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Looper's Delight
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Dear Warren, Thanks for your letter and your kind acknowledgements. I wanted to write about a couple of things that you mentioned just because I have a very different take on them that I"d like to share. You wrote " I replied that I was a composer, working on some music, and he said, "oh, well, who isn't?" And, you know, despite the obvious differences of years of experience and study and dedication, at core I felt that he was essentially correct in his attitude. He was me 20 years earlier. It was shockingly humbling. So yeah, Rick (tho you didn't say this to me, it felt like you did), I don't put that much external value on my own musical creativity. " Gosh Warren, I have such a different take on creativity than this young man who was so rude and dismissive to you. I think that all people's creativity is valid and anyone who knows me well knows that I champion people being creative as a matter of course in my own life's work so please dont' assume that I said this to you. It's not in my being EVER to say such a thing to someone. I actually really resent that kind of thinking. It's small minded and judgemental. Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you this is true. My honest definition of an artist with a capital A is someone who has the courage to get up and do art everyday that they possibly can. Having a day job or doing it proffesionally doesn't matter to me at all. Honestly! There are, of course, times when I will do a gig as a seasoned professional musician where I may encounter a musical situation where it is obvious that another musician just hasn't devoted that much time to a particular task. I think anyone in any profession occasionally shakes their head at a newbies mistake or misstep but I don't think this is overly judgemental of anyone...........it's just part of the process. Will a person who's played guitar professionally every day of his life for 30 years be more accomplished than a young person who has played for 5 years? Of course he or she will. Is that professional musician intrinsically more creative than the newbie? Absolutely NOT. If I thought so, why on earth would I insist on having a lot of complete newbies at the festival every year? I'm certainly never patronizing anyone by having them (and I"ve had to actively defend my stance of including newbies at the festival to more experienced players at times----there are a handful who won't play the festival anymore because of it...........thinking it lessens the quality of the experience. Miles Davis was playing with musicians in their early 20's at the end of his life. Why? Because he wanted to be on the cusp of what is happening and he wanted to be inspired by these brilliant, yet not completely accomplished minds. His example completely inspires me and it says something about creavity, I think. In Zen Buddhism, there is the concept of 'beginners' mind'.....................that excitement one has when one is brand new into something they are loving completely. As with all things, it's much easier to be in that excited, turned on, creative space when we are first in love with something (from a musical style to a romantic interest to a new philosophy or religion to a new guitar). It's a lot harder to recreate that experience over and over again as we become more familiar with the new process. A master meditator in Zen Buddhism has the ability to conjure up 'beginners mind' even after having meditated for 30 or 40 years. The ability to conjur creativity all along the way is one of the great goals of art and music, imho. The process has nothing , intrinsically to do with money.............making it or not making it. I wrote passionately at the start of this thread because I sensed a resentment and an anger towards musicians who have made their entire lives about making a living. This was shocking to me , especially on this list, which has always been people by exceptionally creative people: people who , for the most part, have eschewed the dominant paradigms of music and commerce in this culture (let's call it Western culture though that's a terribly lame an inexact title). When I was young, 'making it in music' was what almost every musician I knew aspired to, so I've been having some culture shock around the fact that much of our culture lately feels like it's okay to take music from someone off the web with compensating the musicians who both invested and made it. There's a rise in the attitude that professional musicians are somehow part of the exploitive musical system that almost everybody feels oppressed by. This is just so nuts to me, but it's quite obvious now that not everyone sees it this way here. You also wrote: "Can I possibly do better with Garageband than a teenager with hours every night to surf the web for beats and samples? Not likely." I know that you later qualified this in your letter but I hear people talk like this so much that I wanted to respond to the concept: To me, this so totally misses the point of creativity. I don't think it's important to worry about such considerations for this reason. (and forgive me in advance for reposting this anecdote, but I think it speaks so strongly to this discussion). BRIAN ENO's anecdote about losing creativity The great ambient/performance artists Brian Eno was once asked by a journalist if there were ever days where he felt bereft of creativity (considering every day he is payed handsomely to be creative, whether doing an art installation or producing a record by Talking Heads). To the surprise of the reporter, Eno said, "No". "Why is that?" asked the reporter. "Well," Eno answered, " if you took every single person on this planet who could comply with your wishes (whether they were young or old, man or woman, intelligent or retarded) and gave them a piece of paper and a red crayon and asked them to draw you a picture of a house and a tree it would produce 3 or 4 billion drawings of a house and a tree. Not one of those drawings would be the same. Not one!!! " And yet, a house and a tree are not made of red wax and white cellulose..................so each unique drawing would be the result of that person filtering their vision of the world through whatever technique (or lack of technique) they have and then creating an analogue of that vision on the piece of paper. Each person, consequently, would have CREATED something totally unique with their drawing. He continued "Human beings don't have to worry about whether they are creative or original....................they just have to DO.' note: this is a paraphrase of a this quotation, heard from someone who had heard him say this live...........I wasn't there but the spirit remains the same. *********** So, it's a different day..........a different era. Quite obviously, a larger percentage of talented and innovative young musicians in this culture are headed toward DJing and Remixing and making their own Electronic Music tracks than they are moving towards mastering guitar or other instruments. Of course, you see wonderful young musicians everywhere using very different modes of expressing themselves musically but in my thirty years of teaching trapset and percussion students, I'm just not seeing very many serious students of the drums anymore. For sure they're out there, but I think a typical kid is drawn to different things (my apologies to all punk, emo and indie rocker, jazz and country kids out there) and so that's where the creativity is going. My advice is to correspond with that kid who has all the time in the world to surf for samples and collaborate with them! And, of course, keep doing the really cool things I've seen you do before with your own music. respectfully, Rick