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Dave Wirth

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—Awesome Guitar Lessons in Austin, TX.
 

Creative Lifestyle Design Experiment: Space

Mountains

Mountains, from Karamatsu Mountain Lodge, by Tsuda. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Space. Retreat. Silence. No wonder why vacations are so… lovely.

I love to let go of things that get in the way of my creativity. It simply means I end up with more energy and time for stuff which is more important, and more pleasing, to me. I have a hunch, and I want to share it in the form of an experiment. Please bear with the teacher/nag side of me for just one blog post. At least consider the following creative lifestyle design challenge:

  1. Try to narrow down one big distraction in your life. Your child or spouse doesn't count - they need your love. Email might count, talking on the phone, movies, or going to parties. The point is, find something that gets in the way of what you really want to be doing.
  2. Judge how much trouble you'd get in if you didn't commit to this big distraction for one week. 
  3. Commit to not-doing this big distraction for one week.

Twyla Tharp does this whenever she's deep in the throes of a creative binge. Hugh MacLeod states that we might need fewer pillars. Either which way you slice it, getting rid of one distraction for one week helps you get a little bit of space.

Julia Cameron's excellent book The Artist's Way describes the result of reading deprevation, which can be substituted for any tool of choice for getting more space:

Even at the safe remove of the written word, I can feel the shockwaves of antagonism about trying this tool. I will tell you that those who have most resisted it have come back the most smugly rewarded for having done it. The nasty bottom line is this: sooner or later, if you are not reading you will run out of work and be forced to play.

Does this design experiment seem a little out there for you? I understand. It's not for everyone. But if you need a push in this direction, here's some lines from a William Wordsworth poem to help the home team:

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

Posted by Dave Wirth
 

Sex and Cash; Hugh Macleod Meets Guitar

Hugh MacLeod: Ignore Everybody

Ignore-everybody
One of the many fantastic reasons to read Hugh Macleod's new book, "Ignore Everybody" is the 'Sex and Cash Theory.'  I like how he really makes it clear that no matter who we are, there will always be a division between what excites us and what makes us money. Accepting it, according to Hugh, may mean we can have more peace with our pursuits, professionally and beyond.

I liked how he used the example of John Travolta. His role in Pulp Fiction? Sexy. Totally sexy. His role in Broken Arrow? Cash. Totally a dough move. Hugh also used the idea of a painter. Painting what the collectors want? Cash. Painting what she wants? Get the idea?

I have been working pretty non-stop on a cross-browser prototype for online guitar lessons. The ideas percolating in my head are monstrous fun to think about.  From the marketing, design, programming, to even the business aspects, just everything about it is fun to think about and work on. I've even been taking my computer home to work on it until 4am in some instances. These parts are currently the "sex" part of the equation. The cash is what I do on a daily basis, i.e. teaching. The daily work of teaching is still very very important to me, but the trick of it is how to allow myself to be there for someone else. It's about learning to put aside anything else because nothing is as important as this person at that moment.

Sex and Cash Theory for Guitarists who Teach?

For guitarists who teach, the "sex" might be writing a song. Perhaps there are people out there who can appreciate the feeling of being really opened up by the creative experience of writing a song, being caught up in it, and then two seconds later your student knocks on the door. Parkinson's Law at work? I don't know. But the journey is how to accept the teaching, and keep from coloring outside the lines with the sexy part of what we do (like writing songs, or these days for me at least- programming online guitar lessons).

Posted by Dave Wirth