forward to some instant gratification knitting there soon. i have been contemplating returning to the yarn shop at much wenlock to see if they have any of the yummy yummy hand-dyed welsh merino yarn in a fat enough weight to use on this project, but i think if i don't get there in a couple of weeks, i might just pick up some more usual chunky wool and have a go. one can never have too many winter hats, in my opinion...
i find myself restless and discontented at the moment and i'm not sure why. things are actually going pretty well, overall. i've knitted up a couple of projects i had queued - redid the calorimetry headscarf, which came out well this time, and made my first foray into knitting-in-the-round as a preliminary study prior to starting a pair of socks, with these wristwarmers, recommended by tchatchke:
and now i am working on another wisp scarf (like the one in the last post), this time in red and unvariegated, for my mama who is freezing in the midst of an actually cold sydney winter. unlike me who is freezing in the midst of a rather wet british summer. hmm.
post-op recovery has been going really well and i've been up and about and pretty much normally mobile (although not ready to attempt to carry the vacuum cleaner upstairs yet!) for the past two weeks, which has been grand. i made a good start on transferring all my non-vox blogs across to wordpress in our new hosting account and have learnt a ton of stuff. it's been brilliant working on this stuff again. i do miss the webstuff when i'm not doing it, so i guess i'm in the right business for my dayjob. i even played around with photoshop and pulled together an entirely new template design for one creative thing, which i'm rather pleased with and which has translated ok into wordpress, although i still need to finesse the whole comments situation. but best of all, i finally got all my Business Activity Statements up to date and was able to cancel my registration for Australian GST (Goods and Services Tax), so I don't need to worry about them ever again unless I choose to do so on our return to Australia.
and yet, ever since i finalised the BASes and dealt with the GST, i've felt at a loose end. i guess it's the release from tax trauma that has haunted me for the past 4 years, but i've been unable to settle to anything and have been slightly discontented and grumpy. i thought my trip up to shropshire to visit djeli in his new lair might sort me out, but i fear i have returned home much the same, just feeling a wee bit lonely. i suspect i need to get out of the house. i've been pretty much trapped here on my own for a month now and i think i need to force myself to go forth and do normal-people stuff. oh, and get a job. that too. i did have a couple of jobs vaguely waved at me - the first sounded really good... except that it was in slough, which would take a mere 45 minutes to get to, if i (a) drove and (b) had a car, but by public transport would take a whopping 1 hour and 45 minutes, only 20 minutes of which would be actual train trip, so no time to get anything done on anything at all, really, just 4 wasted hours of every day, so i turned that one down. the other job was certainly more convenient - with an agency near oxford circus, which is a straight run of about half an hour down the central line so i'd be there in about an hour from home, but paying £20 less than market rate for what i do, which i was a little uncertain of, and starting on monday, when i was still in shropshire. that job seems to have evaporated and i'm guessing they found someone who could actually start on monday. so heigh ho. guess i'm to remain a pauper for the moment. sounds like the market's pretty quiet, but i have other things to do here - if only i can pull myself together enough to actually do them!
the best thing about all this alone-time is that my creative brain has finally started to fizz again, and while i can't seem to settle to anything properly, i've been messing with a whole bunch of other things - drawing, knitting, trying new recipes (the diet is killing me - i'm so bored with everything, so i've decided that a couple of times a week i can stretch a point and include some soy sauce or do, say, a casserole which includes a little wine and salt) and yesterday i accidentally made a few purchases at the ever-so-tempting oxfam sound and vision shop up at ealing, a dangerous shop where giving in can all too easily be accompanied by the phrases "but it's so cheap!" and "and it's for a good cause!" fortunately the former, as well as the latter, is indeed true, and for the princely sum of £10 and some loose change, i picked up three cds, one of music by the american composer and organist carson cooman (who once emailed me to say he'd play anything i wrote for the organ. i still plan to accost him with this one day when i work out *how* to write for the organ), another of wind concerti by telemann, and the third the complete piano works of erik satie played by jean-yves thibaudet. i do actually own the aldo ciccolini version of the complete satie piano works, but the cds are in storage in sydney, and it never hurts to hear a different version. so far, i'm pretty pleased.
