Moments You Can’t Rehearse

In my last blog we just finished talking about some of the brain science of creativity and innovation. Now we have the yin to the yang: creation not as science, but as magical, mystical, even inexplicable. I’m not the only one to acknowledge the unanswerable when it comes to composition. Take a walk through some comments from some of the most creative people on the planet:

“I pick up the pen and God moves it” (Hank Williams); “The songs are there…just waiting for someone to write them down – if I didn’t do it, someone else would.” (Bob Dylan); “If I need a melody, I pluck it out of the air” (Willie Nelson); “Some days it gets very, very spooky” (Lionel Richie); “I wrote ‘If I Needed You’ in my sleep” (Townes Van Zandt); “Even the best gardener can’t make a single flower” (Robert Wyatt)

Moments you can’t rehearse. When it comes down to it, sometimes there are no definitive answers, only perspectives. This is an era of ambiguity, get used to perhaps the inability to ‘control’ everything. As a matter of fact, the ability to live and work with ambiguity is a much sought after competency today. The paradigm of always having to have all the answers is a dying one. The same is true as it relates to creativity. I do know that most songwriters can’t differentiate a “hit” until after the fact. Who knows whether the latest movie will fly … or flop, climb or crash. Sometimes we can’t predict and control the process of original or interpretive creation any more than we can control the weather. Moments you can’t rehearse. We can only prepare for them and maybe take full advantage when they do come.

Let’s do something different – we can’t help but get better:

  1. Make yourself ready – all acts of creativity and innovation carry a common denominator; they will evoke. When creativity strikes we feel compelled to think, feel or do.
  2. Respond – try to capture or at least nurture the result. When magic happens, quit trying to figure it out … try instead to enjoy it and profit from it.

-Don Brown
don@donbrown.org

Don Brown dedicates his career to ‘helping people with people’ in leadership, sales and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking and medical equipment.

Speaking, writing, coaching and selling to the best – Ford Motor Company, Anheuser-Busch, United Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Jaguar Cars, Hilton Hotels and many, many more – Don takes great pride in long-standing customer relationships (some running well over twenty years).

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Don Brown dedicates his career to ‘helping people with people’ in leadership, sales and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking and medical equipment.

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