This might not be a particularly new idea, but it is one that I have personally been clinging to a bit lately, paradoxical as it is: creativity is often encumbered by too much freedom.
But let me put this another way, and via an example…
As I noted previously on this blog, over the last year I have built up a pretty respectable sound production studio in my basement. Mics, amps, cables, a recorder, an effects pedal, a looper pedal, and of course my synth. All of it is more than enough to make something interesting.
And despite that great setup, can you guess what I do when I get stuck creatively?
I go online and I start window shopping for more equipment. Maybe a drum machine. Maybe a pickup for my violin. Maybe a better synth, or… gulp, add to cart: cha-ching!
In my mind, in that moment, any of it, all of it would mean more freedom and opportunity to do more stuff with sound and music… sure.
And yet another truth hits bone: none of it will do the work for me.
What I know in my heart is that I just need to sit in the seat and do the work, play the notes, speak the words, and… just create. But having too much freedom to keep looking for something better, something additional, something else—all of it is entangling the effort of actually doing the thing itself.
I’m boxed in by being unbound by opportunity to try something else, rather than just looking at my gear and reminding myself: this is what you get, now make it work.
Terms FROm this POSt
- blog
- I admit, I am pretty old. And I started posting formatted words and photos online before the word blog had entered the common lexicon. Most people work in the medium of social platforms these days, but being both a product of my time and a stickler for content ownership and control, I still lean into and promote the idea that the blog (a content managed general purpose personal website) is the beating heart of the internet I once knew and loved.
- synth
- Often mistaken for a piano, especially in my house where my spouse reminds me that we already have two pianos and I don’t need a third, synths are electronic sound engines that shape primitive audio waveforms through a various processes either analog or digital for which the result is a unique pitched “note” often “discovered” by the artist, and a form of musical instrument that has become the basis of many modern forms of music.
- violin
- I write here quite a lot about the violin. It is exactly what you think: that four stringed wooden instrument with the distinctive curved body shape. Played well it is tuned to the range of the human voice, so it often haunts our hearts and reminds us of singing. I have been playing since 2016 when I took it up as an adult student, but one who could already read music. I can play, but the quality to which I aspire is something I will work on for the rest of my life.
