Creative Process Reflection

This semester has been very inspiring as we looked into what the creative process means to us. The understanding of creative process for me is the process of opening your mind and trying new possibilities. If we are able to approach everything that we do in a fresh and new way, thinking in a way that is outside of our typical approach, we will be on our way to something creative. There have many excellent books given to us this semester that have really helped me think differently and and to approach all aspects of my life in a new way. Not new in the sense of never been done, but new in the sense of an approach or awareness that I did not have before.  The book that I connected with most is Zen in the Art of Archery. The idea of using archery to achieve a state of Zen was very awakening for me as I realized that we are all trying to achieve that same level of Zen with our instruments and our  approaches music. We are constantly trying to find unity in our musicianship by incorporating our knowledge, inspiration, gestures, and our very sense of life into our ideas. I'd like to share a passage from the book, it embodies the struggles that I am currently experiencing in music and what it means to play with this type of purpose.

"The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoow the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen."

 "But you yourself have told me often enough that archery is not a pastime, not a purposeless game, but a matter of life and death!" "I stand by that. We master archers say: one shot--one life!What this means, you cannot yet understand.