Anti-Slump Artist Date

Today I went on a trip to the beach. Just a little, half-hour excursion, just me & my camera.

I've been in a slump the last two weeks - emotionally, creatively, spiritually. The Artist's Way talks a lot about slumps, creative set backs, and generally not feeling up to creating. The advice that is given, over and over, is that creating things, despite how you're feeling, will bring you out of the slump. Having read this advice (over and over) I thought, "Obviously! How many times have you told me? I will SO remember this when I hit a slump."

...I didn't. Until today.

I've been trying to feel better by "relaxing" - watching tv, lounging around - or by trying to "be creative" by working on homework and my show. But, the thing I was missing in all that "relaxing" and "creativy" was PLAY. I wasn't letting myself play around and really enjoy the things I was doing.

When my rehearsal for this evening was cancelled, I went home and started doing the usual, but then I was struck by a whim to get in my car and hit the beach. So I did.

A selection of the fruits of my labor today:

Taken from inside my car, at the stoplight.

I didn't realize as I was taking it, but it almost looks like the foreground is in black and white.

I love silhouettes against sunsets.

Really love them.

And then...I started playing with the functions on my camera. Longer exposure and a receding tide equals moooving pictures:

I had to include this, even though it's so close to the other shots I took (there are so many more versions of this shot in my album from today). The wave is just slightly blurred. Yay movement in still photos.

And one last one, also taken from my car. Sort of a Hail Mary shot. Stuck the camera over my shoulder and pressed the button. I just wanted to colors! I love blue and orange together.

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I also spent some anti-slump time playing around on Pinterest. I think that's what made me want to take my camera out. It's so great for vision boards and discovering new images that inspire you! It also made me realize that I've been avoiding writing, so it was good to allow myself to be creative in a few different visual ways so that I felt unblocked enough to write again.

Inspiration: On Being Creative

When do you feel the most creative?

Summer Solstice Sunrise in Krakow by Raffee

I've started to wonder about this since I re-started The Artist's Way. There are times that I expect myself to feel really creative, like when I'm writing my morning pages, but I find that I'm just...not.

I suppose, just because I tell myself "write, right now" doesn't mean that the creativity comes along with it. For some people scheduling time to work on art everyday is helpful, and I've certainly  found it to produce results in terms of number of pages written, but it's not always as fun as when I'm feeling inspired or moved or just ready to create some shit.

What I have noticed...is that I feel creative at night. Late at night. This sucks, because that's a time that I like to spend sleeping.

I think I come up with some of my best ideas as I'm falling asleep. Sometimes I actually get up and write them down, but it takes a lot to get me out of a warm bed, so frequently my night insights are left with a "I hope you're still there tomorrow" as I fall asleep.

Feeling creative is different than feeling productive. I feel most productive in the morning. If I can get it together to get out of my oh-so-comfy bed early - I get shit done. But, rarely is it creative shit. It may be mildly creative shit because the things I'm getting done right now are usually homework assignments for grad school, but if I complete something like that in a productive mood, it gets done in a productive (rather than a creative) way.

Starting to hone in on this daily creativity cycle can be helpful. If I can find an ounce of productivity to get me away from the tv or computer late at night, then I can do creative shit when I'm feeling creative. This is also great to know in terms of rehearsals or even auditions - plan them to my advantage. It's like working out to maximize calorie burn. If you work out at a certain time after you've eaten, or at a certain time during the day (depending on which studies you read) you will burn more calories than if you don't. I want to give myself time to be creative when I'm feeling creative.

Also interesting to notice - when I don't feel creative. The morning, wow, the morning. The morning pages are especially difficult when I do not feeling like writing at all! Also, when watching TV. I'm sure this is obvious to some, but I have often tried to write or look over a script or draw while watching TV and it just doesn't work. Watching a movie can be great, but TV...I don't know. Maybe it's the commercials.

Has anyone else noticed this? Do you often feel creative at certain times of the day? Or is it just me?

Nocha de luna llena by Luz Adriana Villa A

Inspiration: Cross-Create

music by craigCloutier

I'm working on a song in my voice lessons that I am having some trouble with. It's an Irish song, and it's essentially the same four-line stanza that repeats three times. I LOVE the song, but I felt like it was all the same mood, the same inflections, etc. the whole way through. The hard thing with this kind of song is building a story around it so that you can give it variety and interest within the same set of notes. I was feeling kinda bummed about working on it cause I wasn't really sure where to start.

Normally, my voice teacher has us write out our lyrics on a piece of paper so that we can see the build of the thoughts as the melody changes. For example:


xxxxx
xxxxx
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xxxxx
xxxxx
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     xxxxx



          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


               xxxxxx
               xxxxxx

               xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


But with my current song, it looked like

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Boring!

So, he suggested that I make up a story. This is fairly normal, because you want to create circumstances for yourself in a song that are specific and that speak to you and fuel you to perform the song. However, for this particular song he suggested that I think of it like a screenplay. It's basically like making my own music video in my head, but it's not a way that I've worked before so it may turn out to be really helpful.

Decide the specifics of the story, thought by thought, and even imagine what the camera shots look like - when is the camera on you?
when is the camera from your perspective and who are you looking at and why?
when are you singing in voice over and we're seeing a flashback into the time in your life that you're singing about/thinking about?

I think this is not only an awesome idea, but an idea that inspired me - what if I started to apply different mediums to things I'm working on? Like applying screenwriting or film making to singing performance.

My voice teacher told me about an artist friend of his who would put on a symphony and paint what she heard. Sometimes I'll put on music while I'm writing, and damn does it make me feel like everything I'm writing is brilliant!

Cross-Creating is like cross-pollinating. When plants are cross-pollinated, they often end up getting stronger and better able to pollinate (they often have taller stamens, at least according to Wikipedia...).

Maybe if I start cross-creating, my art will get stronger.

Other things to try in the future:

Paint the feeling of a poem
Take pictures of things your character might look at or find interesting - how would they frame it?
Choreograph a dance that embodies the story arc of your character in a play
Sing a monologue - what would it be like if this monologue was the main number of a musical?

Yay making things!

Inspiration: Give Yourself Boundaries

Every Wednesday is going to be Inspiration Day. I'm going to write about things that inspire me to work on new projects, or things that may inspire you.

My boyfriend saw Jack White of the White Stripes on Charlie Rose say he never wanted to expand the band from him and his drummer, Meg, because it challenged him artistically. White said, "I think there's more creativity when there's less opportunity." He said similar things in an interview with Rolling Stone.When my boyfriend told me, all I thought was what a great idea.

Have you ever thought of giving yourself boundaries in order to create something new?

Box girl by sxld

A lot of people are using time as a boundary - 365 days of pictures, a year of doing this or that every day. Theme months, theme weeks. (coincidentally, this picture comes from a 365 pix project - "365 photos taken over the course of forever")

What if you only took pictures of things that were green?
What if you only took pictures from three inches off the ground?
What if you only drew things that made you think of home?
What if you never rehearsed a dance piece in the same room twice?
What if you wrote a short play where each sentence a character spoke had to be one syllable longer than the sentence before?

Some of these could be terribly difficult, but they would force you to do something you've never done before.

Create the box, so that you can think outside of it.

What kind of boxes are you going to create?