Articles tagged with: creation

Great Artists Steal or How to Learn from the Masters

Maxima Kahn October 18th, 2017

T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

What did Eliot mean by this seemingly outrageous assertion? He wasn’t talking about plagiarism, which would be directly quoting or copying exactly another artist’s work. What he was talking about is recognizing great ideas, great techniques, great tools and making them your own.

When you borrow something, it doesn’t belong to you. When you steal, it becomes yours, a part of your unique artistic style.

How To Steal and Make It Your Own

You observe closely. Take note of exactly what the artist is doing that makes their work so powerful and effective. What is the shape and weight of the line? How do they create that shading effect? Where are the line breaks in the poem? How is metaphor used? What is the structure of the musical piece? What is unusual about the harmony, the melody? Most of all, what is it you like so much about it?
by Francisco Gomes on Unsplash
You start by copying. Many student artists are given the assignment to reproduce a great work of art. Many musicians learn to play note-for-note the solos that great performers improvised. This is phenomenal training. If you can pull it off, as closely as possible, you will learn an enormous amount about how to make a great work of art.
And, significantly, you will learn it in your body. As your hand attempts to create the exact curve and delicacy of line of a Michelangelo sketch, your body engages in deep learning about beauty, art and drawing. When you learn something in your body, as opposed to just consuming information in your mind, you truly learn it. It becomes a part of you.
You adapt what you love to your own art. Once you’ve learned the techniques and embodied them, you return to your own voice and aesthetic, your unique expression, enriched with a powerful palette. Now, your job is to find exciting, inventive, imaginative ways to use those tools and techniques to express what is uniquely you. Now it is time to be authentic, to say what you need to say, while using what you’ve learned works to make extraordinary art.
The brilliant editor Shawn Coyne [visit his site Storygrid.com for loads of free, useful information] talks about the importance of including in your writing the “obligatory scenes” and “conventions” of whatever genre you are writing in. He stresses that a story won’t “work” for readers without these scenes and conventions. For instance, the thriller genre must include a scene of the “hero at the mercy of the villain.” And yet, he adds, the challenge and the art is to create those obligatory scenes and satisfy those conventions of the genre in new and surprising ways.

Learn By Copying

I once typed up all of Salinger’s masterful short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” so I could feel what it took to write a great short story. I learned so much about how the story was made, even though I had read it many times before. For example, I was surprised to discover how much of the story is dialogue.

I got the idea to type Salinger’s story from the great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Bartok copied by hand all of Beethoven’s string quartets before writing one of his own, so he knew what it would feel like to write a great quartet. Time-consuming, painstaking work. The result: He wrote six magnificent string quartets of his own that sound nothing like Beethoven.

When You Need Inspiration, Look Around You

by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash

As a graphic designer, when I needed a great idea for a new client or project, I would start by looking at other designs—on book covers, coffee cans, posters—and also in nature and all around me. I would look for colors, shapes, ideas that jumped out at me. And I would steal: That use of layout, those wonderful colors, that arrow highlighting an important element.

Sometimes I practiced reproducing a layout exactly, so I could learn how to do it. I’d often have to discover new uses of tools on my computer.

But my designs were my own. I stole elements and great ideas from other designers, but not whole designs. In this way, I expanded my palette as a designer and didn’t get stuck in ruts.

I often practice writing poems and stories, modeling the style, voice and/or exact forms of other poets. This is a way of apprenticing myself to them and getting new ideas, new possibilities.

My students worry that if they do this, they will sound too much like some other writer. My feeling is that you would be very fortunate indeed if you manage to create something truly reminiscent of some famous writer. In the process, you will be becoming a better writer. And then, you can use that knowledge to sound more like yourself.

Become an Apprentice

If you want to be great, study the masters. Artists apprentice themselves to great artists in order to learn, to grow, to study their art and craft. David Levine wrote about this, “Shakespeare routinely stole plotlines and even whole scenes from other writers for his own plays.” Remember, stealing means making it your own, not just direct imitation.

