BLOG POST 13: Unleash your Creativity - PART 1
Have you
been struggling to unleash the true power within you? This book is the solution
to your Creativity Block – ‘The Creativity Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life’
by Twyla Tharp. Below are some of the excerpts from this book
Creativity
doesn’t come easy and there are no “natural” geniuses. Mozart was his father’s
son. Leopold Mozart had gone through an arduous education, not just in music,
but also in philosophy and religion; he was a sophisticated, broad-thinking
man, famous throughout Europe as a composer and pedagogue. This is not news to
music lovers. Leopold had a massive influence on his young son. Mozart had a
father who was a composer and a virtuoso on the violin, who could approach
keyboard instruments with skill, and who upon recognizing some ability in his
son, thought of seeing how far he could take his music. Whether or not God kissed your brow, you still have to work.
Without learning and preparation, you won’t know how to harness the power of
that kiss. Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight
years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent
practicing, performing and gripping a quill pen to compose. That’s the missing
element in the popular portrait of Mozart. Certainly he had a gift that set him
apart from others. He was the most complete musician imaginable, one who wrote
for all instruments, in all combinations, and no one has written greater music
for the human voice.
As
Mozart himself wrote to a friend, “People err who think my art comes easily to
me. I assure you dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to
composition as I. There is not a famous matter whose music I have not
industriously studied through many times.”
In order
to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative. No one can give
you your subject matter, your creative content; if they could, it would be
their creation and not yours. But there’s a process that generates creativity -
and you can learn it. And you can make it habitual. A lot of habitually
creative people have preparation rituals they choose to start their day. The
composer Igor Stravinsky did the same thing every morning when he entered his
studio to work: He sat at the piano and played a Bach fugue. Perhaps he needed
the ritual to feel like a musician, or the playing somehow connected him to
musical notes, his vocabulary. Perhaps he was honouring his hero, Bach, and
seeking his blessing for the day. Perhaps it was nothing more than a simple
method to get his fingers moving, his motor running and his mind thinking
music. But repeating the routine each day in the studio enhanced some lick that
got him started.
There is
no one ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for
another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working
environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn’t scare you,
doesn’t shut you down. It should make you want to be there and once you find
it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment
that’s habit-forming.
Five big
fears the author faced that paralysed her even before she began her work and
what she writes to overcome it are:
- People will laugh at me – People you respect will not laugh at your work and they won’t start now either.
- ·
Someone
has done it before – Everything has been done before. Nothing’s really
original. Not Homer or Shakespeare and certainly not you. Get over yourself.
- ·
I
have nothing to say – This is an irrelevant fear. We all have something to say
- ·
I
will upset someone I love – The best you can do about this is to remind
yourself that you are a good person with good intentions.
- ·
Once
executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind – Leon Battista
Alberti, a fifteenth century architectural theorist said, “Errors accumulate in
the sketch and compound in the model.” But better an imperfect dome in Florence
than cathedrals in the clouds.
What is
the one tool that feeds your creativity and is so essential that without it you
feel naked and unprepared?
Each of
us is hard-wired a certain way. And that hard-wiring insinuates itself into our
work. That’s not a bad thing. Actually, it’s what the world expects from you.
We need our artists to take the mundane material of our lives, run it through
their imaginations and surprise us. If you are by nature a loner, a
melancholic, a crusader, an outsider, a jester, a romantic or any one of the
dozen personalities, that quality will shine through in your work.
Once you
have mastered your creativity, immerse yourself into the details of your work.
Commit yourself to mastering every aspect. At the same time, step back to see
if the work scans, if it’s intelligible to an unwashed audience. Don’t get so
involved that you lose what you are trying to say. Dive in-Step back-Dive
in-Step back (The yin and the yang of the author’s life)
Click to read Part II - My Creative Autobiography
Click to read Part II - My Creative Autobiography
Click to read Part III - Unleash your Creativity continued.
