THE SECRET TO ETHEREAL CREATIVE POWER
WHAT IS THE SECRET TO ETHEREAL CREATIVE POWER?
Rewrite these questions with regard to any art form.
Is it becoming a virtuoso on an instrument?
Is it knowing the full span of what we call music theory?
Is it knowing the practice of music theory?
Is it knowing the language of music as well as your native tongue?
Is it reading, writing, speaking in the language of your art form to adult level and beyond?
Will the secret only reveal itself after many years of experience in that art form?
Is it something that was there all along but gets overlooked so remains a secret within a small circle of influence. A dim and narrow light in a huge world and high mass of population?
Is it Flow?
Is it being in the zone?
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the answer is NO to all of the above.
They all contribute to the art of creation, certainly they do.
They are, however:
Practices
Rules
Functions
Techniques
Methods
They contribute to WHAT is created.
Almost all of the questions listed are more on the subject of gaining a wider palette to draw from and creating impressive perfect performances and manifestations of the created.
The very first catalyst of creation, if it was that. The very first moment that something got created in whatever form and whatever way. We were not there; our consciousness was not there. Something was there. There was a causality.
Humans have created so much under their own causality. Under the influence of a god, the god. Under the influence of drugs. Under the influence of a hallucinogenic. Through time. Under the influence of pain. Under the influence of love, of hate, of tears, of anger, of grief, of knowledge, of power, of desire, of lust, and on and on.
Was the first creation under the influence of nothing?
We start small and we grow. Our functions grow. We end large and we decay. Our functions decay. You, in our terms of time, right now, are from a long age of a lifeform. That lifeform has travelled a very long period through the mechanism of life as we know it on earth. It’s a journey that led to you and only you. You are the singular branch from that stretch, that created what you yourself call you. You are this planet’s, this universe’s, the creators, or however you want to refer to the source, the catalyst, greatest act of creativity.
I’ve been down the road of knowledge on the subject of something out of nothing. The quantum fluctuation. And I’ve decided to make a choice until some science appears that makes me change my choice.
That choice is to believe that something does not come out of nothing.
There is a something. We and everything we see came from that something.
And I’m beginning to believe as I listen to my music playbacks and I go through this “branding” process, (this process of trying to explain my music so that it can be perceived artistically and can spread to others that might be interested, and lead to enough financial support for me to continue this on a full-time basis)
I’ve come to believe that something is everything.
I’m not referring to the school of everything that exists, already existed or can exist or any thought or idea can manifest from the universe or cosmos.
I don’t know what I’m referring to, I’m trying to work it out right now. I’ll present to myself and to you some ideas as I think and write. I’ll probably write matter-of-factly, but really, I don’t know and can’t present actual facts.
In relation to the source of the something, what goes into the something, what becomes the something, what am I referring to?
An infinite source of things that can be drawn from where all things exist but have not become apparent to the conscious mind.
It’s not something that will ever run out. There is no sale by date, no use by date, no minimum or maximum limit.
Unlimited creative power because the source of the ideas that flow into any creation is unlimited. It is only, guided by our own human experience. The creation grows but the source stays the same. There is no growth, no time, time doesn’t exist, in the source.
Our connections to the source are what draw from it. As those connections grow so do our creations.
I can try to explain this using a stripped back example.
A wandering human with little knowledge of anything, even civilisation, who has never heard music, never seen a musical instrument, stumbles across two guitars.
The human picks one up as it’s clearly a static object to the senses and safe to pick up and touch. (“No”, I say to myself, “I’m not stripping back that far!” The human has senses, built up from the environment that creates perceptions of objects etc… etc... blah blah.)
The human then smashes it on the floor as the curiosity rises. Can I use this? Can I kill things with it? A noise occurs that noticeably comes from the strings and has never been heard.
The human then starts using its’ fingers to touch and play around with the strings on the second guitar, listening to the six sounds interact and sound out from each of the strings. At this point there is no way to ascertain that pressing fingers down on the fretboard will make new sounds.
The permutations of six are enough to last for hours of curiosity.
Patterns and familiarities to sounds in nature start to emerge and connect with the consciousness of this human. Emotional connections emerge. On and on. Feedback loops. Growth. Likes.
Dislikes. All to the conscious mind of this human. The human takes it back to its tribe and starts to show others. More growth and this time conscious acceptance from other humans ensues. As those connections grow so do the humans creations.
This growth, is a conscious level growth. They are interactions with sound and instrument that come from a conscious level and are born from curiosity.