Austin Kleon wrote a wonderfully inspiring, helpful, wise and fun book that leaps off from this idea of theft as being important to the creation of art. His book is called Steal Like An Artist. I recommend it highly.

What artist will you commit to studying in depth and stealing from today?

In my next post, I’ll give you a specific “stealing” assignment, a creative prompt based on the work of another artist, for you to use as a jumping off place. Stay tuned!

Creativity Is Your Birthright

Maxima Kahn September 6th, 2017

Creativity is not something we have to stress and strain after, contort ourselves into shapes over, feel terrible about, measure and fail.

Creativity is our birthright, our blood. It flows through us and all things, giving them life and growth, drawing forth unique expression, blossoming, beauty, gifts.

photo by Pascal Chanel

Consider the Flowers

Just look at a flower, bursting from seed through soil, pushing past pebbles that must seem like boulders to the tiny, vulnerable sprout. Courageous, determined, seeking the light, it perseveres through darkness and difficulty, with no guarantee of success, to break through into opened ground.

Gulping in light, drinking water and nutrients through its roots, the flower grows into its unique, implacable form—giving color, beauty, fragrance to all who happen by. Not needing affirmation, assurance. Not comparing itself with other flowers, nor with trees, birds, rocks. Happy to give its gift openly to those who will receive it. Not forcing itself on anyone. Happy to allow them to make of that gift what they will.

The flower doesn’t feel guilty or undeserving of its plot of ground, the water it thirstily drinks, the sunlight it absorbs. It doesn’t worry that it is taking too much. It takes just what it needs and no more. It doesn’t question the value of its blossoms, if they are beautiful enough, if they matter. It gives what it came here to give, what is within its power to give.

The flower doesn’t try to be something else, more or other. It doesn’t strain. It perseveres and grows toward what it loves. It doesn’t hide its beauty, nor hide from the light. It has no need to.

Creativity is Life Force Energy

Creativity is the life force energy flowing through us. It is “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” as Dylan Thomas wrote. [Read the poem here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower]

Creativity is unstoppable, unless we put up blocks within, paving over the rich soil in which we are meant to grow. And those blocks to our creativity only have as much power as we choose to give them.

You Have a Choice

We are at choice in our lives, in ourselves.

Do you feed the false beliefs, the perceived limitations and lack, the bad habits, and the wounded self?

Or do you feed the power of the Life that flows abundantly through you and all things?

Do you nourish healthy habits and positive self-belief? Or do you dwell in your past, your fears or seeming failings?

Do you grow like the flower steadily toward your heart’s dreams? Or do you allow every pebble and root to stop you cold?

Do you nurture the Essential Self—radiant, infinite, powerful, knowing—or do you wallow in old wounds and helplessness?

It’s up to you.

You Can Do It

by Skitter Photo on Unsplash

Yes, it takes perseverance, practice, repetition, faith and patience. Yes, it takes courage and support. We are not meant to go it alone.

And you can do it. You can be the unique flower you came here to be. You can let your creativity flow unabated and unabashed. You can blossom and let us see your beauty.

To your blossoming,

Maxima

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Facing the Blank Page: Tending Your Creative Fire, Part 2

Maxima Kahn March 30th, 2016

[This is part of a 2-part series on Tending Your Creative Fire and how to get yourself started creating each day. If you missed part 1, you can find it here.]

As artists, we all know the horror of the blank page (or blank canvas or the equivalent in whatever medium you work in), that gaping void waiting to be filled with brilliance, if only you knew how to begin.

So how do you begin?

Have a Familiar Entry Point

Having a regular way that you start your creative time can be a tremendous support to overcoming the blank page/blank canvas syndrome, and it will decrease your resistance to getting started.

For instance, if you are working on a novel, you might begin your creative time each day by rereading what you wrote the day before. And then, have decided in advance what scene you will be working on that day.

