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.

Habit, not inspiration

sun breaks over the eucalyptus
grove below the wet pasture,
water’s about hot,
I sit in the open window
& roll a smoke.

            Gary Snyder from “Marin-An,” “The Back Country, New Directions, 1968

It’s not too good to be over analytical about your own creativity. The only analysis necessary is to do your work and do it as well as you can.

That’s about it. Self-motivation may not even be necessary if you work from habit; if everything that you see, hear, or feel is fodder for your work. If the sun cuts rays through mists in the branches of the eucalyptus at 7:30 a.m. and the pasture is wet; if the water’s ready for your coffee or tea and if you are rolling a cigarette, it’s all fodder for you to say what you need to say. 

Creativity and the Big Sleep

Lately I’ve been especially conscious of my own mortality. At 60 friends start to pass away. No matter the physical shape a person may seem to be in, a heart may just have 43, 54, 64, or 75 years in it. Period. It’s best to use our time as fearlessly as we can to do our creative work and to put it into the world.

Both tasks are hard.  Did I say tasks?  “Tasks” sound distasteful. It’s really our labor of love. Creating that book you’ve dreamed of for years; painting a series of watercolors; making a film, even if you have to do it with your iPhone. Don’t let anything stop you. If you put your love into it, work hard at it, something good will come of it for you. Yes, it may take years. Maybe you’ll die trying. Better that than having the death bed regret of not having tried at all.

Then, once the project is complete, as complete can be, the next step is to put it into the world where it may be hated, loved, liked, or treated with indifference. Make contact with people, deliver your enthusiasm to them, whether it’s radio DJs, Internet media, or a school newspaper.

The one thing I’d really like to accomplish with my work is to inspire others to do something. Something they’ve wanted to do but haven’t yet tried. I’ve found that I’m very happy when a student or friend imitates something I’ve done on their road to developing their own voice.

There’s no telling what could happen. The worst might be that the finished project languishes on a shelf. I look at my compositions as children, in a sense. Many years ago, I was commissioned to compose for a symphony orchestra—a short piece for children’s concerts. The orchestra paid me for it but rejected it for performance. After I got off of that truly bloody phone call when they gave me the news, I looked at the sketches and finished score and cried. It was like I’d lost a family member, though, of course the sense of loss was not disproportionate to an actual occurrence like that. I did go through a short mourning period. And 30 years later the piece has never been played, though I still regard it in a much more positive light than the orchestra management did.

It doesn’t matter. I learned a lot by writing that piece. I learned a lot by being rejected. For one, I could have been more in communication with the orchestra management as I composed the piece. There was a period toward the end of the deadline when I unplugged the phone so I could just work uninterrupted—of course they were trying to reach me at that point and couldn’t. I imagine the frustration of not reaching me at a critical time led in part to their decision to move on. For another, they believed the piece was too difficult for a one rehearsal gig, though I did my best to make everything clear in the score. But, I should have been in communication, discussed sketches, gotten feedback and moved on. It’s good to be in communication with the musicians for whom you are composing as you are composing.

If writing, it’s good to give your writing to other writers or an editor for feedback; painters could do the same. Communication is an important skill. All this being said, fear of failure is just fear. No reason not to put yourself on the line, make mistakes, and learn. Eventually we have to deal with the “big sleep,” and at that point nothing much matters. Better to make our work matter now.

Drawing a Blank

One of the more controversial compositions of the 20thc, perhaps of all time, is John Cage’s 4’33”. In three movements, the performer, usually a pianist, is asked not to play during the space of a total of 4’33”.  Each movement has the instruction: tacit. The pianist delineates the movements by opening and closing the lid of the keyboard.

I once staged this piece two days in a row. On the first night, we placed the composition in a traditional concert hall. The usual sounds from the inside of a concert hall were heard during the performance: rustling programs, uncomfortable shifting in seats, titters from the audience. This is partially what the composition is about: sounds in the silence upon which the music is usually played. In this case, those ambient sounds become the music.

The next afternoon, with another performer, we staged the piece in the backroom at a local bistro/cinema. In the bar adjacent to our space, a 5 pm happy hour was in progress. Laughter, loud talking, and canned music was heard throughout our performance.

