Scattering beauty: the creative dance of letting go
Autumn is my favorite season, and here in the Upper Midwest, autumn brings blue skies, crisp days and frosty nights, but the stars of this season are the trees. Seemingly overnight, the lushness of summer gives way to a palate of red and gold leaves that glow in late afternoon sunlight and dance their way to the ground. In this world of changing deciduous trees, nature lets go. Here, in a flamboyant display of glorious abandonment, autumn celebrates the passing of summer, willingly releases its youthful foliage, and parties its way into the icy embrace of winter.
Letting go. It’s as much a part of our lives as the changing seasons, especially for those of us who work in the arts. Things change, projects evolve; we change, we evolve. One day we realize that who we were and how we created music are now parts of a richly-lived history, not who and what we are today. Something inside of us says we’re done. We’ve fulfilled a task or dream, and now it’s time to leave that project or life stage behind and dance our way into the future.
There are no roadmaps for this creative transition. We know what we need to leave behind. We feel it in the deadness we experience when we keep doing things the way we always have. And we know it in all the ways our old creative containers no longer fit what we long to express. The old is dying away—or has already died—and it’s our job to release these things with joy rather than trying to grasp the brittle leaves of projects, jobs, or life stages we’ve internally left behind.
This is scary stuff. There may be people reading this who are prescient enough to know what’s coming next when they’re undergoing a creative change, but I’m not one of them. Every creative shift I’ve ever undergone has started when I’m still performing well, but underneath I feel a deadness that grows until I know it’s time to make a change. I let go. I wait. And I follow the tiny little threads of ideas until one or more lead me to the next thing. I learn through doing, not through planning.
As in most aspects of my life, music is my patient guide. As a time-based art form, it’s a daily practice in learning to let go—letting go of notes, letting go of mistakes, letting go of moments of glory, and in the end, letting go of the piece I just played the moment the notes dance their way into silence. Music reminds me that it just is. It isn’t a stepping stone to something else. It’s a window into beauty, and time, and it’s all the more precious for its ephemeral nature.
There’s beauty and freedom in letting go. We shuck off the old husk of ourselves and feel the winds of creative freedom against our skin. We finish the work we’re given to do, and then we step out of what was and into what is. We listen to ourselves, trust what we hear, and we take practical, measurable steps to move into what’s to come. How do we do this? Here are some questions I’ve found helpful in my own life. Perhaps you’ll find them useful to you as well.
What projects do I want to complete so I can move on?
What creative work has begun to feel stale and confining?
Who am I willing to disappoint in order to be who I am?
What relationships need reevaluation or attention?
What am I willing to sacrifice to follow my heart?
What we pay attention to defines who we are. We can get caught in the trap of trying to stop time. We can fritter away our lifeblood fulfilling others’ expectations. We can grasp our accomplishments, fearing the emptiness of letting go. Or we can release our grip, open our hands, and accept the beauty of what is, not what was. Will we be misunderstood? Probably. Will we miss some aspects of what we let go? Absolutely. But we’ll be creatively alive, grateful for what we had in the past but content to wait for the creative buds of all we’re growing into being.