John Lacey » Creative Process

Gary Reef On Expectations

John Lacey — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 01:03:03 +0000

I’ve been watching Gary Reef‘s videos for days now. He posts on YouTube as CapricornArtist73. He does some extraordinary work.

This advice seems like a double edged sword – on one hand it seems quite encouraging to know you’ll improve over time, on the other hand it seems depressing that it will take such a long time. But it is true, I’m sure.

It’s the mark of a seasoned artist actually, at least as far as I can ascertain, to not be so hung up on judging their own output. In my experience I am always wary of being judged, I invariably preface posts with my artwork with words like ‘beginner’ or ‘amateur’ in part because I want to give context but also because I’m hoping random passers by will be gentle.

Robert DiFazio: Everybody Sucks

John Lacey — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:40:27 +0000

Michael Jackson was by pop culture standards ‘The King of Pop.’ It was a sad event for many when he passed away last year. One of the things I came to realise was that he had been a constant presence around me. There had never been a time in my life when there had not been Michael Jackson, indeed his life and career extended long before I showed up on this planet – and he had been Michael Jackson the entertainer almost his entire life too.

When you watch him perform it seems everything he touches turns to gold. It’s a kind of miracle. You don’t sit there thinking, “Wow, so he’s been developing his talents for close to fifty years,” you just think “wow!”

But was it always as easy as he made it seem? Robert DiFazio doesn’t seem to think so. He has a startling revelation and I’m hoping it will change the way you look at your own work too.

Robert DiFazio:

The average person would say ‘scrap this, come up with something better.’ But the producer is supposed to say, ‘no, there’s a Billie Jean in this song. We can figure this out.’ It’s going to be hundreds of different decisions and hours and days and months and whatever. But you have to somehow recognise the forest through the trees and see the whole picture at the same time. So don’t discredit things that suck initially is one thing I would say to my students…

You have to see the forest, the trees and the whole picture – all at once. There’s an obligation to have a sense of the work as it is while also imagining how it could be. And then, of course, you build on what you have. So don’t be too dismissive of your early efforts, they’re building blocks and you’ll never know what you can create upon those foundations unless you try!

Creativity Is Still A Process

John Lacey — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:04:17 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Kate Bush for some time now. For some reason over the last three days I’ve been particularly fascinated by her work, watching documentaries and music videos and interviews with her. The thing that I found interesting was the way music commentators described her as being a ‘fully-formed’ artist from her musical debut. The inference I think was that she came out of the womb as the creative force we see and know and love today. This was despite the fact that the same documentary alluded to her artistic development; to her learning the piano and the violin from an early age, her studying dance, her writing songs from a very young age, her EMI ‘Artist Development’ deal, and a wealth of support from her parents (her father was typically the first audience for her early works) and family friends. To me this demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the creative process as a process.

In the same documentary the same commentators suggested her Hounds Of Love album was her greatest and most complete work. They went further to suggest that the reason for this was because after being hurried on earlier projects, being constrained by time and the expense of studios and equipment, she built her own home studio. Here she could work at her own pace, here she could entertain creative whims and take artistic risks. The difference here was time. Because ideas – and artists – go through a period of gestation, and creativity and art take time.

In a similar vein, Mur Lafferty in her most recent podcast ISBW #133 – You’re allowed to suck / Anders and Defendini Interview:

You’re allowed to suck in your first draft but you’re also allowed to suck at the beginning of your career. Now I haven’t read the book yet but I have heard many people mention the Malcolm Gladwell book that talks about how you need to have 10,000 hours of doing something before you’re a master. And a lot of people have said ‘You don’t want to sell your first novel.’ And some outspoken agents on Twitter have even said ‘Don’t send me your NaNoWriMo novel.’ NaNoWriMo probably says, ‘we are all about quantity over quality. The goal is to get the book on the page, after that fix it. Or make it longer. Or learn how to write a book.’

I think one problem novice writers have is we believe every idea we have is a perfect snowflake that must go out to the world. This is what causes people to work on a book for 20 years. It’s what causes people to freak out when they’re rejected, and not think, ‘okay, well if this story or book has been rejected 50 times maybe I should put it aside and write something else.’

Bob Brookmeyer On Starting The Process

John Lacey — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:05:02 +0000

This video comes from Artists House Music and features composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and music educator Bob Brookmeyer. He talks about a lot of different things in the course of this video but the part that interested me the most was about what he did to actually start the process of composing.

Bob Brookmeyer:

I joked with my wife, I told her I figured something out in the bathroom. So she put out a scorebook and a pencil – at least then you get an idea. I sometimes warm up with whole notes just to get pencil contact and anything that will start the process.

There are two great ideas distilled here. Firstly be ready to work with inspiration whenever and wherever (in this instance, the bathroom) it hits. Secondly get into a habit of ‘showing up’ and going through the process perhaps with a warm up exercise of your own; something that is conducive to your own creative process.

John Lacey » Creative Process

Gary Reef On Expectations

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Robert DiFazio: Everybody Sucks

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