Kyle Gann, composer, writer, and critic; the man who literally wrote the book on this composition, was in attendance. He stated that is was the perhaps the most exciting performance of 4’33” that he had ever heard.

The conceptual blank page is something many (all?) artists fear. The question of filling that page is daunting. John Cage, when composing this composition in 1952, was faced with a blank page and basically left the page blank. In doing so he created one of the most philosophically intriguing music compositions of the 20th century.

There is no reason why we can’t, in essence, do the same. When faced with the blank page, you are not faced with nothing. You are faced with a blank page . . . which is something. If you have no other ideas, doodle on it, make a list of ideas, perhaps list structural ideas, write about nothing, empty space, desert space, personal space. Crumple the page and tear the page to make sound.  In a Yoko Ono-type gesture, ignore the page.

The fact is, nothing is something, and therefore all we have to do is build on this concept of nothing, creating something from what, in essence, may be something. The philosopher Martin Heidegger postulated that simply because there is a concept and word for nothing, nothing is actually something.

Make something out of nothing.

 

Boundless Magnitude

We don’t know the potential magnitude of our work.  There is the physical magnitude of each individual composition (novel, poem, film) that we make. Another magnitude is the number of people that you may reach with your work.

Anton Webern initially wrote very short, lovely compositions, some movements last 35”. He did this because he was working at reinventing concepts of music creation in which every parameter, every note had a different expression; a different and distinctive life. Each note in a composition might have a specific volume, tone-color, pitch location (range), etc. For his string quartet, Sechs Bagatellen, op., 9, he found the process of shaping each and every note very difficult. But the end result is a short work of beauty, one that may be endlessly listened to with boundless discovery.

However, if I characterise these short movements only by the magnitude of their length, then they are not significant. But, 45 years later, Webern’s efforts to shape everything in this and other works went on to influence a young generation of composers such as Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Using the inspiration of Webern’s music, they set up systems and methods, sometimes byzantine, to define carefully every aspect of each composition. While their results were somewhat longer in scope and size, Webern’s magnitude could be said to have a similar or greater scope in that he, with the small seeds of his compositions, created a revolution. He didn’t live to see the massive growth of his influence as he was accidentally shot by an American soldier in 1945.  

We don’t know the impact that our work may have. One might hope that we may influence a number of students to go on and do fabulous things, or that other creators will be inspired to do their own work as they see fit, or, perhaps best of all, that an audience might find solace, happiness, or a salve for depression, among other things in our work. 

But we have no control over that. 

An important aspect of our work is that we not worry about the end results—either artistically or in terms of impact. All we have a right to do is to write, paint, or stage, as best as we can. What happens after that, happens—or doesn’t. It’s hard not to care about what sort of reaction our work may bring, but, ultimately, that sort of speculation is worthless. Better just to concentrate on the work at hand. And then think of what you will do next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=39&v=8aTmvdt7RNw

 

Turning Off

I’ve taken to turning off my iPhone, iPad and computer WiFi when composing in the morning. I was starting to get into the addictive habit of checking email, Facebook, the weather forecast, and Instagram anytime I hit minor snags in the creative process. (“I wonder if anyone has ‘Liked’ my photo upload on Instagram? . . . I really need to message that person about lunch next week.  Maybe I should update my Facebook profile picture.”) The simple act of turning the phone completely off makes the act of turning it on seem complicated. It’s just more time consuming to check email if I have to hold the switch down for five seconds, wait while the login screen brightens the room, put in my pass code, and then go to my email accounts where nine-times-out-of-ten I find more spam than anything, since people seem to be using instant messaging more.

Disconnecting boosts my focus. Sometimes out of habit in frustration with the creative process I grab the darn iPhone and then remember it’s off. That actually stops me from going further. And nothing will be missed. If someone calls and wants to reach you, they’ll leave a message.  Text messaging is wonderful because you can wait a while to respond. No one expects and instantaneous response, tho’ the dopamine rush of an instant response can be addictive. But in turning off the phone I choose to forgo the possibility of that rush in favor of getting a few more notes on paper. 

