spinning drum blog

I once heard it took 10,000 hours to master something. 10 000 hours behind a piano, swinging a bat, play chess, whatever it was, it took 10,000 hours to truly nail it so to speak. After telling this to a friend he said, “Wow that means some of the delivery drivers I work with are total masters at their job. Let’s see 8 hours times 5 days a week for 52 weeks is 2080 hours in a year; 5 years working that job and you’re a master at bringing in and out crates of pop bottles.” It’s true you know, you look at some of them, how they work, and they are masters at their job.

So we are constantly meeting masters and virtuosos in our day to day lives. It’s true. As well it makes one think about how and to what we apply our time. Still in whatever we engage in, regardless of for how long, it is very few who adopt the title of master, fewer too who consider themselves virtuosos, which brings me to another label – artist. Some of the most creative and skilled individuals I know shrug off such titles and simply do what they do and have always done. For them, whatever their medium, their work speaks for itself. Others hungrily wait for some kind of arts and culture branding franchise to officially grant them such recognition before they will claim the title artist. Same goes for musicians, writers, athletes etc… Regardless of which you are, labels can help define what you’re doing and reflect a relationship cultivated over time. However, it really is the relationship’s constant evolution that creates and solidifies the “artist” and the realization of mastery and all subsequent titles only a byproduct of the exploration.

One does not talk about becoming a musician but of being a musician. It is a state of mind to respond and think in patterned sound and rhythm. Same for any artist – the word relating as much to her approach to life as to what exists in her portfolio. The word artist speaks of a way of being – a certain connection between body and mind.

Still, it is easy to say it’s all a process, and artists drunk on the state of creation can often doubt their results. And yes there is an attachment to “results.” For at the end of our free mind and fine execution the exploration does end in accomplishment of one fashion or other. It is in this final “product” that we are able to justify, verify and sanctify our creative passions and pursuits.

People, self-proclaimed artist or not, of course have a strange relationship with results. Some hold on to an idea that there are perfect ones. A whole concept which rides on a right and wrong paradigm, implying a narrow window in which an achievement of real merit can be met. Yet perfection, both its execution and appreciation can funnily enough elude the average person. Most of us when embracing a new art form have to be trained to see or hear “perfection.” We have to be connoisseurs if not avid students first before we can understand what has been rendered “perfect.” I have worked with artists, both visual and audio who believed in “perfect” that such a thing can guide the creative process as much as serve it. I have also worked with artists who think it entirely unimportant, who go about their creative process embracing whatever wabi sabiness and dynamic “imperfections” that arise. It is a relief that these two perspectives cohabitate the art and music world with equal vigor, if for none other reason than to foil lofty ideals and arrest tiresome pretensions.

Perfect, however, can have another meaning; one more tied to a state of being and an awareness present in authentic creation. Here the perfectly rendered piece or painting is perfect not so much in form, though it may be rendered with great technical skill and knowledge; it is perfect because it was the result of an unfettered alchemy of body and mind – the product of a genuine dialogue with the soul. This type of perfection can only be measured in personal experience and is property of no one and obtainable by everyone.

Studio b has moved. It’s left the creative expanse and country confines of the Sunshine Coast and is now centralized in the Republic of East Van. While it’s still in the process of migrating over here turntable by turntable so to speak, at this point, I’ve at least established a virtual connection to the digital world and opened a channel where a steady stream of .wavs are sure to follow.