This week I’m pondering the way the music in me finds expression with a blend of thought, intention, and imagination when I create in “the space”.
And how my micro experiences parallel with macro world happenings…how can I find understanding and growth?
“The Space” is a Kenny Werner aphorism, coined to describe his experience entering a creative almost automatic zone when he approaches and plays the piano without ego and the typical intrusion of mental activity.
When I saw and heard Kenny’s Effortless Mastery - the name of his book and teachings - and started exploring my own effortless mastery in “the space”, my music transformed in a way that was not rational.
Over months of experimentation, approaching the piano with curiosity - watching and listening to what music my fingers, and soul it felt like, wanted to create - I was able to reinforce technical skills and let my creativity fly.
The starting point of effortless mastery let me shed years of conditioning and gave me daily bursts of fun, delight, deep emotional release, challenge, and joy beyond what I imagined life could bring, and a sense of purpose - a knowing that for no other reason than to experience the richness of creating music, I was here now.
Pretty good for a COVID-times overthinking existential crisis-y middle-aged mom retiring doctor jazz master-wannabe.
So many labels….
In all those pre-COVID years of musical struggle I had used a more “outside in” approach, trying to replicate exactly a piece of music and memorize the each note to force my fingers into “perfection”.
But somewhere in 2020 I realized that with this approach, at best I would hit the mark, and there was little room for overshooting with spontaneous creative expression.
With the new way, if I learned only the basic form of a song, and had done the work to understand it deeply, magic happened.
Unpredictable beauty and grace.
Seemingly channeled from the ether, through my happy liberated fingers.
The rational had its place - for example, I could recognize when effort came in for a difficult passage, and slow down to “teach” my fingers the precise series of notes and rhythm.
But starting to move away from rational…if I played with what I knew already in my bones, simple as it was, I was free to play. Like a kid. And build.
And if I dropped perfection? As Kenny Werner suggests, start by telling myself “every note I play is beautiful…every sound I make is exactly the right one”….
Man, that seemed like a comedy for awhile, until I got to the place that I stopped taking myself so seriously, and realized what freedom felt like without the constant critic attaching the notes to my human sense of self-worth.
So what if I was a jazz baby? Starting at the very beginning of tone, timing, breath, sound itself?
What I discovered was that “deeply understanding” the form of a song - getting it into my bones - meant more than memorizing the notes.
I researched the original composer, the music they wrote, music of the time, other musicians’ variations on that original theme. I studied the relationships between the lead musical line (melody) and the accompanying notes creating harmony (chords). I experimented with the function of each chord in the progression of chords through the piece of music - why did a particular chord lead into another? How did that create a unique sound, mood, movement?
That period of study was the in-between part of the spectrum with “rational” and “beyond rational”. At times, the integration of the form involved “seeing” connections - like running over the music in my mind and realizing the similarity in patterns with different songs, or “happy accidents” at the piano leading to “wow! so that’s how that works!”.
Once a feeling in the fingers, or an embodiment of a form was anchored, however, it became part of the flow, part of the known me connected to the more-than-me, and less conscious intention was required to guide the musical expression. What seemed beyond rational was watching the higher level input (desired emotion, or message) translated by a thousand tiny details (like the nuance of how lightly a key was struck) actually result in deep creative expression with a truth and beauty I had previously only hoped for. And trial and error stabbed at.
This concept of form, and the layers of complexity to arrive at effortless mastery, creating in the space, has been the medium in the sandbox of my life for the last nine months, and pondering how these lessons translated to the wholeness of me being human was the natural next area of the playground to explore.
So it was that last week I came across work in a seemingly unrelated field that made more connections for me between rational/beyond rational and macro/micro worlds.
I have followed @PezeshkiCharles on twitter for some time, appreciating his insights and balance. Cool guy.
Last week, when I took the time to read his latest post “Why Fauci and Walensky will never apologize” I was blown away.
Dr. Pezeshki’s writing details the science explaining authoritarian leaders of organizations, and the psychology of decision-making. In this post he delves into the “why” of leaders doubling down on clearly harmful measures, even after overwhelming and clear scientific evidence refuting current public policy.
Dr. Charles’ twitter handle is “Connection Doctor, Empathy Guru”…and since many of my twitterfam are new age-leaning kumbaya types, I judged this book by it’s title and missed the startlingly rational content within…until now.
As an engineer/academic/international boots-on-the-ground consultant whose life’s work has explored human systems and relational psychology, “Connection Doctor, Empathy Guru” has developed and collaborated on schema for understanding evolutionary - and devolutionary - progress throughout human history.
Working globally, his experience with institutions and individuals has been anchored in a scientific approach, and has a rare breadth and depth - like simultaneously seeing the forest and the trees.
More powerful for me was his clear real-time use of these models, incorporating the science of historical experiments in human systems, and rational insights into our collective future.
What an enriching rabbit hole! Post after post I found great swaths of fabric filling in the tapestry of our shared experience as humans in these times.
With Dr. Pezeshki’s integrated mastery (yes, the energy of his writing is effortless - dude is in the zone) of the complexity in relational dynamics at such an expansive level, he easily distills the simple truths found, and explains the crossroads ahead for us as a whole human system - especially challenging with the leaders we have chosen to guide us through unprecedented change.
And choose we did, over generations of collective living, incrementally outsourcing responsibility for major facets of our individual lives.