I see it in all three of the areas of creativity in which I'm active: writing, music, and now pottery (from poetry to pottery).
Without technique, one's creativity is limited.
True, children are endlessly creative and boldly imaginative, but the limits of what a child can do are evident.
However: the effort to acquire technique often stifles creativity.
The young writer becomes aware of the need to write correctly and stifles her imagination.
The young musician strives to control her instrument and stifles her expressivity.
The young potter concentrates so hard on producing centered, symmetrical, and light pieces that she loses the drive for originality and spontaneity.
For the mature artist, technique and creativity feed into one another. One enhances one's technique in order to create things that were beyond one, and one's enhanced technique spurs one's imagination for further creativity.
When I took up music again after more or less giving up on it while I was in college, I studied for two or three years with Stephen Horenstein, a brilliant composer and virtuoso saxophone player - who became and has remained a good friend. At the time, Steve said that if someone were just playing his instrument without being creative at it, there was no point to it. That was the first time I'd heard that from a music teacher. Up till then the challenge had been to play the notes correctly.
I wasn't ready for Steve's message then and, while I kept on playing saxophone, never really extended myself creatively at it.
About fifteen years down the line I acquired a musical guru of sorts: Arnie Lawrence. Perhaps because I was ready for it, I let Arnie push me hard in the creative direction.
Have I become a creative musician? A creative person?
These are the wrong questions.
I am more creative than I was and more appreciative of creativity when I encounter it.
That's already a lot.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Getting into Pottery
I am ordinarily slow to come to decisions, but the decision to start taking pottery lessons was quick and virtually instinctive.
When I was a child of ten or so, my mother enrolled me in a pottery class at Greenwich House, near our home in Greenwich Village, New York City. I was too young to walk to Greenwich House on my own, because I would have had to cross Sixth Avenue by myself, so she took me there. We walked downtown along Washington Square West, where we lived, then to the west on Fourth Street, probably a ten minute walk. It would have taken too much of her time for my mother to leave me, go home, and then come back to get me, so she enrolled in an adult class.
I enjoyed pottery, but after a year or two, all the other boys in the class dropped out, and, I being too young to see the advantage of being alone with a room full of girls, dropped out, too. Meanwhile, my mother remained an avid amateur ceramicist throughout most of the following years.
The idea of taking up the craft as an adult never occurred to me until a few months ago.
I looked up pottery classes on the Internet and spotted one that seemed appropriate from every point of view - it was within walking distance from my house in Jerusalem, the price was not too high, and the hours were extremely flexible. I called up the teacher right away, arranged to go to see her setup, and within a day or two I was sitting at one of her wheels, struggling to center a rapidly turning lump of clay.
Hadas, my teacher is a tall, thin young woman, and her studio is in two front rooms of a small rented apartment in an extremely expensive neighborhood. She has four wheels, a kiln in a shed outside her door, and the clay, firing, and glazes are included in the price of the class. The downside of the flexibility she offers us in scheduling our sessions is that she constantly has to juggle us from one slot to another. Because my time is pretty much in my own control, I have attended classes on various days, at various hours, and so met many of her students. They are mainly women, but now I don't mind that.
Hadas' teaching method is low key and unintrusive. She lets us work on our own and waits for us to ask her how to do things. That suits me perfectly.
I think I would have been happy as a potter. If I'd stuck at it as an adolescent, I'm sure I would have gotten more and more deeply involved in it, maybe gone on into it. But who knows? There were so many external pressures on me at the time, pressure to excel academically, pressure to get into a fine university and qualify for some prestigious kind of work, that I wasn't ever in touch with what I wanted. I can't imagine that I would have considered going to art school and majoring in ceramics in the face of all that pressure, for I had completely internalized the values it came from. I thought that art school was for people who weren't good at other, more important things.
Now, however, as I approach my mid-sixties, having done all the things I was supposed to do, more or less -- received a BA from a prestigious university, earned a doctorate at another prestigious university, worked for decades as a translator (in other words, I put my intellectual gifts to some kind of use), raised a family, and so on -- I feel as if pottery is the artistic medium I have been searching for all my life.
I always wanted to be some kind of artist, but never got it together to become one. Since I'm very verbal, I thought I ought to be a writer, that if I had an artistic medium, it would be words. Indeed, I have had some modest success as a writer and translator, but I never felt delight in what I wrote. I also have some visual skills, and I was seriously involved in photography for a few years, but there, too, I didn't find that I was taking pictures that anyone else couldn't have taken. When I was doing photography, it was more a way of running away from my disaffection with graduate work than involvement in the thing itself.
