I spend a good bit of time at my computer working on writing - which runs from emails to creative projects to schoolwork. I've noticed that creative writing (and I suppose my other key-tapping efforts benefit from this) is a lot like I imagine acting to be. That is, I've had to learn to emote - perhaps in a slightly exaggerated form, as befits acting - in order to define characters I write about or make up, and to present them through their actions and dialogue.
So here I often sit, spewing supercharged emotions, even after the writing's done for the day. But I can't turn off the emoting as easily as I can shut down my computer. So my wife, my friends, neighbors, even cell phone-clutching SUV drivers on the freeway- i.e. everyone I meet- gets to feel the brunt of these creative juices during my daily "cool down" period, and sometimes long after. My dear wife is generally okay with that; she has an artistic sensibility, and easily gets into the flow with me. Sometimes I'm too much even for her, which means I probably confound friends and neighbors with what seems erratic behavior, if not a latent bipolar disorder.
One way I spin down that energy is by walking - up to four miles a day around a small, local lake. Or through carpentry. Or yardwork. Or weightlifting. But sometimes, when my muse has injected my soul with too much muse-spiration, even these things don't let me put creativity to rest.
On my walks of late, I've started wearing my iPod, listening to downloaded music, college lectures, languages, and such. For me, the music option is best. The rhythms, the emotional content of the music, these act as lightning rods for my creative juice - they put me back in my own body. Soon, I'm walking in time with the tunes. The more intense the music, the faster I go...well, up to a point...I'm not eighteen any more. The music colors the way I see the world around my lake: if it's brutally hot, some cool jazz will make me seem in the midst of sea breezes on a California beach. If its gloomy, the air fouled with dust and pollution from lack of rain, my day brightens with some good-time music.
Recently I pulled out an album by
Kenny Rankin, a great song stylist with a masterful voice. This album of Rankin's ,
Silver Morning, was a hot item back in the seventies. It covered a couple of Beatles tunes and showcased a facile voice that must command a four if not a five octave range. Soon I found myself searching iTunes for more of his stuff.
He has a new album out - I say new - 2004, I think - it's named
A Song For You, and on it he styles on jazz and pop standards.
Yesterday, before I walked the lake , I found myself in a gloomy funk. I've been writing about a real-life character, a soldier/pilot who fought for Germany on WWII's Eastern Front. Naturally, I've climbed in the emotional saddle with him, and as he wears down under the stress of war, so do I - hence my bluesy funk. But this funk proved a nasty one - durable and deep. At the lake, I slid my iPod dial to Rankin's new album, pressed play, and began to walk. The second cut on the album is called
Where Do You Start - about someone splitting from their romantic partner, the pair trying to cope emotionally as they divide up their belongings.
My funk had little or nothing to do with a break-up, of course. But just like Rankin's song character, I wanted to find a way out of this moody morass I was in. As I dug into the song's story, began to feel what the character, the song's writer, and Rankin were feeling with respect to that piece of music, my mood began to bleed away. Halfway around the lake, I felt purged.
This, I realized, is catharsis. The Greeks felt the process, named it, and passed it on through the ages. They urged emotional release through drama, maybe through related songs as well.
So now I'm wondering, not about the creative process as much as about its nature. Is there really some underlying and unifying impulse to creativity, something that allows me to use writing to sense the emotions of a real German pilot, to pass that emotion along to my future readers? Is there some abstracted, subterranean sensitivity that knows when I've delved too deeply into the drama of my "arty" life and can use someone else's creativity to help me purge?
If so, there's a lot more to life - and to art - than I ever imagined.
I spend a good bit of time at my computer working on writing - which runs from emails to creative projects to schoolwork. I've noticed that creative writing (and I suppose my other key-tapping efforts benefit from this) is a lot like I imagine acting to be. That is, I've had to learn to emote - perhaps in a slightly exaggerated form, as befits acting - in order to define characters I write about or make up, and to present them through their actions and dialogue.
So here I often sit, spewing supercharged emotions, even after the writing's done for the day. But I can't turn off the emoting as easily as I can shut down my computer. So my wife, my friends, neighbors, even cell phone-clutching SUV drivers on the freeway- i.e. everyone I meet- gets to feel the brunt of these creative juices during my daily "cool down" period, and sometimes long after. My dear wife is generally okay with that; she has an artistic sensibility, and easily gets into the flow with me. Sometimes I'm too much even for her, which means I probably confound friends and neighbors with what seems erratic behavior, if not a latent bipolar disorder.
One way I spin down that energy is by walking - up to four miles a day around a small, local lake. Or through carpentry. Or yardwork. Or weightlifting. But sometimes, when my muse has injected my soul with too much muse-spiration, even these things don't let me put creativity to rest.
On my walks of late, I've started wearing my iPod, listening to downloaded music, college lectures, languages, and such. For me, the music option is best. The rhythms, the emotional content of the music, these act as lightning rods for my creative juice - they put me back in my own body. Soon, I'm walking in time with the tunes. The more intense the music, the faster I go...well, up to a point...I'm not eighteen any more. The music colors the way I see the world around my lake: if it's brutally hot, some cool jazz will make me seem in the midst of sea breezes on a California beach. If its gloomy, the air fouled with dust and pollution from lack of rain, my day brightens with some good-time music.
Recently I pulled out an album by Kenny Rankin, a great song stylist with a masterful voice. This album of Rankin's , Silver Morning, was a hot item back in the seventies. It covered a couple of Beatles tunes and showcased a facile voice that must command a four if not a five octave range. Soon I found myself searching iTunes for more of his stuff.
He has a new album out - I say new - 2004, I think - it's named A Song For You, and on it he styles on jazz and pop standards.
Yesterday, before I walked the lake , I found myself in a gloomy funk. I've been writing about a real-life character, a soldier/pilot who fought for Germany on WWII's Eastern Front. Naturally, I've climbed in the emotional saddle with him, and as he wears down under the stress of war, so do I - hence my bluesy funk. But this funk proved a nasty one - durable and deep. At the lake, I slid my iPod dial to Rankin's new album, pressed play, and began to walk. The second cut on the album is called Where Do You Start - about someone splitting from their romantic partner, the pair trying to cope emotionally as they divide up their belongings.
My funk had little or nothing to do with a break-up, of course. But just like Rankin's song character, I wanted to find a way out of this moody morass I was in. As I dug into the song's story, began to feel what the character, the song's writer, and Rankin were feeling with respect to that piece of music, my mood began to bleed away. Halfway around the lake, I felt purged.
This, I realized, is catharsis. The Greeks felt the process, named it, and passed it on through the ages. They urged emotional release through drama, maybe through related songs as well.
So now I'm wondering, not about the creative process as much as about its nature. Is there really some underlying and unifying impulse to creativity, something that allows me to use writing to sense the emotions of a real German pilot, to pass that emotion along to my future readers? Is there some abstracted, subterranean sensitivity that knows when I've delved too deeply into the drama of my "arty" life and can use someone else's creativity to help me purge?
If so, there's a lot more to life - and to art - than I ever imagined.
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