so basically, everything's pretty gosh-darned good. especially with the fizzy brain stuff. now i just need to work out how to sort out this restlessness without spontaneously moving to romania or dying my hair green...
i've been silent a while, eh? well, that's what accidental employment will do for you. i must say, i'm really enjoying the job. it's exhausting and takes every waking hour i have, and the three-hours-commuting-daily isn't exactly what i was hoping for, but the work's interesting and the people are lovely, and then, of course, there's the toast. and i'm learning an absolute ton of useful stuff. i've also learnt that i hate bill gates with a passion - as if ie6 wasn't bad enough he has to go and inflict ie7 on us. with its non-functioning zoom and assorted oddities both new and old. but i won't go into details over that because if i did you'd all run away and that would be no fun at all, now would it?
i finished reading julia cameron's walking in this world a few weeks ago and felt at a bit of a loose end, still feeling a need for some general creative encouragement but not wanting to embark upon another of cameron's books just yet - they're great books, don't get me wrong, but i felt it was time to try something else. so tchatchke very kindly recommended make your creative dreams real by sark which i duly ordered from amazon with the remnant gift vouchers from my bonus last year. i confess i was a little nervous. all those watercoloured borders and random-looking handwriting, i was rather concerned it was going to turn out a bit girly for me, tomboy that i am, but i have to say that it's coming through with flying colours. ok, there's a slight girly element, but it's more a feminine whimsy than true girly-girl girliness, and the content is great. i've read the first two chapters and while quite a few of the concepts expressed i'd read in cameron's books, sark has a really fresh take on them and i'm learning plenty of new stuff and coming to fresh realisations too. in particular, this week's chapter, "the land of no" has been excellent - she details a bunch of strategies and character traits which can hold us back - from simple procrastination through to bitterness, jealousy, anger, and feelings of not being understood. i like the approach she takes with some of these difficult emotions and tendencies - not that they're out and out wrong, but that we shouldn't dwell on them - we should recognise them for what they are and then she provides keys for dealing with them so we can move on. some of them really struck a chord with me - i'm a terminal procrastinator and perfectionist, but i'm proud to say that i'm becoming more aware of both and yesterday evening overcame both to do something that will really benefit me - i received an email from spnm, the society for the promotion (we used to say "prevention" back in australia. *giggle*) of new music, announcing a web composition workshop being held online on sunday evening this week - send your scores in to be included, first come, first served. this is exactly the sort of thing i'd have procrastinated on, and sure enough i came very close to just plonking it on my rememberthemilk list which would have been a sure step towards it being forgotten until it was too late (not everything falls into this hole - most of my RTM to-dos do actually get done, but this sort of thing i just have a resistance too and then i regret it later) when i realised that if i did that then, no, i wouldn't get my piece looked at, wouldn't get any feedback and would have missed a great opportunity. so i pulled myself together, decided on the piece to send and started pulling out bits. the the perfectionism kicked in - the mp3 was a bit dodgy cos finale is a little unsubtle in its rendering of dynamic changes - maybe i should pull the dynamics out so it's a bit more even. maybe i should move this or that in the score so it looks better. maybe i shouldn't send this piece because i know it has problems and perhaps i should send one that's closer to being complete. maybe maybe maybe. but i know that there's pretty much nothing i've written that i feel is really ready to face the world. and it's a workshop, which means it's going to be pulled apart a bit anyway, and if that's going to happen, surely better to ease into it with something that i know i need to pull apart anyway (it has genuine problems of register and i have booked a harpist to help me with them once i'm not working again) and then i can incorporate any recommended tweaks at the same time. it took a lot of mental pulling-together, but i'm proud to say that within an hour of receiving the email, i'd sent off my submission. haven't heard back yet about whether it's going to be looked at, but at least i submitted it!
