Backstage Tour

November 6, 2024

I recently completed another creative project: the 5-Minute Voice, a series of 52 video clips introducing concepts and exercises for you to play with your voice. In celebration of its publication, I thought I’d share its metaphysical backstage with you.

Warning! This post is right-brained and full of jokey non-sequiturs. If you prefer to read a sober-minded description of the 5-Minute Voice, click here.

The mother of a creative project is Mystery, and the father is Curiosity. You think you have some clear, ostensible reason to do something, a well-defined practical goal. But what really moves you forward probably lies outside your intellectual consciousness. Don’t get me wrong: It’s good to have well-defined goals. But it’s also good to “allow the stinky fumes of intuition to mingle with the fresh air of the well-ventilated workshop.”

The 5-Minute Voice was likely born when I was born and let out my first whimper (“Why me, oh mother?”). Then it was born again when I was in college and a solfège teacher complimented me on my voice and invited me to take part in a Sunday service at the church where he played the organ. Then it was born again when I trained in the Alexander Technique (a philosophy that was born of its founder’s vocal troubles), at which time I also took my first actual singing lessons with the late Roy Hickman of Elephant & Castle. Then it was born again when I started taking singing lessons with the late Cornelius L. Reid of West End Avenue. Then it was born again when Cornelius passed away and “I became my own voice teacher, for better and for worse.” Then it was born again in 2017, when I produced an early round of 52 vocal clips which should have been subtitled “Maybe.” And today it’s now reborn as a thing-in-itself and a culmination-in-progress (“Oh mother, why me?”).

A creative project might undergo multiple iterations. You achieve a version, you like it very much, you share it with the world, the world appreciates your efforts. Then somehow you go deeper into the project’s potentialities, and you come up with quite a different version—the “final” one. And sometime later you see that your final version is a stepping stone, a necessary and inevitable approximation. “Creativity likes movement and distrusts finality.” This year I turned 66. I may have another 15 or 20 years left on this earth to create another few versions of the 52. Then I’ll revise the 52 Infinitely And For All Eternity, unless the maggots get me first.

Amazingly, even in Infinite Eternity the 52 will have its flaws, its incoherences, its blind spots, its zits in its bits. “Creativity is perfect in herself; a creative project is imperfect in himself.” “Don’t confuse the two.” “What’s with the quotation marks, Pedro?” I mean, it’s good to work to high standards, but it’s also urgently good to agree to the Imperfectus of life and of human beings. Two perfectionists met in a bar. They didn’t get along.

What’s the Supply Chain Pyramid of a creative project?

Receive an inkling

Sit with it for a while

Play with it, poke it with a long stick

Play with it, poke it with a short stick so help me God

Sketch it, and give yourself permission to be laughably incompetent

Computer, software, camera, tripod, microphone, shower and shave, shirt,

press the button, perform, perform redundancy just in case, hydrate, nap, walk

Edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit

Publish and go hide

Let me explain, so-called. “To bypass the inkling is to chew gum with your nose.” Try it. And record yourself doing it, I’d like to see how it works. “Long stick short stick makes a project tick.” The Creative Cemetery has multiple tombstones with the following epitaph carved in granite: “Poked the project with the short stick too soon.” The camera, tripod, and all the rest are totally secondary, even though you can’t finish the project without them. Redundancy helps a lot. Make and record the same mistake seven times, then choose one of the seven as “the work of art.”

Your mind is framed

September 25, 2024

Our lives are intertwined with our projects. It’s difficult to define the word “project,” because it can mean an obligation, a choice, an objective in your career, a creative impulse, the decision to start a family, and many other things. Allow me to simplify and complicate the issue by defining a project as an undertaking on a forward path.

Flow counts for a lot. You don’t want the project to stall. A clear path is preferable to a blocked one, and the ability to overcome obstacles on the forward path is vital. Project management is a big deal, whether the project is to build a skyscraper, help a child apply for college, or write a blog post.

It’s important to be practical-minded when managing a project. Laying out plans, making lists, keeping track of the steps you’re taking: good and neccessary. But “practice” for the practical-minded is only as good as “the frame of mind” of the practical-minded (or, as Descartes never said, “l'état d'esprit de l'esprit pratique”).

Image from https://learnodo-newtonic.com/rene-descartes-contribution

Here it is: the famous frame-of-mind list that Decartes didn’t publish in 1652, two years after his untimely death. Abridged and updated.

