This & That: A Couple Ideas About Creativity

A lesson about music that carries over.

Hi there readers,

In this edition of the newsletter, I write about my piano lessons, share a list of books on creativity, and, as always, share some great links for you to peruse.

Let’s get right to it!

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Something I’m Thinking About: Taking Breaks to Get Unstuck

I’ve been taking weekly, in-person piano lessons for almost four months now. It’s become one of the highlights of my week and a truly fulfilling new hobby.

A couple months, I decided to print off the sheet music for Interstellar’s main theme song — it’s one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite epic soundtracks. I’ve watched the pro video below about a million times since I first started taking lessons:

The piece is definitely a bit advanced given where I started, but I’ve been chugging away, a few notes and measures at a time and I’ve made some pretty good progress! If you watch the video above, I can get through the first ~2:30.

After weeks of obsessive playing, I was starting to feel a little stuck. Like I wasn’t getting any smoother or more proficient. So I took a break. For a full week — which sort of feels like an eternity when you’re a piano beginner — I didn’t touch the piece.

Last Thursday, I picked it up again, expecting it to feel a little rusty. Instead, I played through what I knew as smoothly as I ever have. My fingers knew what to do and it felt great.

As a person who writes a lot, I should’ve known this would be the case. There are times when pounding away at the laptop quits working and I need to take a walk or even just make a fresh cup of coffee.

It was nice to learn, though, that the magic of taking a break, even an extended one, carries over into other creative disciplines.

If you’re feeling stuck or frustrated in your work — like the tap has been closed shut — the best thing you can do is walk away for a bit. Your brain will fill in the gaps and the creative tap will open afresh.

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The Mini List: Unlocking Your Creative Potential

I’ve only recently begun to let myself believe that I’m a creative person. Sure, I do a lot of writing, but most of it is descriptive, not requiring much brainstorming or workshopping. But after getting into piano and taking my descriptive style of writing a little more seriously, I can admit that I am in fact a creative human. We all are! It just manifests in a million different ways. Here’s a few books I’ve thought about a lot in recent months as I’ve more intentionally cultivated my creative side:

• The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield — There’s no better writer on the creative life than Pressfield.

• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert — Gilbert has had an up and down writing career, but her book on pursuing a craft is must-read.

• Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson — This is a fat biography, but Isaacson does an awesome job analyzing da Vinci’s creativity and translating those lessons for us mortals.

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Miscellany

👦 Libraries and bookstores are full of kid’s books about inspiring role models for women — Rebel Girls, for example, is a staple nighttime read in our house. I’m thrilled that these books exist, but the same type of book for boys is surprisingly hard to find. With Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, we finally discovered a compilation of brave and compassionate men for my boys to look up to.

🎥 I’m always leery of celebrity memoirs, so I appreciate that The Atlantic published this list of seven titles that stand out from the crowd. I can vouch that Stanley Tucci’s Taste was very good.

📜 Lindsay Chervinsky is a historian who excels at connecting the past to our modern world. This piece about Lincoln’s incredible success in spite of his unpreparedness for the job reminds us that predicting presidential success is a total crapshoot.

👕 My wife recently snagged this Spyder Performance Hoodie for me at Costco and I love it. Pretty sure my closet will soon have at least one more.

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Thanks for the time and attention. I know it’s your most valuable commodity and I deeply appreciate it.

-Jeremy