William: Hey, Jack, I’ve got a new piano piece! With this piece I now have enough music to complete a new album. It’ll be all solo piano–meaning I’ll have 1 piano album and 7 glass armonica albums. I still have my ‘post-production’ to do to turn it into a finished product, which should take a few weeks.

Jack: Congratulations! Let’s hear this new piece. What’s it called?

William: Shadows at Twilight.

• Here’s the complete MP3 of Shadows At Twilight (8:28)
• Here’s the first 20 seconds
• Here’s the score to Shadows At Twilight for you pianists.

Jack: I like it! The title is a little curious, however: are there shadows at twilight? <wink!>

William: Nice. Don’t I get some artistic license or something?

Jack: Not from me! Interesting that it’s over 8 minutes long–on the longish side as music pieces go.

William: Yes. I know that’s a bit of an issue for folks downloading mp3s of it–which is why I also have the 20 second samples. But that’s only an issue once–the one time they download it–after that they can play it as many times as they want without that delay. Meanwhile, sometimes a ’short story’ won’t do–sometimes you really need a ‘novel’. Some moods just take more time to create.

Jack: Reminds me of how Beatles era songs had to be less than 3 minutes long to be played on the radio. That’s all the time the radio stations allowed for music between commercials. If a song was longer than that, it wouldn’t get radio play!

William: I didn’t know that! And of course there’s a similar issue for TV, where the heroine only has 40 minutes to save the world–60 minutes minus 20 minutes for commercials! Meanwhile, I think many of the best things in Life just need the time they need–a good meal, love making, sunsets–but when commercial media is involved, time is money!

Jack: And understandably so. TV studios, for example, and the whole infrastructure for distributing TV is pretty darn expensive. Same goes for movies.

William: That whole concept of taking the time–making the time for something is an issue I constantly struggle with.

Jack: Don’t we all!! In many ways a true measure of a person’s priorities is how they spend their time–and money, which is pretty darn closely related. Of course that can be complex. All kinds of folks make providing for their family the top priority, so off they go to work every day. Then their secondary priorities kick in with their discretionary time and money. We’re all a complex mix of primary and secondary priorities.

William: Sure. But at the same time, if someone says “I want to be a novelist” but never spends any time writing, they’re kidding themselves.

Jack: That’s true. I’m reminded of the famous Woody Allen saying: “80% of success is showing up.” Showing up for practice, showing up to your word-processor if you’re a writer, showing up for your kids’ school plays if you’re a parent…

William: So the challenge for me is to be conscious of my choices about how I invest my time. To do reality checks of looking at how I am actually spending my time and cross-checking that with what I’ve been telling myself my priorities are.

Jack: Like Mr. Socrates said: “The unexamined life is not worth living!”

William: This all ties in with a book that I’ve been meaning to tell you about: The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield. The premise of his book is that success in Your Art–which in his book includes any Great Task for you: starting a business, writing that novel, learning yoga, losing weight–that the great challenge is ’showing up’:

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”

Think about Tiger Woods. Do you think a day goes by when he doesn’t get out his clubs and practice his swing–in the hotel lobby on rainy days, if necessary? Does Jack LaLane miss a day doing his calisthenics? Does the devoted monk skip his daily prayers, even when he’s not in the mood?

Pressfield calls that “turning pro”–professional:

The word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning “to love”. The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.

Pressfield point out that we already have ‘turned pro’ about a lot of things in our lives: our jobs, our relationships–we commit to ’showing up’ every day to make them work. Or we get fired–by our bosses and our amours! So it’s really a concept that’s already familiar to all of us.

Many times I’ve thought of myself as not being very disciplined, and yet my life is full of all sorts of self-disciplines: I never have any internal debate about stopping at red lights, or brushing my teeth every day, or paying my bills–there is a long, long list of things where I just do what I need to do without any muss or fuss. Well, maybe I fuss a little about paying the bills <grin!>, but it never seriously occurs to me to skip doing that altogether.