Given enough time this human may begin to grow creations from a less physical, spatial, and conscious space. There may be a catalyst like I listed in the under the influence section I described earlier. With this wandering human, it would probably be a bad mushroom.
And now the curiosity turns into the question where is this all coming from?
Before the catalyst, it’s a question that is easy to answer. I think it is.
And here is my answer. For 99.99% of everything that is created by us, the answer is the before. The growth from the conscious level of existence we all share.
My source then, is something that is everything itself.
There is nothing to stop AI making mostly all of the music that is used in this world, based on what it’s learned from all the recorded music we have created throughout history. In this world that is.
I am creating music from an ancient infinite world, in this world. A world that we rarely think about, recognise or use and from a world that isn’t in the big data cloud that AI learns from.
The secret to ethereal creative power then, is the mystery of existence and the unknowable.
The AI can’t know it, because the data isn’t there.
We can know it, because we have this incredible brain, that we don’t fully understand, that can connect with it. Perhaps one day, when we fully understand the brain, that knowledge will become data that AI can use. I think only on that day would I ever call AI sentient. I think calling AI conscious is certainly something that could be argued to be true now.
The secret to ethereal creative powers use, is to realise, accept and connect with that mystery.
Once connected, let that mystery do whatever it does that you will never fully understand.
Do this, by removing any conscious blocks. By removing yourself and your sense of self.
I will try to go further into this, but first, it will serve well to go into what I do in order to achieve what I just described. There will be all sorts of methods for this, and you will have to find your own, and your own method will come from your own understanding, assimilation and experience of the message I am sending in this text.
My own method that I use is not complicated, and you may give a sigh of despair when I say it, but I will give specifics on how it draws me away, and what it draws me away from, that then allows or should I say opens a valve that allows the mystery, the “not me” come through.
It’s meditation. There I said it. That’s it.
Before I sit down to create music, I meditate, draw back from the world and my consciousness.
It doesn’t take long and sometimes it is just drawing back and releasing myself from the world. Which can sometimes be immediate, a simple quick closing of the eyes and breath in. It depends where my mind is and how cloudy it is from the recent past. Creating for me is gentle. It is not using my emotions to throw myself at something and express human emotions and past experiences. Creating is calm and peaceful.
Before the meditation I will contemplate any experimental practical ideas and sounds and notes, I might want to explore during the next composition, or the next layer/track that I’m going to lay down.
When it comes to the actual playing, I move to release all conscious thoughts and patterns and once a finger touches the instrument I remain in that state and let my hearing take over and the responses from that mystery to take over from one note to the next, without break.
If something happens to throw that off, like a mistakenly struck note or a conscious choice that my hearing rejects and knows has destroyed the current process, then I stop and start from the beginning. Sometimes a mistake does occur that my hearing doesn’t reject and playing continues. When I listen back afterward, my conscious mind then understands why it wasn’t rejected and often it becomes a beautiful part of the piece.
My hearing is somewhere in both worlds, conscious yet unconscious at the same time.
If I play something like a common pattern or stray away from the playing’s vocalisation, this is recognised. So, I know my hearing must be in both worlds as it recognises this and stops and rejects it, and continues if not. That choice, whether to stop or to continue, at the time does feel like a conscious choice as a response to hearing something. Perhaps it isn’t, perhaps sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. I am unclear on the answer here.
I should mention here, as it is on my mind to do so, that amongst the rules and things regarding musical composition, there are two that remain important as I go through the creative process.
I’m unable and don’t really want to rebel against them, creatively.
One, is melody. I tend to complete my pieces with a melodic journey, like walking a path that has been laid, or swimming a river. The other, is resolution. My ear still feels uncomfortable when something has not been resolved. Call, response, question, answer, however to view it, a lack of resolution isn’t something I’m exploring right now. Maybe in the future I will.
I still see music as a pleasurable experience. Lacking in resolution causes a conflict inside musically, just as it causes conflict mentally in the practice of life and the act of living.
Conflict is good and can strengthen if not abused, but for me, it still remains a stressful and unwanted guest in life and music.
Creativity is a language that is drawing from a mysterious unlimited and unknowable source that has no language. That for me is something to understand and to use and is identifiable by the creativity that is produced. Without explanation and instruction, listeners to my music will hear it as something I consciously created and they will listen to it consciously. With explanation and instruction, I hope, they will come to recognise that there is something more than solely the conscious use of past learning and experience.
Image credit
Merlin Lightpainting @ pexels.com