Everything depends on “allowed, not allowed.” Do I allow myself to invest time and effort in a project? Is the project useful, to me and to others? Is it a priority, or is it a waste of energy and money? Who am I to write a book? If you don’t allow yourself to start the project, you never will. It seems obvious, but when you’re in the middle of doubt and confusion you might not see how “allowed, not allowed” is clogging up the path forward.
How will it turn out? It’s often difficult, if not impossible, to know how things will unfold and how the project will conclude. It’s relatively easy to make a baby, but—no, you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Accept the unpredictable, the uncertain, the unclear, the un-manythings (to coin an expression), or you’re cooked and the project might sink. Believe it or not, Descartes actually said “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.”
A paradox is “two opposites, both true.” Life-as-project is full of paradoxes: I want to, I don’t want to; I own the project, the project owns me; I’m okay with it, I’m not okay with it; the project is going forward, the project is stalled; I’m a genius, I’m an idiot. Both are true. Project management is paradox management.
Commitment and distance, at the same time (ay, paradox!). Too close to the project, and you can’t see it as a whole; the details overwhelm you, your emotions cloud your judgment. Too removed from the project, and the thing seems meaningless. Here comes a throwaway remark that I’ll not explain: “Perspective is humor, humor is perspective.”
It takes courage to finish a project, and it takes courage to abandon a project. Since projects are investments in your future, abandoning one can feel like a threat to the continuity of life (“project management as telenovela”). In college, I had an insight about Mozart, and I thought I’d compose a series of beautiful and challenging études for solo cello. It’s been 45 years since I self-planted that self-seed on my self-brain, and I have yet to abandon the project even though I’ve spent no more than 22 and a half minutes on it, or roughly thirty seconds per year.
Your definition of success and failure determines success or failure. Also, temporary failure is often a stepping stone to success. Also, you may feel that you’ve failed when you’ve actually succeeded, and you may feel that you’ve succeeded when you‘ve actually failed. Also, other people have diverging opinions about your failures and successes. Also, it’s generally better to put a little space between yourself and failure. Also, it’s generally better to put a little space between yourself and success.
How long does a project take? Technically, making a baby only takes a few seconds. Don’t let that fool you.

Project Management for Babies

March 30, 2021

My wife knows me. That makes sense, right? I mean, she can tell when I’m squirming, or floundering, or squiggling, or threshing, or prevaricating, or gerrymandering, even if I’m sitting still and looking relatively normal. The other day she saw that something was afloat, or sinking, or—Pedro, leave the Thesaurus alone and tell me what’s going on.

Screen Shot 2021-03-30 at 9.53.56 AM.png

I’ve been working on a piano method for four years, and it’s now under contract, with a deadline. Concepts, exercises, compositions, video clips. Did I tell you that the project is big? I explained to my wife that, besides everything else, I couldn’t choose among a number of solutions for a structural problem deep inside the project. I tried to describe the problem and some of its solutions, and my wife bypassed the intricacies and diagnosed my condition: “You’re suffering labor pains.”

The light bulb went on, the penny dropped, and the dog wagged its tail. Thanks to my wife I had understood the biological and symbolic dimension of project management. It’s called “conception, gestation, delivery.”

Before you become attuned to the possibility of a project, it exists on an immaterial plane out of reach of your intellectual grasp. Let’s call it “God’s imagination,” which of course is eternal and infinite. It encompasses all projects, including—for instance—performing the entire Bible as a one-man Kabuki show, or floating a horizontal Empire State Building along the Suez Canal, or eating five kilos of chocolate in one sitting just to see what happens (“apotheosis”). From that database, a project “comes to you,” often when you least expect it, sometimes catching you in a bad moment. On Saturday, May 14 2017, I was practicing the piano at Studio Bleu in central Paris, struggling to get the brain and the fingers to make friends, when I heard a voice. (I swear I did.) “Pablo, why don’t you write a piano method?” “My name is Pedro.” “Of course, my apologies. Pedro, why don’t you write a piano method?”

Conception! The project had passed from the immaterial to the brains-and-fingers, from the universal to the individual, from unimaginable to imagined. I was elated. “Thanks, Joe!” “My name is G-d.” “Of course, my apologies!”

Like in the baby-generating domain, project conception is an amazing and incomprehensible wonder. I immediately started getting ideas and insights about the creative processes of playing the piano. It was a revolution in my music work. I’m not saying that I suddenly started playing the piano well, only that I had found a new path to explore. I’ll be pretentious and name it “the true path.”

Then came the gestation period, the appetites (five kilos of chocolate), the morning sickness, the growth of that stranger inside you, the deep meditation. Gestation meant studying, practicing, reading, watching, practicing, sharing, teaching, learning, practicing, performing, writing, editing, revising, discarding, despairing, and marveling. If a project needs two months, it’ll take two months; if it needs four years, it’ll take four years. Mosquitos and elephants don’t have the same gestation period.

“When is it due?” According to my contract with Oxford University Press, the baby is due on April 1st (this April 1st, not next year’s; today; TODAY!). That means delivery of the final manuscript, plus supporting materials, plus blood and guts. The baby will be late. The baby is lingering and malingering inside the cocoon. The baby has structural problems that need intrauterine laser surgery. The baby enjoys inflicting labor pains upon its hapless famother (you know—the amalgamation of father and mother, Isis and Osiris, tomato and mozzarella). The baby—

I love my baby. Do I really have to let go of it?

A snapshot of Musician at the Piano, my method-in-progress.