As a dancer, you might have a particular warm-up you always do. When I dance, I begin by lying on the floor for quite a while, stretching and rolling around. I need to make strong contact with the earth, the base for all my dancing, before I move into the upper levels and become more active. Knowing this is where I begin, I enter the studio and lie down and begin. I don’t have to wonder where to start.

photo by Derek Truninger

As a poet, I usually begin by reading several poems by other poets. This helps me shift into a musical and alive use of language and sparks my imagination for what’s possible in a poem.

Then, I usually follow that with a writing prompt (a word, phrase or topic to write about) and do a 10-20 minute freewrite, using that prompt, to get the words flowing. (If you do not know what freewriting is, I highly recommend you read Natalie Goldberg’s now-classic Writing Down the Bones, and familiarize yourself with this extraordinary tool for writers.)

These two short activities—reading a few poems and doing a freewrite—help me to prime the creative pump. I don’t always begin in this way, depending on what I’m working on, but I always have this simple practice to fall back on, and it’s how I most often begin.

Use Creative Games and Playful Activities

I have various creative games and exercises to bring me into a more inspired state in an inviting, open way that often yields profound work.

Playful and inviting are touchstone qualities for entering into creative work.

Creativity is play, at its heart. Unfortunately, as artists, we often forget this, to our detriment. We turn our creative play into hard work.

We approach it as work, partly because that helps validate the activity in our minds and the minds of others. American culture, grounded in the Puritan work ethic, and many of our contemporary first world cultures, tend to revere work and think of play as frivolous. But approaching our creative activity as hard work is a sure-fire way to make it less appealing in the long run, and hence generate more resistance to doing it. And I believe, it is ultimately not true to the creative spirit.

I recommend that you create some of your own playful invitations in whatever medium you wish to work in. Search out interesting creative exercises and try them on.

Small challenges and assignments are also incredibly helpful. As are larger projects you can work on over time. Limitations or boundaries actually set our creative imaginations free.

As a painter you might decide to begin each painting session for a month by making a quick 4” x 4” painting in 20 minutes. Or you might allow yourself only certain colors. Or you might always begin with a still life sketch. If you get bored with your assignments after a while, change them up.

The dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp in her wonderful book The Creative Habit has an exercise she calls “Do a Verb.” She expresses with her body for several minutes a single verb, such as “twist.” This gets her moving and thinking creatively.

Collect a Treasure Box of Generative Ideas

Here’s an idea: Create an index card box full of creative prompts and draw one out at random when you begin your creative time. Then, do whatever is on the card. Come up with a batch of your own ideas to get you started. Ask friends for other ideas. Write them down. Collect them.

Or, choose a regular way to enter your creative state, a routine, a habit, a practice, and stick with it. Perhaps your regular way is drawing a card from your treasure trove box and doing it.

What matters is what works to get you started. Few things are more daunting than the blank page or blank canvas or stage with no idea where to begin. Have a way to begin and know what it is before you enter the studio that day. You might leave yourself an assignment at the end of the previous day’s work.

Collect some fallback methods or exercises that you can rely on. Ask other artists what works for them to get started. For me, when all else fails, I revise earlier work. No matter how uninspired I feel, this always gets me into creative engagement, and it moves my work forward.

How will you begin the next time you enter your studio? What helps you get inspired and flowing?

My Recommendations

Use some or all of these as they work for you.

Decide in advance how you’ll begin the next day
Start with something small and easy
Think playful, inviting or inspiring
Experiment and see what works
Consider creating a regular warm-up practice, a habitual way to begin your creative time

To your creative fire,

Maxima

Coming Alive to the World

Maxima Kahn May 2nd, 2015

As a poet, as an artist, one of the core skills we need to develop and cultivate is a radical attentiveness to the world around us, an awakeness to our senses and the sense impressions all around us. We need to sharpen our senses to a keenness that hears, feels, smells, sees, tastes vividly, that notices what is happening around us and in our bodies in response to the physical world we encounter. We need to become sensually alive.