I am also a serious amateur musician. I play saxophone and clarinet and even went back to university to study musicology half time for three years. I love hearing and playing music, but I'll never be seriously good at it. Not that I mind. I'm not ambitious as a musician. I'm glad to have opportunities to play, and I enjoy it. It's refreshing to do something without being ambitious about it. Perhaps ambition is what took the pleasure out of writing for me - but let's not go into that for the moment.
When I was a child of ten or so, my mother enrolled me in a pottery class at Greenwich House, near our home in Greenwich Village, New York City. I was too young to walk to Greenwich House on my own, because I would have had to cross Sixth Avenue by myself, so she took me there. We walked downtown along Washington Square West, where we lived, then to the west on Fourth Street, probably a ten minute walk. It would have taken too much of her time for my mother to leave me, go home, and then come back to get me, so she enrolled in an adult class.
I enjoyed pottery, but after a year or two, all the other boys in the class dropped out, and, I being too young to see the advantage of being alone with a room full of girls, dropped out, too. Meanwhile, my mother remained an avid amateur ceramicist throughout most of the following years.
The idea of taking up the craft as an adult never occurred to me until a few months ago.
I looked up pottery classes on the Internet and spotted one that seemed appropriate from every point of view - it was within walking distance from my house in Jerusalem, the price was not too high, and the hours were extremely flexible. I called up the teacher right away, arranged to go to see her setup, and within a day or two I was sitting at one of her wheels, struggling to center a rapidly turning lump of clay.
Hadas, my teacher is a tall, thin young woman, and her studio is in two front rooms of a small rented apartment in an extremely expensive neighborhood. She has four wheels, a kiln in a shed outside her door, and the clay, firing, and glazes are included in the price of the class. The downside of the flexibility she offers us in scheduling our sessions is that she constantly has to juggle us from one slot to another. Because my time is pretty much in my own control, I have attended classes on various days, at various hours, and so met many of her students. They are mainly women, but now I don't mind that.
Hadas' teaching method is low key and unintrusive. She lets us work on our own and waits for us to ask her how to do things. That suits me perfectly.
I think I would have been happy as a potter. If I'd stuck at it as an adolescent, I'm sure I would have gotten more and more deeply involved in it, maybe gone on into it. But who knows? There were so many external pressures on me at the time, pressure to excel academically, pressure to get into a fine university and qualify for some prestigious kind of work, that I wasn't ever in touch with what I wanted. I can't imagine that I would have considered going to art school and majoring in ceramics in the face of all that pressure, for I had completely internalized the values it came from. I thought that art school was for people who weren't good at other, more important things.
Now, however, as I approach my mid-sixties, having done all the things I was supposed to do, more or less -- received a BA from a prestigious university, earned a doctorate at another prestigious university, worked for decades as a translator (in other words, I put my intellectual gifts to some kind of use), raised a family, and so on -- I feel as if pottery is the artistic medium I have been searching for all my life.
I always wanted to be some kind of artist, but never got it together to become one. Since I'm very verbal, I thought I ought to be a writer, that if I had an artistic medium, it would be words. Indeed, I have had some modest success as a writer and translator, but I never felt delight in what I wrote. I also have some visual skills, and I was seriously involved in photography for a few years, but there, too, I didn't find that I was taking pictures that anyone else couldn't have taken. When I was doing photography, it was more a way of running away from my disaffection with graduate work than involvement in the thing itself.
I am also a serious amateur musician. I play saxophone and clarinet and even went back to university to study musicology half time for three years. I love hearing and playing music, but I'll never be seriously good at it. Not that I mind. I'm not ambitious as a musician. I'm glad to have opportunities to play, and I enjoy it. It's refreshing to do something without being ambitious about it. Perhaps ambition is what took the pleasure out of writing for me - but let's not go into that for the moment.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Smashing all my Pots
As I may have mentioned, a supremely generous woman has been allowing me to use her pottery studio a few times a week for the past three months or so, and I produced thirty or forty vessels on her wheel. I was planning to ask her to fire them. Then I was planning to bring them to the studio where I take lessons to glaze them and fire them again.
When I asked Hadas, my teacher, whether that would be possible, she told me that I had made an irreparable error: I mixed different kinds of clay that have to be fired at different temperatures. So she can't fire them for me.
It is true that if I had my own kiln and my own glazes, I could have glazed and fired them all at a low temperature, but I'm far from there. So the only thing I could do was smash them all and soak them in water to reclaim the clay - which remains clay that I won't be able to glaze, though I can fire it.
