Creativity

The documentary we watched on the three legendary guitarists conference in 2008 got me thinking. What inspires creativity and what inhibits? What they all three seemed to have in common were financial limitations as a youth and plenty of free time. The rule of thumb for creativity, at least for me, seems to be simple. Relying on other people for "creativity", such as playing board games or listening and replaying music off of a sheet, is limiting. It inhibits one's own thinking by mimicking that of others. The best analogy I could think of deals with a playground.

As a child in Germany, I was allowed to play tag on the playground. When I moved to the U.S., the game of tag was forbidden at my new school. Rather than dropping the activity overall or conforming to the standard basketball/monkey-bar giggling kids, my friends and I desperately attempted to create acceptable games that allowed for the hunting down of each other on the playground. The point is, we refused to accept the prescribed manners of free time and instead chose to circumvent the set rules. While this did lead to scolding at times, overall, it was a delightful, though guilty, pleasure. However, we achieved creativity!

In this sense, I believe that I can start being more creative in small increments playing the piano. At first, I played straight from the sheet music. Then I modified the sheet music to a more difficult or personally satisfying level. Now I'm trying to write my own songs and learn music by ear. Small steps forward, trying to avoid the creativity of others and find my own.