To do this, we intentionally practice opening our senses, paying attention. We take on a practice of deep seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling. “Attention is the natural prayer of the soul,” the French priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche wrote. Or as the poet David Whyte so brilliantly puts it, in his poem “Everything is Waiting for You”:

You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

We have to counteract the numbing out, the dullness of routine, the sleepiness that is so habitual and instead invite ourselves again and again into an awakeness, awareness, attentiveness, aliveness that senses and notices deeply.

We can do this by creating small windows of attention, spending five minutes with our eyes closed listening to all the sounds we can hear, loud and soft, distant and near, staccato and sustained, noticing the varied textures, letting go of naming or identifying the sounds to simply listen and hear the symphony around us and within us.

We can spend ten minutes looking out the window or sitting on the front porch, tuning up our seeing, noticing colors, light and shadow, patterns, textures, shapes, movement, juxtaposition, composition. Or we can spend ten minutes looking at one thing only—this leaf, this rock, this chair, this shoe—seeing all that becomes available to us in this act of deep looking, of presence—and noticing too how it changes us within.

We can eat a banana as a meditation, feeling its heft and form in our hand, peeling it slowly, smelling it, inhaling deeply, slicing it into pieces, feeling the slipperyness, tasting it, paying attention to all the gradations of taste, texture and sensation as we consume it.

We can take ourselves on a poem walk and open up all the sense to observe the world vividly, noticing details, smelling and touching things, listening.

Or we can walk around our living room and notice everything we normally do not see, look for what we overlook, the tiny details, the ceiling, the floor, the walls and all the objects in the room, the light and shade, the colors and textures. We can feel the textures and shapes of things, picking up objects, listening to the sounds they make if we strike them or shake them gently, smelling them.

Deliberately practicing opening the five senses brings delight, peacefulness, pleasure and gives us a rich storehouse of imagery and sensation to draw from when it is time for us to write a poem, make a dance piece, or paint a picture.

This rich, physical detail is an essential component of great poetry and great art. We experience life through our bodies, and it is our ability, as artists, to bring that life vividly to the page that makes our poems speak and sing to the reader, that causes our poems to move the reader and not simply be a series of abstractions, interesting thoughts or sentiments with no impact, no zing. When the reader can feel—see, hear, smell, taste—along with us, we draw them into the experience of the poem. And this is true with abstract art as well, because our own deeply felt experiences, when communicated in some powerful way, are far more likely to communicate powerfully than that which we have not felt deeply in our bones and blood.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” Robert Frost has said. The artist has to feel it first through and through, and then feel it again as you create your art, then and only then will the reader feel it. “Understand that you can have in your writing no qualities which you do not honestly entertain in yourself,” Walt Whitman wrote. In other words, you can’t fake this. You have to live it, and it is your own profoundly lived experience that you transmit through your art as a gift to your audience, as an offering and invitation for them to wake up to the world too, to experience the fullness of this life completely. This is one of the core functions of art, providing a doorway to deeper being, greater aliveness—and it is the artist who must first walk through that door and then beckon the audience to follow.

So, practice waking up to the world. Fall in love with the sidewalk and the grime. Fall in love with the laundry on the line, moving in the wind. Fall in love with the roar of traffic and the whisper of your slippers on the floor. Fall in love with pots banging in the kitchen and distant laughter of children in a neighbor’s yard. Fall in love with cinnamon and moss, curry and rain. Notice the bit of white plastic among the brown leaves in the gutter as if it were a painting or sculpture, a deliberate arrangement. Notice the musical composition made by the ticking clock, overlaying the hint of distant churchbells and a car loudly rushing by, and underneath all that the sound of your own breathing. Notice how the air feels on your skin, how your own clothes feel, the tension and relaxation in your body, how your organs feel.

I will talk next time about coming alive to your inner world, another core skill of the artist.

Until then, enjoy coming alive to your world,

maxima

P.S. Join me for a 5-week teleclass called Writing Your Way Home, starting May 14. You’ll access voices of wisdom, inspiration, humor, playfulness and love within that will astonish you: https://brilliantplayground.com/writing-your-way-home/