Early this morning I went down to the studio and broke up almost all the vessels I had thrown over the past three months. I put them in a tub of water to turn them back into raw clay, which I've decided to use for projects that don't need glazing. Maybe I'll make a bunch of flower pots, for example, and some sculptures. This morning I started in that direction. But I'm prepared to smash all that in a month or two.
Oddly enough, I have absolutely no regrets about any of the pots that I destroyed. My standards have been going up as my skill has increased, and I didn't see much point in firing and glazing a bunch of heavy, lopsided, clumsy pieces.
Many teachers of pottery impose stringent discipline on beginners, making them smash every pot that isn't centered. Hadas, the teacher I've been going to, is more laissez faire, and she's right. Sometimes clumsy pots have a charm of their own. Why discourage people when they're doing pottery for the fun of it?
When I asked Hadas, my teacher, whether that would be possible, she told me that I had made an irreparable error: I mixed different kinds of clay that have to be fired at different temperatures. So she can't fire them for me.
It is true that if I had my own kiln and my own glazes, I could have glazed and fired them all at a low temperature, but I'm far from there. So the only thing I could do was smash them all and soak them in water to reclaim the clay - which remains clay that I won't be able to glaze, though I can fire it.
Early this morning I went down to the studio and broke up almost all the vessels I had thrown over the past three months. I put them in a tub of water to turn them back into raw clay, which I've decided to use for projects that don't need glazing. Maybe I'll make a bunch of flower pots, for example, and some sculptures. This morning I started in that direction. But I'm prepared to smash all that in a month or two.
Oddly enough, I have absolutely no regrets about any of the pots that I destroyed. My standards have been going up as my skill has increased, and I didn't see much point in firing and glazing a bunch of heavy, lopsided, clumsy pieces.
Many teachers of pottery impose stringent discipline on beginners, making them smash every pot that isn't centered. Hadas, the teacher I've been going to, is more laissez faire, and she's right. Sometimes clumsy pots have a charm of their own. Why discourage people when they're doing pottery for the fun of it?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Intelligent Design
What about Stupid Design?
It is argued, for example, that something as complicated as the vertebrate eye could never have evolved by chance, without a guiding intelligence.
But why design eyes that weaken as we age, that are subject to blindness and disease, and that are limited the way ours are?
For that matter, why would an intelligent designer give us teeth that rot and gums that recede?
There's so much palpably wrong with the little piece of the universe where we live, that one might go so far as positing an absent-minded designer with occasional flashes of intelligence and a nasty tendency to play practical jokes.
It is argued, for example, that something as complicated as the vertebrate eye could never have evolved by chance, without a guiding intelligence.
But why design eyes that weaken as we age, that are subject to blindness and disease, and that are limited the way ours are?
For that matter, why would an intelligent designer give us teeth that rot and gums that recede?
There's so much palpably wrong with the little piece of the universe where we live, that one might go so far as positing an absent-minded designer with occasional flashes of intelligence and a nasty tendency to play practical jokes.
Wishes and Fulfillment
You have probably been exposed to the New Age fad of visualizing Success. The first step toward achieving what you want is to visualize it, one is told. And visualizing it becomes a guarantee of achieving It - jobs, money, the perfect spouse.
At my age, some of the things desired by people in their thirties, who are launching themselves into life, don't seem relevant. I'm more modest in my ambitions: maintaining decent health, living to see my grandchildren reach maturity, making good use of the time allotted to me.
A friend of mine fantasizes about travel, about renting a barge and floating down the canals of Europe, about buying a camper and roaming about the North American continent, and in fact he did something a lot of people imagine doing but never get together: he and a couple of friends, men in their late sixties, bought huge motorcycles in California and zigzagged across the US and Canada for a few months.
My fantasies are more about staying put than about traveling.
One recent fantasy that I'm living with is to install a pottery studio in our home and devote much more time to ceramics - my latest passion - than I am doing at present. I'm halfway there, in fact, because an acquaintance of mine, an accomplished ceramicist, is allowing me to use her studio two days a week.
Another fantasy is to create a music studio, with sound equipment, and to play and write music. I imagine writing arrangements for the big band I play in.
Another fantasy is to get a regular gig in a pub with my pianist friend and play standards. I'm too shy to move forward on this, but it's certainly possible.
And I entertain fantasies about importing musical instruments and opening a woodwind store. This is not a serious idea!
Interestingly, I don't have fantasies about writing a hugely successful novel or anything else connected with writing and literature, though that has been my main occupation all my life.
