Theory vs Practice

picking up the keyboard again to not practice the things I don't teach.

My goal was to put into practice some ideas Ive been formulating about mistakes and imperfections in art. I was going to start from scratch and make something deliciously human, while still sounding good.

I realise now, as in right now while writing this paragraph, that my mistake was setting out to produce anything like anything at all, instead of starting with a more meaningful intention. Production is just that, a means to an end, and what is included or excluded from the process is not as important as, and should probably be extrapolated from, that purpose.

Herein lies an eternal problem with my art - I never see it as a means of communication, rather a means of fun and expression. I like the way some things sound or look, and adopt assumed methods as my own. I guess though that those artists are different to me, with ends and means that won’t work for me in the same way.

It might be time to deconstruct my process all the way back to the WHY. My issue is the WHY is an omnipresent blob of awesomeness enveloping the universe and filling the gaps between everything, something hard to manifest in specifics. I have human scale WHYs but they tend to be critical rather than joyous… joyous being the underlying nature of reality I’d prefer to express if I could.

RAMBLES! You’re welcome.

It’s strange me deciding to reverse engineer my creative process after a failed creative session today, because the conclusions reached do echo an upcoming video on how to thrive as a creative. Let me excerpt….

The first step is short, but huge. You hear time and time again that story is important, but the most important story is yours. Write it out. Your story is your map. Who are you? What's your message? Who do you help? Where are you going? Nail this, and the rest falls into place. Every decision is clear if you go back to this.

Told myself so. Here’s the failed stanzas - just a few repeating bars that were meant to be more interesting because I left them without unquantised. It doesn’t make it as listenable as I thought. It’s only here for posterity, don’t bother listening!

This kind of essentialism might not be as … essential … to everyone but I really want to dig deeper into this to see if there’s as much there as I suspect. It’s just not possible to know without a little digging. My own inner truths are so abstract that matching them to a process is going to require some blank slating. Maybe new tools might be required.

What DO I want to say? The things I would say to people uninhibited are so ridiculous I tend to say them as if they were jokes.

“don’t worry, you’ll be dead soon”

“you spend you life killing and maiming as if it’s your birthright and cry when you get sick”

The ridiculousness of human life and the persistent encultured point of view, even in the face of the obvious, is hilarious. Buying into the dipoles of discourse as if they are relevant or real; ending lives around us while thinking our own life is precious or special…

Even amongst the higher thinkers there is bigotry and dogma, bought and sold truths and defensive positions.

I truly believe there is no common ground from which I can relate to anyone.

If I ignore anything that matters I can enjoy my life - but this seems adverse to me creating anything that matters to me - seemingly even creating anything I like at all. Or so I suspect and must somehow investigate.

FML.

Attaching a follow up email for posterity:

In the last email there was this sentence:

The ridiculousness of human life and the persistent uncultured point of view…

Aaargh. That’s the opposite of what I wanted to say. The word I wanted to use was encultured, which is absolutely a word but you know how sometimes Apple gets choosy.

It was all off on a bit of a tangent anyway - I meant to illustrate how finding a deeper creative motivator can be difficult, which turned into an off the cuff exploration of reasons why I don’t find my motivation in my reaction to the world, but would prefer to be motivated by something more ineffable and … pleasant although probably much less fun. Bit of a catch 22. But anyway- one thing I for sure don’t care about is how ‘cultured’ people are. The world probably needs more empathy and solidarity at the human level, rather than obsession over arbitrary culture.

And here’s the point I was really trying to make - my reaction to this world is … not good. It puts me in a funk if I focus on it. I can get along just fine with everyone and anyone if I ignore absolutely everything, which is also reasonable because everything is just a reaction to something else. Bye ignoring everything I get closer to the truth that matters.

Somehow, it’s this that I’d like to explore as a creative motivator.

I think my days of aimless creativity are behind me. Sitting down at the keyboard (musical) to jam out a beat just doesn’t yield the same inspiration as it did 20 years ago.