Present Tense Music Making
It starts quietly, a whisper or perhaps just a vague sense that something doesn’t work anymore. We play something we always loved but now it feels drained of meaning. We compose or write something the way we always have and realize it no longer gives voice to what we’re trying to say. What once sustained us feels empty. The creative “jacket” we’ve worn so comfortably for years no longer fits.
Welcome to the path of creative growth. This is where outdated versions of ourselves and our creativity lure us to stay in the comfort of what we know while curiosity and musical intuition prod us to try something new. We rarely know what the new will be when it first appears. It arrives in flashes, little hints, and in unexpected places. Some artists choose to resist this change and become fossilized in old ideas and forms. Truly alive creators follow those flashes and hints wherever they lead, and as a result, their art remains a living thing.
Composers know this place well, and one of the best things about creating No Dead Guys continues to be the many conversations I’ve had with people who live at the knife edge of risk. Something doesn’t work? Start over, try something different. Need inspiration? Feed the mind with art, film, literature, travel, conversations with friends, and other styles of music. Trust creativity, even when it seems to be leading one off a cliff. Where I, as an interpretive artist, dither about trying something new, my composer friends are living reminders that making good music means grabbing the live wires of inspiration with my bare hands and letting the power flow directly through me and into my music and writing.
One composer friend is being led to significantly change his musical language in his mid-70s—this after an award-winning career. Another, in her 60s, has shifted from writing art music to arranging and performing jazz. A pianist/author friend in her mid-70s is preparing to release a book that she’d never planned to write before it showed up and demanded to be written. All of these professionals have achieved international success in their careers. All of them put aside what they’d always done and followed their muses to new forms of expression. All of them are beautiful living examples of what it means to keep a wild, creative self alive regardless of age. They remind me that the fatigue of trying to be what I no longer am is soul killing and that vitality and growth are worth the risks that come with change.
My own creative journey has taught me that creativity is no respecter of our past successes. And while not overtly reckless, inspiration also ignores timidity. When it arrives, it offers hints and glimpses, not controllable multi-year plans. These gifts are laid at our feet and it’s up to us to pick them up and follow where they lead. Sometimes we’re led on seemingly effortless paths. Other times we may have to dismantle everything and start again. We may whine that it’s scary and difficult, and if we do, inspiration shrugs and reminds us that this is the price of being the musician we are today, not yesterday.
With so many external voices offering opinions on what and how we should create, how can we hear inspiration’s whisper? It’s a matter of focus. Outer focus asks, what will people think? How will this affect my career? What if I fail? Inner focus asks us to stop what we’re doing, put past successes aside and listen with childlike curiosity. We wait. And when those unexpected flashes of inspiration begin to show up in our peripheral vision, we trust them. We don’t hold them up for other people’s opinions and we don’t drown them in our own doubts and fears. We explore. We play. We listen and we obey what we hear. Eventually, if we’re loyal and patient, the new vision or form is born.
Making present tense music means living a present tense life. It means accepting that everything about us is evolving and changing and that there’s never a moment when we or our music have it all together. Every change leads to another. Every new vista shows us new mountains to climb. We learn that in order to know our path of purpose we must commit to living instinctively. We let go of old forms, old self-images, old ideas of success, and old ways of looking at ourselves and we learn to dance and play our way into the new vision we’re being offered.
Photo by Robert Collins, courtesy of UpSplash