Zero Point Series — Ownership

Zero Point Part 2

My Ownership Complex

Before the end of last year, I completed an album

I worked with and am still working with an engineer at another studio,

Lee from the Elements studio in Nottingham, which has been great by the way, he is a Wizard!

We spent a day doing a hand over in December

In which I gave him the music in a format he could work with

I experienced a mixed bag of new emotions during this process, of going through the material

It took me about a day to figure out what I had experienced

I felt vulnerable and exposed, and expressed this with a withdrawn, timidness

When the reality was I had a monster album on my hands

Yet my behaviour exemplified the opposite.

He was sensitive to this and was patient with me,

And he seemed to respond positively to the work, he was curious about how I made the pieces

And seemed to sense there was stories embedded in the creative process

He was right, there is a substance there, its hard to be clear about what that substance is

But it has meaning to me, so its a meaningful substance.

So my attitude was disemboddied from the reality

This mismatch is common in all sorts of situations and they are worth taking note of

As they reveal a lot to you about yourself and the way in which you are interacting in the world

The way I behaved was as if I was happy to let the moment pass

not to make noise or a fuss about my achievement

Although the opportunity was ripe to take ownership,

and perhaps to indulge in the pride of achievement

I had gone from point A ,no work to show, just potential idea’s in my head

To point B, to the manifestation of the idea in full

My reluctance here was interesting and seemed to point to some inner contradiction

Although in my persona, from a young age I decided that I would aspire to be ‘quietly confident’

That I would be able to be powerful without having to externalise or ‘project’ excessive authority

There is great skill involved in this ‘quiet confidence’ as there are many ways of executing this ideal and also the many pitfalls

Some more effective than others, some tried and tested and some more original

Back to the statement,

‘What you want is the same as what is it you are willing to own’ from the previous blog

To analyse my response to these new emotions, two points of interest

One — Subtle Understanding

It may of been a mark of intelligence for me to respond this way

Knowing that whatever the work I had made, wasn’t fully mine.

In the sense that I hadn’t done it completely alone,

And there is an important aspect of this to all creative work.

Therefore I did not warrant the full credit of complete ownership of the project

There where many factors that sustained and initiated the development of such a project

Which allowed the project to grow, many of these which remain uncreditted and unspoken for.

For example, the people who keep the electrics working in the studio,

some people who have given me equipment to work with,

the other people I share the space with who’s work contribute to the

overheads etc…..

A creative person is like a sponge, taking in a large bandwidth of information

Paying attention to subtle nuances, listening in ways people don’t perhaps normally listen

Picking up on subtle patterns of behaviour and language

And then assimilating this information

The skillful creative is then able to distill this information into something which appears much

simpler in form yet conceals dimensions of thought and layers of meaning coded into the form

In this sense what is a logical next step to the creative artist

is awe inspiring to an onlooker, as the links, the artist is drawing comes from a wider range of potential possibilities,

Yet in the artists mind its an obvious link rather than a jump in context.

So maybe my sense was in that initial response was it was my accumulative experience which

had a bigger part to play in creating the project, than ‘I’ the central part of the experience.

This accumulative experience would include, the other artists who have influenced me,

Friends who I have insightful, therapeutic conversations with,

Traumatic experiences in the past which creative work such as this allowed me to transform

into more positive experience’s helping me change my perspective on life

Even brief moments throughout the day, gazing at clouds, an encounter with a farm animal during

a country walk or overhearing a conversation on the bus, paying attention moment to moments

Offers many bright moments to draw inspiration from.

All of these accumulate in experience and somehow influence us in subtle ways

What is unique about all of these factors is that there isn’t anything that you have to do

There is not instruction or task, it is rather simply just being human

But one thing that I did do which was an active in the process

Was to discipline myself to learn how to sit and edit, critically think

And persistent self discipline until the project was able to be turned from a potential to a reality

You might want to think of it as at the sword of my consciousness which made the splintering

decision to shift matter from one form to another

This is elaborate, but its a metaphor for the proper use of power, strength ability and mastery

Once you practice this for long enough, you discipline yourself to sit and work enough to be able

to get yourself in a state of flow

During the creative process all of these elements seem to galvinize themselves into something new.

In this state it can seem like there is no time

which creates a sense of magic or something mystical yet

you can still break down the individual parts

The magic is in the mysterious ways in which these parts alchemise themselves in unexpected yet familiar ways.

TWO — Self Definition — Openness

Where and when do you draw the line? and how do you decide when to do this?