Then, the trick is realizing that you can take that Discipline skill, that you really already have in abundance, and consciously apply it to new areas of your life when you are so moved.

Along those lines I’ve been trying an experiment lately. Now mind you, I’ve composed about 200 titles so far in my composing career, so I like to think I’ve been investing the time. But it’s been pretty haphazard–I might compose all day one day, then not at all for a couple days, like that. So lately I’ve been trying the ‘Pressfield Plan’–’showing up’ every day to the music paper. Not all of the music that results from that is good, of course–that’s what recycle bins are for! But there really is something different about making that commitment to just ’show up’–every stinkin’ day. Some crazy days that may mean getting up early. But there’s something amazing about showing–proving–your devotion to Your Muse by giving her attention every single day. Just like you need to give your boss and your amour attention every day. And your boss, your amour, and The Muse–they all respond in kind.

This doesn’t mean you can never take a day off. Rather, it’s the difference between ’showing up’ being the rule with the occasional–and conscious–exception, as opposed to what you were doing before where ’showing up’ was the exception–it was haphazard, and not the rule.

The big surprise has been that just ’showing up’ has been the hardest part–that the first note is by far the hardest to compose. The next note and the note after that come far more easily.’

Jack: I look forward to hearing how this works out for you.

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As always, MP3s are on the ‘honor system’–if my music does something for you, do a little monetary something for me and

I had the good fortune of having a great music teacher in my youth named Jack, who later became my mentor for life in general. We’ve remained in contact over the years, and I always enjoy my conversations with him. The other day our conversation turned to the subject of creativity…

William: So, Jack, what do you think ‘Creativity’ is in the first place?

Jack: Why don’t you take a stab at it yourself, and we’ll go from there.

William: OK, how about the ability to ‘think outside of the box’.

Jack: I think I know what you mean, but can you give a couple examples?

William: All right, how about a ‘practical’ one, and an ‘artsy’ one. For a practical example, we’re actually surrounded in modern life by millions upon millions of creative solutions to practical problems–embodied in the buildings we live in, the way we feed ourselves, the tools we use, just about everything! But, instead, I’ve always thought it rather interesting to think about the really simple inventions that go back to time immemorial which we still use every day. Like the BUTTON. Who thought of THAT? I like to imagine some long-forgotten cave WOMAN inventing the button (made out of lizard tooth) to bind and unbind two brontosaurus hides. And now, thousands upon thousands of years later, we’re still using her same invention.

Jack: (chuckling) OK! I like that! And your ‘artsy’ one?

William: Um, how about a really interesting use of words, where both the MEANING of the words and the SOUND of the words themselves work together to paint a picture. One of my favorite poems is a good example of that: Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells:

Jack: That IS a great one. The Complete Poe is right over there—let’s hear it again.

William:

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! -
From the molten - golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! - how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now - now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale - faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people - ah, the people -
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human -
They are Ghouls: -
And their king it is who tolls: -
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells: -
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells: -
To the sobbing of the bells: -
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells, -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Jack: That’s a great one all right! So, you said that creativity has something to do with ‘thinking out of the box’. How do the ‘button’ and Poe’s The Bells exemplify that?

William: Um, I don’t know! The button was definitely a “cognitive leap”—the inventor put stuff laying around to a new use; and Poe’s poem is definitely a creative and fairly unique use of just the SOUND of language itself to help propel the poem. Maybe “thinking out of the box” isn’t such a good description of Creativity after all.

Jack: Oh, there’s plenty of good “definitions” of creativity, and “thinking out of the box” is as good as many of them. So let’s not give up on it quite yet. In the case of the Button Cave-lady, what might HER ‘box’ be?

William: Well, there’s actually probably more than one. One would be her old way of doing things. Maybe it was a brontosaurus coat and it was lashed closed and you just had to wiggle your way into and out of it–which could be hard to do. So one box could just be HABIT—not taking a moment to stop and think: “there’s GOT to be an easier way!”

