I think a lot about the learning process, and the creative process. While there is heavy overlap between the two processes, they are not exactly the same.
Nevertheless, people often want to rush both. They want to push as hard they can, like it’s all metric driven, like it’s a profit and loss chart in a high-pressure sales room…
“OK, we have to acquire one new note a week, because by the end of the year I’ll have more range than any singer ever”
“This song feels comfortable, so I can’t be pushing myself, gotta find something that finds my limits again”
“If I can’t nail this song in one attempt, I’m a total failure”
Utter nonsense!
Yet we have all thought along such lines at some point or another. We may never have articulated such things in so many words, but we’ve all FELT that way about progress.
That progress has to be measurable, quantifiable, dissectible. And that measurable progress needs to be constant and even day to day, week to week, year to year. Slow downs, setbacks, or worse, variable performance is not acceptable.
Learning and the creative process really isn’t like that. With such a mindset, frustration and burnout is an inevitability.
In fact, even more metric driven things you’d THINK would be like that (e.g. weight lifting, business work) isn’t really like that. There’s always ups and downs. While there may be greater risks attached to getting things wrong in such domains, there is always the requirement to recognise the highly variable nature of progress, and to be gentle with oneself. Just because the results aren’t there today, doesn’t mean you’re not doing everything you need to do to get there. Growing things of value and worth – especially things of a creative and artistic nature – take time to grow and develop.
Jason Alexander
This was summarised beautifully in this short clip with stage and screen actor, Jason Alexander.
If you can’t listen to the clip right now, here’s the transcript.
“As you begin to find your way of working, and you bump into something [you find] I can’t make this work. Be gentle with yourself. I keep quoting my teacher Larry Moss, I studied with him for 14 years…
You don’t yell at a bud for not being a flower yet.
It’s going to be a flower, but it opens when it’s time for it to open. If you’re working on something that is beyond your ability at the moment, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be beyond your ability [forever], but at the moment it’s going to frustrate the hell out of you.
Acknowledge it, go ‘I’m not getting this, I’m not achieving what I want to achieve right now.’
[Then say] ‘Tomorrow. I’ll make another choice tomorrow, and I’ll look at another of these elements another way.’
I think that’s such a beautiful and concise way of summarising the learning and creative process. Keep up the work, recognise some days it won’t come together with big leaps forward as it did at the start of your journey… and then keep up the work again anyway. The bud opens when it’s ready.
If you’d like to experience this kind of learning process in your voice and music, you’re very welcome to book in to work with me right here.