There is no simple answer to this question

As i’ve described earlier, there is an openness when you are being creative

which often means you shut down your barriers and you allow things to ‘come in’

An when this happens you let all sorts of unexpected things in, the more open you are

On contemplation of this scenario with Lee, I asked myself ‘what was I afraid to loose?’

To see if there was a fear or an association that came up,

When you are open more often than not,

You can get into the thinking habit of being afraid to miss out on something,

Open too wide for too long, and what you begin to loose is the acknowledgement of what you’ve already got.

On the quest for something new….

The things that are more obvious, that are staring you right in your face

Desperate for you attention and appreciation,

Yet at a certain point you have to draw a line and take what you have let in

and turn it into something.

Self definition, Its like having a blank canvas and drawing the outline of a figure

Or transforming a stone into a sculpture, turning formless potential into something tangible

Why is this important to grasp?

At a certain point you have to discern your moving on,

From a blank canvas to an image, and in this decision, this is where the ownership take place,

Even if its a ‘bad’ image, its a honest start….which is actually enough to begin with

You could also think of this in terms of growing up

And going from one stage to another in your evolution

And owning yourself, your actions, behaviours, thought patterns throughout this process

Thinking of it in these terms really helped me push through to end of this particular project

It made it seem more important and helped to motivate me to get it done

Also realising that with more and more projects that you do

You are only going to get better with each one

Even if you are slightly dissatisfied with the outcome

Knowing that its part of the process of continual improvement

The Creative Process

This is my biggest lesson I learnt from the last year

My pattern was to ; not open myself enough and edit too little

Or to open myself up too much and loose the ability to edit in the overwhelming chaos

I also learnt that each one can become a comfort blanket

The optimum position for growth is one foot in the unknown and the other foot in the known

Just on the edge of your comfort zone, positioning yourself for challenge and mastery simultaneously

When I create I am more interested in capturing the raw emotion than, clean and polished sound

I generally tend to keep moving on until I find the precise expression I am looking for

And when I find it I generally tend to know instinctively and I usually trust that, this was the antidote to my problem was to embrace both approaches and try to find a balance between the too,

To neglect neither of these two approaches and to over-do neither

Another practice I use which helps me to keep my idea’s flowing is to try all of them

‘Trying ALL of my Idea’s’ I write them down because it is impossible to remember them all, and I have alot of idea’s so Im always working

So I have a backlog of idea’s I’m constantly working through

Even if they are no good, at least Its discovery and I can eliminate the possibilities

Another reason for this method is that time is limited, on a good week I can spend

between 20–30 hours in the studio on concentrated creative time

You want to be able to produce as much work in this time as possible and minimise

Time spent ruminating, hesitating, and overthinking the work or your decisions

And instead maximise your creative output

This is what works for me, but you’ve got to find whatever works for you

I seem to be moving into a new phase now so It is likely to change

Yet its proved to be a good model for me to build on

Editing — Freedom & Discipline

The need to edit, its where the thinking and the conscious effort happens

To be able to challenge your own work, from multiple angles

To test your ideas to see if they stand up when opposed with different view points

Are they build to last?

During the creative process you may be activating parts of your mind or self

Which where previously dormant and expanding yourself in the process.

Which is a really healthy and a mark of personal growth

Expanding your awareness on a moment when you created something

Unconsciously doing multiple things you had no witness too

A recording can capture these moments and allow you reflect upon yourself

When I was younger I had no ability to do this

It’s kind of like drowning, because the overwhelming chaos can consume you

There is just too much of it, and too little of you

It was about finding a balance between the freedom and the discipline

Editting was a real discipline for me, it became fluid to create work

But to go back and filter through what you had already done and decipher

whether the idea’s are any good that was a big challenge

Perhaps because of overwhelming self criticism,

this was something I had to work on

To consciously improve and develop a healthier relationship with music and creativity

What helped was this rule;

‘For each criticism you give yourself, give yourself an equal amount of praise’

This helped me to keep the balance

Conclusively

Exploration is the approach I’m discussing

Its fun, it’s an Adventure, you will fail, you may experience successes

Extreme highs and Extreme Low’s are all part of the process of becoming

Because there is simply so much potential, We wont run out of things to explore or learn in one lifetime,

You could attempt to get through as much of it as possible and see what that results in

One way I like to look at this,

Is that you are yourself by the very fact of being alive Self Definition,

You are all of these potentials already, just the simply existing.

Life or consciousness gives you these as a default

And thus you have the opportunity for self realization as a consequence

To further evolve yourself into something beyond your current imaginings

Thanks for reading