What Do I Want to Create?

As I mentioned below, the book is flowing again. A very different form emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, and its working well. The creative process is like that. You wrestle and wrestle with something, give up, and then, when you least expect it, the idea appears.

Many people talk and write about the creative process as a form of problem solving. You present your imagination with a problem, and a creative solution emerges. Robert Fritz, author of The Path of Least Resistance and Creating (whose writing style can be dismissively arrogant when it comes to others' views, but from whom I've learned a lot) stresses that creating is different than problem solving. Fritz's writings have taught me that "what do I want to create?" is much more powerful than "how do I solve this problem?" The former question opens up possibilities, while the latter more often limits them.

In music, free improvisation to me often feels more the answer to "what do I want to create?" while idiomatic improv, especially when one is learning the vocabulary of a style, is more of a problem-solving process. A keyboard player learning figured bass may ask herself, "here is a chord progression; how do I realize it?" You can often hear jazz students "playing the changes," carefully outlining the chords and using the appropriate scales while not expressing much. It's very left brained.

When someone has mastered an idiomatic language, then idiomatic improvisation can be as expressive and spontaneous as "free" improvisation. Writing in English was once a struggle, when I was a child. Now I can write anything I can speak, with the only impediment the speed of my 2-fingered typing. (If only I had taken that touch typing course in high school!)

Hmm. I was going to write about something else, but this came out. I encourage improvisation in myself and others by saying, "play the music that wants to be played." It seems that it's also important to "write what wants to be written."