Soundchoices: Paul Elwood

Slow Learner

The structure of our lives, our work, our love, is the structure that the world has given us. We sleep best over an 8-hour period corresponding to a median night’s length; over millions of years we’ve evolved to fit this diurnal cycle. We work in the day, play in the evening, and sleep in the deep night.

So too the structure of our creative life depends on a regular cycle; my day feels incomplete if I haven’t applied myself to some creative task on some level: showing up at the drafting table is the primary activity. If I have no ideas, I doodle until something breaks through. If nothing eventually breaks through I might do something else, like apply for an opportunity or send an email to someone that I need to remain connected to professionally. Sometimes packages need to be schlepped to the post office. Recordings of my music need editing—there’s always something that needs to be listened to and mixed.

The best days for me are when the creative energy flows productively in the morning and the business side is attended to in the afternoon. It’s all the work I’ve selected to do and the creative side often requires a clerical attention.

In college, I was encouraged to take a business course. I finally did, but paid just enough attention to get a C. I wish I’d taken it more seriously, but, at the time, I was an aspiring hippy with artistic intentions, though I didn’t yet realize how to go about developing my craft. Business seemed like such a useless occupation. Now, I wish I’d excelled both in the business course and in my practice. The latter didn’t come until somewhat later, and I didn’t understand the business aspect until I was gigging with a band and needed to sell the product. I learned eventually that the two go hand in hand - while one can create their work on a daily basis, an energy of sharing and personal well-being can grow out of placing your work in the world.

Slow learner.

The Structure of Mind

Our ability to create will be contingent in some measure on how we spend our time. How we spend our time determines our thoughts and the direction of our lives on a daily basis. If I spend my time thinking about my job and conflicts on the job, then that is where the structure of my mind will incline—and that is where my creative gifts will go (or be squandered); however, if I spend my time doing my composition as an active thought-process, at the drafting table or at the computer, then that is where my mind will be; the structure of my thoughts will thus incline. And I will produce something from this active process of thought. Thus, the structure of my thoughts is determined by the activities of my hands and focus of my mind.

The only way I can think of doing this is to develop a habit of daily work.  My dedicated time is in the morning when my thoughts seem to work best. For you it may be in the morning, afternoon, or evening - whenever you believe that you work best.

The beginnings of any composition to me seem paltry, inadequate, pointless, and leading down a path to nowhere. But first steps are always awkward - whether as a child or as an adult. When I set out on my morning run, the first quarter mile seems difficult. But, I’ve found that if I endure and push through, that the pace gets easier.

So too with my work. If I get up every morning and put dots (notes) on paper, then the process becomes easier, those seed dots begin to blossom into larger ideas and, one fine day, they become a completed composition.

"We play the game, but fate controls the cards."

We play the game, but fate controls the cards. 

            -Algiers, 1938 with Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer

If only. We actually control the cards - the ones we’re given, which I guess could be argued is dependent on an act of fate. What we can do with what is given us is to create work that, with practice and application, express something within us.  

What is our work about?

I’m not thinking on a grand existentialist level, but specifically of the novel, poem, painting, composition that you are creating. I find that having a thesis or idea to aim for is much better than flailing about. I’ve written music that started with no thesis; this is possible, but not always satisfying, and, ultimately it comes down (at least) to meaningful connections in my musical material: motives, rhythms, textures that repeat, or create a satisfying melodic/harmonic whole (whatever the term “satisfying” means).

Subjects are endless and everywhere. They can be outside or inside ourselves; Hegelian bits of self-analysis that state: “‘Everyone ought to speak the truth.’. . . if he knows the truth. The commandment, then, will now run: everyone ought to speak the truth at all times, according to his knowledge and conviction.” Although Hegel goes on to say that this, as “an ethical proposition, . . . promises a universal and necessary content, and thus contradicts itself by the content being contingent.” (Phenomenology of Spirit, #424).

But, one must be committed to work and expression and, hence, you define your work and meaning guided by inner truths as you know them.

A work of art could seem perhaps meaningless, except that even when I look at abstraction, I see line, color, and balance as content that relates one to another and then exteriorizes and relates to me as a sentient viewer.

“All in all,” wrote Marcel Duchamp, “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” (https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/media-and-performance-art/participation-and-audience-involvement/)

The inner truth we hope to express with our work may just be out of our hands.