Amped Up On Creativity

Want to go on a farm tour, visit a factory, or check out wineries? I'm in. I love to see how things are made. And I've been lucky enough to have opportunities to peek behind the curtain in some magical places. For example, in the early 1980s I got to see how the kitchen staff at Disney World quickly peeled onions by the garbage can-full using pneumatic tools to blow the skins off. Genius. At least, it seemed that way to me since I had a pretty good idea of how much longer it would take me to peel and chop those onions.

Creativity crosses into the mists of magic when we have no point of reference. When it comes to music, I have to thank my sister for the point of reference that made me pick up a documentary film at the library last week.

My sister is a very talented musician. The soundtrack of my youth wasn't rock and roll. It was classical piano and flute. I can hum many compositions I heard her practice and perform, but I can't tell you the names of the pieces or their composers. The same is true of much of the music I heard on the radio in those days and the years since. In other words, I'm culturally illiterate in most musical genres, but I have great respect for and fascination with seeing how music is made. And I can check out DVDs from the public library for seven days at no cost. So, why not?

The film was It Might Get Loud, a documentary on the electric guitar featuring guitarists from three different generations: Jack White from The White Stripes, The Edge from U2, and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. Please keep in mind that Stairway to Heaven was the theme for my junior or senior prom (can't remember for sure -- it's been a while).

Imagine me shouting without the use of all-caps: Get this film and watch it, as well as all of the deleted scenes and the Toronto Film Festival press conference footage. When these guys talk about creativity and the creative process, there's no sense of navel-gazing about it (well, maybe a tiny bit, but it's clarified in the press conference. What you get instead is a look behind the curtain at how three artists approach their craft.

The film opens with Jack White creating a stringed instrument from a Coke bottle and wire, a good reminder that with a sense of history and the simplest of materials you can overcome many obstacles to creativity. Here's a clip of that scene from You Tube.



After watching the film, I got to thinking about a 2-credit graduate workshop I taught a couple of years ago. This was at an art center known for its summer youth music programs. My students in the Art Cloth And Story Vessels class were mostly art teachers who remembered the original release of Smoke On The Water, which we heard frequently that week from the electric guitar and bass workshop in the studio above us. One of our challenges for the week was to explore ways to create unity in visual arts. The guitar class had something to teach this group of educators.

Like the guitarists in the film, the instructors for the electric guitar and bass workshop were from different generations. They generously and thoughtfully answered questions about how musician learn to unify a performance -- and gave us broken guitar strings to use in our vessels. Toward the end of the week, my class took a field trip to observe the body language of the student musician as they performed together. (We also visited the hip hop class to see how an instructor "cleaned" the dance to help unify elements of the performance.)

This Might Get Loud left me feeling really amped up -- and that was before the deleted scene where they discuss guitar strings. It was a great reminder to look for alternatives to conventional ideas, and that learning and inspiration sometimes come from unexpected quarters.