i've been working through a real variety of creative things lately and am keeping up with one creative thing. i'm finding this really helps - i'm being made more aware of the creative and creativity-supporting things i'm doing and keeping an eye out for what i can do rather than just drifting along not feeling like i'm achieving anything at all. there's only been one day in the (exactly!) one month since i started that i haven't managed to do anything creative at all, so i'm pretty pleased with that.
alas, now it is a quarter to eleven, which is a quarter of an hour past my required-bedtime-if-i'm-to-get-up-in-time-to-not-be-late-for-work-tomorrow, so i bid you a fond farewell with the word of the day: ARRRRRR!
well, i've had two days back at work and am steeling myself for the 6.15 awaking tomorrow once again. the new job is going well, and is interesting and i'm learning loads too, although friday was a bit stressful (mostly being new and not being able to find anyone who could confirm that i was working from the right design when the code was supposed to go to the client by c.o.b. friday) and overall by the end of the two days i was left with a cottage-cheese brain which lasted all the way through yesterday (resulting in a disgraceful lie-in followed by the consecutive watching of ghandi, robin hood: prince of theives, and mrs brown without really noticing the day drift by). fortunately by this afternoon it had solidifed somewhat into a state resembling cream cheese (still soft, but somewhat less lumpy and runny) and i was able to consider the not inconsiderable problem of how on earth do i maintain my artistic momentum in the face of such mental and physical exhaustion.
i'm really pleased with how far i've come over the last few months of my sabbatical. in spite of all the interruptions and crises, i've managed to complete my set of two-part inventions, explored a new direction in writing the satie song arrangement for america (which the commissioner likes so much he's suggested i do another two), written a psalm for satb choir and the first two songs of a group set to the short poems of walt whitman. and more importantly, i've got myself back to a point where, given alertness and appropriate quiet time, i can write for a couple of hours or so without too much trouble. the problem of course, is finding the alertness and appropriate quiet time. with 1 1/2 hours commute each way every day, having to get up so early and correspondingly go to bed before i really want to, i'm left with very little time to myself. and the cottage-cheese brain doesn't help.
so i have turned to my trusty friend, guilt, for help.
a couple of weeks ago i came across an online project being run by the tate, national gallery, v&a, sir john soanes museum and a bunch of other institutions which is ultimately aimed at helping people to make the most of the various museums' extensive digitised collections, in particular in inspiring and helping people to make their own art. the project is called creative journeys and they were looking for an assortment of artists to volunteer for the pilot. basically, we roam around the online collections, reading and viewing and blogging anything we find intriguing or influential on our own artwork - whatever that may be. so i signed up with the view that as i'd committed myself to the project, it should help me to push through my mental fug and actually do something.
today i had an idea which is based on the same premise and with the same goal, but at a smaller level. i've launched a new blog called one creative thing which i will be using to track the creative things i do every day - sometimes it'll just be one thing, sometimes a few, but hopefully by keeping this up, i'll be making myself focus on doing at least one thing either with or for my creativity every day. of course, one hopes that every day will be a litany of amazing compositional progress, but i know myself better than to expect that. instead, i plan to record anything creative or which encourages me to think creatively or to play in some creative way, be that baking a batch of muffins, booking concert tickets, borrowing a book of poetry from the library, sketching passengers on the train, working on my satie and dada article or buying origami paper.
so why on earth post this online?, i hear you cry. and i guess that's a good question. it's not like i expect anyone will actually read it ever, far less comment on it, but it holds me accountable in a way that a list in a notebook on my desk does not - it's visible to the world, so there's always the chance that someone is reading, and if there's that chance, then i have a responsibility to keep it up. plus, if anyone should stumble over it and think it's a good idea that they could gain from themselves, then that would be awesome.
now i need to go and book tickets for tuesday night's prom, lay out clothes for tomorrow and get everything ready for the morning. heigh ho!
a couple of weeks back i think i mentioned that i was considering buying betty edwards' drawing on the right side of the brain, a book which takes the approach that drawing is a fundamentally right-brain activity which is hindered in non-draw-ers by intrusive left-brain behaviour. the book talks quite a bit about the functions of each brain and how these work independently and together, and sets out a course of exercises based on edwards' principles to teach users to draw by learning how to shut down the intrusive left-brain messages, in favour of right-brain perceptions.
