Key Two of "Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity"
by Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com
I'm reading and searching this book for outside-the-box creativity and marketing ideas for professional musicians. Hugh has had unlikely success with his art and business of doodling on the back of business cards after hours from his day job as a copywriter. Please join me in evaluating the 40 keys to creativity he suggests.
Key Two - "The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours." ~ Hugh MacLeod
by Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com
I'm reading and searching this book for outside-the-box creativity and marketing ideas for professional musicians. Hugh has had unlikely success with his art and business of doodling on the back of business cards after hours from his day job as a copywriter. Please join me in evaluating the 40 keys to creativity he suggests.
Key Two - "The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours." ~ Hugh MacLeod
At first blush, Hugh, this resonates as truth with me. However, when I begin to drill down and think about myself as a musician, writer and performer, I feel a little squirmy - I mean- is there really anything I've ever done, written or sung that's completely original? Is there perhaps a continuum of originality?
After-all, history is the memory – the intelligence, if you will, of what has been seen, heard, felt, done, experienced, tasted, smelled, sung, etc. across the spectrum of time. History encapsulates the remembrances of what came before it was reported. That memory is the fabric displaying the continuum of interwoven threads of discovery now informing our own current creative thoughts and expressions.
Isn't all art, dance, song, cuisine, religion, philosophy, architecture, mechanics, agriculture, technology, manufacturing, sociology, psychology, medicine, law, well - isn't everything is predicated upon and intertwined with what came before it? As Helen Keller stated “No one truly owns anything or anyone.” To quote a proverb from King Solomon of the Old Testament of the Bible - "There is nothing new under the sun." Everything evolves from state to state.
Therefore, the practice of MacLeod’s mantra that “it has to be yours” has the potential of leading a musician to a state of creative and professional paralysis. If I only allow myself to invest in my work when I am convinced my melody or lyric is completely unique, not influenced by any other artist or music, then they'd probably have to bury me without having finished a single tune.
But then MacLeod states:
“The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.”
Ah - ha! So, maybe he wants us to think of sovereignty or ownership as the governing of self in the creative process, rather than the governing of “it” i.e. the creation. It is when I am totally invested in the process that I have the freedom to apply my passionate and creative energy to the idea, work, song, or dance. As I am consumed by it and give my self freely to "it" - "it" becomes something new or “mine.” That is the freedom that
Hugh talks about. It is when I get into that zone, things begin to happen. Other people click with "it" and my little song begins to snowball, because it is then that I just might inspire others to do their own creative work.
How? How do we get ourselves into that zone? Any ideas? I'd love to hear them.
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