Jack: Good. That’s definitely one absolute necessity of being creative—you have to stop and THINK about what you’re doing, and ask yourself “is there ANOTHER WAY”?

What else?

William: It occurs to me, that maybe Button Cave-lady didn’t jump all the way to the button as we know it in one swell-foop. Maybe they first just wrapped rope around their waist to keep the bronto-coat closed; then they had the idea of attaching short pieces of rope to the coat so they could just tie it closed; then maybe they permanently tied that lizard bone onto one of the pieces of rope so the only had to tie/untie the one side; and so on.

Jack: That’s right. Of course we don’t know the details of how the button was invented, but that process of small improvements adding up to a big leap occurs constantly.

And there’s plenty more we could learn by thinking about your ‘button’ example. Meanwhile, how is Poe’s The Bells an example of thinking out of the box?

William: Well, maybe a variation on the ‘breaking a habit’ idea. It occurs to me that, as I listen to you speak, I’m essentially unaware of the specific vowels and consonants that you’re using, and just hearing the “meaning” behind what you’re saying. Just like reading—at a certain point you cease to be aware of the letters and spaces on the page, and are only aware of the ‘message’. To go from awareness of the meaning to awareness of the sound itself is actually shifting your awareness in a way.

Jack: OK, but is this something only a genius like Poe can do?

William: Well, if you don’t understand English and someone read you Poe’s poem, you would ONLY be aware of the SOUND of his poem—the meaning would be lost on you. Maybe you didn’t understand English because you’re a foreigner—or maybe just pre-verbal—a baby.

Jack: But once you call attention to it, it’s EASY to shift your perception and be aware of the vowels and consonants, or letters and spaces on the page. So that’s actually a skill we all already have—and a pretty easy one at that. Poe had the genius to take a mode of perception that we all have, but have forgotten, and to exploit it in a really interesting way.

William: Wow. In other words, we generally perceive our world stuck in ruts. And we’re perfectly capable of perceiving the world in new ways OUT of those ruts. And that shift can actually be pretty easy to do!

So, I wonder how many ruts I’m stuck in, that would be easy to get out of if I could identify them, where doing so would rock my world…?

For the last week or so I’ve been waking up at 2:30 am. Wide awake. Which has been driving me (and my wife) crazy.

My diet/routine/etc. hasn’t changed lately, but I’ve tried varying them anyway to see if I could figure out what’s going on. No difference–still wide awake at 2:30 am.

Then, day before yesterday, my wife suggested: “You know, maybe something inside needs to talk to you and is trying to get your attention. Instead of getting up and trying to do something ‘productive’, why not just stop and listen.”

Which, of course, was a stunningly marvelous idea. And it reminded me of the story of Samuel in the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible (I Samuel 3). Samuel ultimately becomes a great spiritual leader of Israel, but at this point in his story he’s a boy in the care of Eli the temple priest (King James version):

(1) And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no vision. (2) And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place, and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; (3) and ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep; (4) that the LORD called Samuel: and he answered, Here am I. (5) And he ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and lay down. (6) And the LORD called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And he answered, I called not, my son; lie down again. (7) Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him. (8) And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child. (9) Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. (10) And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.

So, yesterday morning, like clockwork I was wide awake at 2:30 again, but this time I got up and sat quietly with my journal. The results were pretty darn interesting…

One of the things I’ve been thinking about, and became clear to me In The Still Of The Night at 2:30 am, is that I need to expand the scope of my blog: I’d like to explore the Creative Life. And that’s not just for artists/musicians–we ALL need creative solutions to the challenges of Life, and to keep growing personally. And this poor planet could sure use some new creative solutions to a long list of problems. So, with your indulgence, I’d like to start sharing my own little victories and insights, and perhaps you might be moved to share some of yours, and we can all become just a little more creative and whole together!

sincerely,

william zeitler

• A Prayer In The Still Of The Night (5:40)
• Here’s the first 20 seconds
• Here’s the PDF score

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As always, MP3s are on the ‘honor system’–if my music does something for you, do a little monetary something for me and