The isolation at first can seem debilitating and then it feels liberating.

Frustration and Its Role in Developing a Work of Art

Frustration can be a great catalyst in driving the pencil. I’ve written some of what I consider to be my best music in the wreckage of some disastrous bad-hair-day, broken-nail incident.

Years ago, I was devastated by some relationship that just didn’t come to pass. I sat up late nights writing a long composition for chamber ensemble, a commission from a group in the Midwest. Fortunately, I lived in a remote North Carolina mountain holler and was able to bang out ideas on the piano at 1 a.m., blast Mahler’s Sixth symphony during minor lulls in the writing, and smoke late night cigars (a quasi-habit in those days). It was an awful and exhilarating time; I ended up with one of the better pieces I’ve composed in the past 20 years.[1]

Frustration with my technical limitations spiced with personal intrigue, conflict-at-work, etc . . . this sort of mental anguish is fabulous fertiliser for making work grow.

If I knew more about neuroscience or general psychology I might be able to explain it. But I don’t and can’t. All I know is that these states of mind seem to heighten focus and enable a creator to delve deeper into the psyche for an expression that gives form to the undercurrent of the normal diurnal creative process of the “up and at ‘em” approach I normally ascribe to and proselytize freely. Maybe it's just a quasi-therapeutic focus on something other than what I'm finding currently frustrating. 

Or the process of working draws past thoughts into our crania like unwanted houseguests that leave their towels on the floor and who don't flush the toilet. An artist in France told me she can't work anymore because the process of painting brings past painful emotions, memories of relationships, and thoughts of roads not taken to the fore in her mind. 

And, again, I can't explain why this is, but it happens to me. I choose to go with these thoughts as I believe—hope—that there is a cathartic payoff to wrestling with these demons.

No matter the psychological frame of mind I'm in, the quotidian approach is best for me; get up every day and compose no matter how anguishing it seems or how much my head may hurt figuratively and otherwise. When one does this then, during periods of emotional intensity, habit enables the use of highs and lows to produce . . . something.

[1]Oddly, that person and I ended up as good friends and roommates in later years­­­; I set her up with a guy with whom she had a long-term relationship. Life is interesting.

 

Is_Is_Nothing

I just finished a composition for cajón (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajón) and electronics.  When asked to compose this piece by percussionist Patti Cudd of the renown Zeitgeist ensemble, I didn’t demure . . . but I didn’t know what I was going to do. Since the composition involves electronic samples triggered via the computer, the piece evolved into an abstract statement on Artificial Intelligence and about the concept of nothing as something, influenced by philosopher Martin Heidegger. That is, if a computer can eventually be made to perform tasks on deeper and deeper levels of complication, will consciousness (somewhere in the dim future) develop or will there always be nothing there?

"IS is nothing. If there is a word for nothing, then nothing is something." 

And the composition was difficult to write. The creative process is often that of drawing on techniques we possess, developing those we may not, and then banging our heads against the limitations of our creativity and technique.  There were passages that I was trying to make interactive between computer and player, where sounds produced and improvised by the player were transformed and manipulated by the program. Each of those attempts were filled with bugs. Late last night, after a 10-hour session, I had to accept my own limitations in making these elements work and settled for a solution that involved just playing back the sounds I wanted, rather than generating them in real time.

I thought about artificial intelligence; part of the piece involves a text-to-speech program that yields an indifferent robotic voice speaking various phrases. She (the voice is feminine) almost sounds eerily cognizant of what she says. 

Is_Is_Nothing

The performer triggers a number of samples including texts by Heidegger and René Descartes, artist Henri Matisse, a NASA space mission, and me (based on Heidegger). At one point a voice from NASA proclaims that “There is [sic] now four computers that have control of primary critical functions.” There, the program takes over and the performer must conform to the synthetic sinewave, triangle wave, and white noise sounds the computer makes.

Heidegger

Throughout, a Wurlitzer organ cheerfully appears, emblematic of the cartoonish effort that we often make in philosophy, study, and politics to make sense of the world we live in.

MontanaMoon