At my age, some of the things desired by people in their thirties, who are launching themselves into life, don't seem relevant. I'm more modest in my ambitions: maintaining decent health, living to see my grandchildren reach maturity, making good use of the time allotted to me.
A friend of mine fantasizes about travel, about renting a barge and floating down the canals of Europe, about buying a camper and roaming about the North American continent, and in fact he did something a lot of people imagine doing but never get together: he and a couple of friends, men in their late sixties, bought huge motorcycles in California and zigzagged across the US and Canada for a few months.
My fantasies are more about staying put than about traveling.
One recent fantasy that I'm living with is to install a pottery studio in our home and devote much more time to ceramics - my latest passion - than I am doing at present. I'm halfway there, in fact, because an acquaintance of mine, an accomplished ceramicist, is allowing me to use her studio two days a week.
Another fantasy is to create a music studio, with sound equipment, and to play and write music. I imagine writing arrangements for the big band I play in.
Another fantasy is to get a regular gig in a pub with my pianist friend and play standards. I'm too shy to move forward on this, but it's certainly possible.
And I entertain fantasies about importing musical instruments and opening a woodwind store. This is not a serious idea!
Interestingly, I don't have fantasies about writing a hugely successful novel or anything else connected with writing and literature, though that has been my main occupation all my life.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Four Kinds of Playing: Number One
I'm not going to write about all four right away, and I'm not sure there really are four. In any case, I'll start with straight classical playing, the kind that I was trained in until I gave up the clarinet when I was in college and wasn't good enough to get into the university orchestra. At the time, the only kind of musician I could imagine being was a classical musician.
Recently we hosted a concert in our home. A friend of ours is a classical singer. She had prepared a recital of Lieder with an excellent accompanist and asked if we would be volunteer our living room and grand piano. We agreed. Indeed, we have had quite a few chamber music concerts in our living room, and our piano has been played by some superb musicians. (I always feel that when a master plays an instrument, the instrument absorbs some of the mastery.) I thought, though, that it would be only fair to ask a small favor in return, so I prevailed upon the pianist to accompany me in a short piece, “Danse,” by Darius Milhaud for alto saxophone and piano. You can hear a fine performance (not by me) of that sweet piece on this website: http://www.dcmusicaviva.org/recordings/documents/dance.mp3
Playing a piece like that demands, first of all, precision. You have to play all the notes exactly the way the composer wrote them, in time, in tune, articulated the way it's indicated on the printed page, with the correct dynamics. The challenge for the musician is to play as accurately as possible and, at the same time, to play the piece expressively, not mechanically.
Last year Judith and I attended a Scarlatti and Bach marathon, which was part or the Israel Festival. Six young pianists took turns playing, and we were enthralled not only by the excellence of their performances but also by the palpable differences in their approach – even though they were all playing the notes “as written.” It was a great lesson in interpretation.
My performance went okay. I was nervous and came in wrong a couple of times, but the accompanist never blinked and stuck right with me, and I don't think anyone in the audience noticed. If I had had more time to rehearse with him and develop a musical rapport, it wouldn't have happened. I enjoyed myself, but only so much. My conclusion was: I don't want to spend time and energy in preparing a recital of classical saxophone pieces (and imposing it on my friends), My self-image as a musician has changed.
Private Adventures
I spend quite a few hours every day in my exiguous home office, facing my computer screen, with a Hebrew book open on my left, rewriting the author's words in English. Usually I translate literature, which is stylistically difficult, or academic material, which can be conceptually difficult. Even when a job is fairly simple, I have to concentrate hard on it – if only to avoid skipping a line or a sentence, which has been known to happen. It's tiring. It can be very demanding. I'm constantly making decisions about individual words, about the shape of phrases, about the structure of sentences. And it's lonely: I make those decisions by myself – although later the authors often respond to my work, making corrections and offering suggestions.
Some of my more polite friends occasionally ask me what I'm working on, and sometimes, when I'm enthusiastic about a job, I'll tell them more than they really want to know. However, I'm deeply aware that my work entails intense, private experiences, which, paradoxically, because it's all about communication, is almost impossible to communicate. There's nothing outwardly dramatic about it. I'm not driving a car very fast, thrashing through a jungle, arresting violent criminals, or engineering billion dollar buyouts. There's also very little at stake – even if I get a sentence in a novel completely wrong, no one's going to suffer very much from my error. But I care deeply about getting the right word or expression, about making a sentence read well, about conveying the author's voice and ideas.
In the end, the locus of human experience is in the heart, not out in the world, and the essence of civilization is caring infinitely about things that don't have many practical consequences.
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