Foundations For Creativity

I was thinking about the "replacement" of knowledge, i.e. gaining knowledge later on in life which replaces what you did before. The example I still use is the way I played music when I was younger and the way that I play and write music now following having a formal musical training. This probably happens to other people as well where you intuitively work on something before you've had any training or education, and then once you've had training you forget how you used to work. I can't remember how I played music in 1978 for example. Knowledge of theory replaced it, although I can reactivate it to some degree with alternate tunings which remap the fingerboard.

Things just fall away once you've gotten to a higher level. The lower levels are closed off and there's no stairway down. You can revisit older ways of working but you wouldn't get anything from it once you've progressed to another level. The question becomes whether there's something inherently wrong with that as if it's an abandonment.

Another thing that's reshaped my approach to music is simply the interest in lots of other things such as Systems. In fact, music is a system, albeit a very simple one. When you know how it works you can create all kinds of things within it and you don't have to be nostalgic for the way you used to do things.

It's interesting how people evolve and  become different people because we have to become different people. But the essential building blocks are still there. Lately, it's been one of the reasons that I've revisited my older music--I want to figure out what the core elements are and what the foundation is.

I've always considered myself a combinatory artist who works architecturally. It's kind of a "golden spike" that I've put down which informs all the things that I do going forward. Sometimes I just go off on a tangent to experiment with things that aren't really like the things that I usually do and I get something out of that as well. For example, after all the jazz soloing practice and studying music theory intensely I started to get interested in other things. One of the things I got into was generative and ambient music because I liked the idea that music was "cinematic", but still rests on the original foundations.  

(Video transcript 7/17/2021)