i decided to work my way through the book because i've been taking an introductory drawing class at central st martin's art college over the past few weeks, and in week 3 of the course i realised that i had issues with perspective because i was having issues estimating angles and lengths of lines - spatial relationships, basically. i didn't want to be held up from learning anything else in the class and wanted to make the most of it, but i knew i couldn't do that without addressing this pretty fundamental area of drawing, so i made the decision to devote a little extra time each week to gradually working my way through DotRSotB, figuring that even if it didn't live up to its (pretty impressive) reputation (read the reviews on amazon if you haven't heard of it before!), at least i'd be getting in some drawing practice.
well, i have to say that i am amazed at the results even after just two weeks of very much part-time work on the exercises. i'm not quite halfway through the book yet, so i'll be interested to see where it goes from here. i'll illustrate my comments with examples of the exercises. i'm a long way from becoming the albrecht durer of the 21st century, but i'm rather pleased with the progress i've made so far.
to start with, edwards encourages readers to make a set of 'pre-instructional' drawings. basically, take a nice chunk of time, sit down and do the best job you can of a self-portrait, a portrait from memory and a drawing of your hand. i'm just including the hand one here as it has the best relationship to the examples which follow. i think you'll agree, it's pretty lame. not totally lame, but pretty lame (it's signed because the book told me to):
anyway, one of the first exercises in the book is an odd one - to copy a line drawing upside down. this is designed to get the left brain (which is the part which names stuff and says things like "a foot is this shape" which interfere with the way things like foreshortened feet need to be drawn in order to look realistic) to shut down - by drawing something upside down, it is apparently harder for the left brain to identify the bits ("oh this is a leg") and easier for the right brain to take over ("how far is that line from this? what's the angle between them"). i found this exercise pretty difficult, largely because i know the drawing used in the example intimately - it's a portrait of the composer igor stravinsky by picasso - so it was quite hard for me to not think of the various bits by their names, but i was fairly astounded at the results of the exercise. compare the following (my upside-down copy) with picasso's original...
the time between the first, "pre-instructional" hand drawing and this one was seven days. actually about 6 or 7 hours total drawing time, including my 2 1/2 hour class.
this is as far as i've gone with the book - hoping to get to do the negative spaces exercises tomorrow night and some more work over the weekend. however, i'm already finding a big difference in the work i'm doing in my class. we've now started on life drawing, and i'm pretty pleased with the results - after all, there's no way in the world that five weeks ago i could have drawn anything like this:
What books are on your nightstand?
well, as with wirehead, i don't have a nightstand at the moment... just a floor cos there's not too much room between my side of the bed and the fireplace and also because we don't want to buy too much furniture at the moment and bedside tables seemed a little frivolous :-)
but books, oh yes.
Firstly there's Testimony, the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich which I wrote about earlier and which is one of the most fascinating and hard-to-put-down books I have ever read. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it. should be done with it this week.
Secondly there's The artist's way by Julia Cameron which is kind of indispensible to me at the moment as it really is helping me out of a huge unartistic abyss.
Thirdly there's a couple of notebooks to go with The artist's way - my "morning pages" journal and my tasks book, both moleskine cahiers, the first beige-covered, large and ruled, the second black-covered, middle-sized and squared paper cos they'd run out of ruled and i'd also always wanted to try the squared but couldn't think of an excuse. oh, and a pen.
there's also a terry pratchett book, Men at arms, which i've read several times and is lovely diversion for when i'm tired and my brain can't handle the trauma of Shostakovich's life.
Lined up and waiting for Shostakovich to be done is Stravinksy's Poetics of music which I read a long time ago at uni and which I'd believed to be out of print ever since until I found it on Amazon a couple of weeks ago. I'm very much looking forward to reacquainting myself later in the week :-)
Edit (29 August 2006): uh, and when i got up to bed i realised i'd even forgotton one: a book on dadaism plus another notebook (moleskine standard large lined) for making notes on relevant bits for the article i'm slowly pulling together.
