Katri Ervamaa, cellist
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Bio
  • Performances
  • Discography
  • Sounds
  • Contact
  • Gallery

Lack of discipline is not the same as freedom – debunking the myth of inspiration

9/12/2014

1 Comment

 
Written for the RC Newsletter, September 2014:

Obviously, creativity can exist everywhere and in everything, and is not the sole possession of the creative artist. The RC summer readings study creativity from many non-arts related angles, especially as it relates to education and learning.  I am offering my thoughts on the practice of creativity not only as one of the performance teachers in the college, but also an active performer on the cello: practicing the creative and interpretive arts is a great way to explore your creative processes. Using them as a gateway to discovering your creative brain is not only smart, but also fun and definitely educational, whether or not you intend to make art your profession and life’s purpose. This is why the RC Arts practicum is an integral part of the curriculum of the college.

Creative artists are often portrayed like magicians or shamans, in control of higher powers and inspirations that strike randomly and are all consuming. In all honesty, the idea of inspiration as the genesis for creativity is a romanticized 19th century product of great PR. I rather like thinking it’s the other way around: creativity is the genesis for the inspirations and if your creative brain is active, ideas will come. If you sit around twiddling your thumbs, waiting for inspiration to ascend from the heavens you might have to wait a long time. If you get lucky, and it happens to come anyway, what then? If you haven’t developed the necessary competence to follow through on the inspiration, it will only really exist in your head, and maybe your heart. I would rather it become something real and substantial! 

“Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.” (Dancer Twyla Tharp). The most successful artists are mostly kind of boring, and, usually, incredibly self-disciplined and organized. I, too, am a great fan of the creative habit. It is an active practice of daily creativity, best done at the same time each day, meticulously organized and grounded in skill, or in building of a skill. It is important to define the skill: it could be as conventional as playing the C Major scale perfectly in tune on the cello, or as broadly defined as taking the sounds in your daily environment and organizing them into a piece of music in your chosen medium (recorded, live, rhythmic, vocal, improvised, composed etc). Creative habit is setting up conditions in such a way that they enable the creative processes in your brain – once those processes are activated, creativity is easy. And, in the most wonderful, or at times inconvenient and messy ways, they carry over to all activities, not just the artistic ones.

There are several facts about my own creative brain that I know to be true:

1.     It does not get activated on facebook or e-mail. Most often the best ideas come shortly after I have started my daily practicing, while doing the warm-ups that essentially stay the same every day.

2.     It needs time, space and freedom, not only to work through the idea but also to let the subconscious mind process the new information or discovery

3.     It wants to be grounded in a discipline that needs constant, active nurturing

4.     It finds working with limits often liberating, and helpful

So what can YOU do to explore your creative processes in the RC? I guess first you have to decide the medium – painting, printing, ceramics, writing fiction, plays or poetry, acting, playing an instrument, singing, composing, improvising…and then go do it, every day! Instead of waiting around for the inspiration to come, enroll in an arts class, start learning a skill and practice every day.  

1 Comment

Fear is a good motivator, panic not so much. Time is a precious commodity! 

6/10/2014

1 Comment

 
I think with a few more difficult and lengthy concert programs in the horizon I have entered a new realm in my creative process. I feel my brain changing, and I am searching for the right ways to work to preserve the old and apply the new. With more experience improvising, memorizing pieces is at once easier, and harder - initially employing harmonic and formal analysis makes things stick a lot quicker! Being improvisatory about bowing, affect and articulation makes things more fluid and a lot less reliable! I'm finding that if I move back to the old reliance of muscle memory and even for a second loose track of the form, I flounder. It's really the skill of being at once in the present, and in the future. Which brings me to the actual point of time....   

These days time is moving a lot quicker than it used to. There just seems to be a lot less of it. Yes, I am a working mom of three with a second career as a performer. Yes, I am still learning my new instrument and I don't have unlimited time to practice. Enter the new stage in my creative process - panic mode. A week before the recital when my brain is too full of music and none of it makes sense. This is actually a familiar stage in the process, but I don't remember being this scared - I think I used to trust the process more and know that this is just part of it. I think I have figured out why, too - enter the kids. With kids, a week can easily be obliterated by one of them getting sick, crack their head open, get into trouble, you name it ... I think the newly found panic stage of my process is caused the unpredictability of life with children. It used to be that if I needed to, I could play 8 hours a day for a week and be totally ready for a recital in a few days. Not so much anymore. Now, however, I have other weaponry gifted by motherhood: I am really good at compartmentalization. I can also get a lot done in very little time (maybe that's why time feels shorter?). I have superpowers in concentration. And, ultimately, my kids will still love me even if don't play the high F# exactly in tune. 

The concept of time keeps changing!    
1 Comment

    Author

    Katri Ervamaa, cellist

    University of Michigan lecturer in chamber music, Residential College Music Program Head

    Chamber musician

    Cellist with Brave New Works, the Muse Trio and E3Q

    Mother of three

    Archives

    February 2017
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011

    Categories

    All
    Blogging
    Creative Process
    Creativity
    Duport 7
    Etudes
    New Music Blog
    Popper
    String Quartet Blog
    Time
    Transitions
    Warm Ups
    Warm-ups

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.