Creativity
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On Twitter And Thinking
You may well know this already, but I’ll say it anyway: Whether you broadcast or receive, Twitter can be a compelling tool for thinking. Reflecting on its virtues, a few points come to mind: Twitter is brief. One hundred and forty characters is just enough of a text allotment to say one thing and then… Continue reading
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On Philippe Petit’s “Creativity: The Perfect Crime”
“When is something worth pursuing? I think when the outcome advances the efforts of humanity.” – Philippe Petit In his recent book, Creativity: the perfect crime, Philippe Petit reveals the elements, flows, techniques, and routines of his very long career as an artist. Petit is high-wire walker, juggler, magician, lock-picker, and all around street entertainer,… Continue reading
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On Creative Analogies: Lessons From Coi
“Perfect food is born of perfect order.” – Daniel Patterson, Coi I have written previously on this blog (see culinary arts posts) about connections between cooking and music. To add to that mix, I recently read Daniel Patterson’s excellent Coi cookbook. The book is structured around a series of short narratives that provide context for… Continue reading
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On Wit And Work: Adam Gopnik On Two Kinds Of Creativity
In his recent New Yorker essay on creativity in jazz and popular music (drawing on recent biographies of Duke Ellington and The Beatles as his case studies), Adam Gopnik makes a distinction between idea-based and action-based notions of creativity: “Originality comes in two kinds: originality of ideas, and originality of labor, and although it is… Continue reading
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On Creative Analogies: Lessons From El Bulli
“Order, order, order, that’s how you create.”–Ferran Adria If you have an interest in creativity, there are a number of reasons to recommend watching the film Cooking In Progress. The film tracks Ferran Adria and his crew from the famous El Bulli restaurant in a coastal town in north-east Spain. El Bulli is now closed–Adria… Continue reading
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On The Lessons Of Antifragility For Creativity: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Antifragile”
“We know more than we think we do, a lot more than we can articulate” (35) – Nassim Nicholas Taleb I used to resist randomly exploring some aspect of music software–an instrument, a sound, an effect, a sequencer–because I wanted to have a sense ahead of time where I was headed. (Good luck with that… Continue reading
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From The Archives: “Roadscape”
A few days ago a friend texts me an urgent musical request: “Send me roadscape” So I send it. *** About ten years ago I first tried my hand at sequencing and recording music on a computer. Back then, my Apple desktop machine was a blue- and silver-colored beast running Logic software. I also had… Continue reading
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On David Byrne’s “How Music Works”
It’s hard to keep track of all the things David Byrne does. He’s the former front man of the Talking Heads, of course, but also a singer-songwriter who has collaborated with musicians from all over the world, a record label founder, a sound art installation artist, a designer, a visual artist, a photographer,a bicycle enthusiast,… Continue reading
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On Beginnings And Anywheres: A John Cage Aphorism
I see the words on an inspirational magnet in a shop window. “Begin anywhere” the late American experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992) tells us. But what was the point of this telling? Cage in fact walked the walk of his talk, relying on rolling dice, consulting the Chinese I-Ching book of hexagrams, and even scrutinizing the… Continue reading
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On Play
Play, I’ve come to realize, is a favorite word of mine. In no particular order, here are some possible contexts for it: He plays that piano well. The book’s title was a play on words. My dog is playful. No worries: we were just playing around. You just got played. The musicians were playing off… Continue reading
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