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Tag: music
A Walk by the Lake
Walking, like creativity, starts with a risky venture into the unknown.
The Creative Gambler
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I want to say up front that I don't advocate gambling in the conventional sense. The house always wins, and there are no exceptions to this rule. However, I've been thinking this week about Kenny Rogers' 1978 song The Gambler (written by Don Schlitz in 1976). Specifically, the…
The Myth of the Prodigy
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. Being over a certain age, I'm way past the point of demonstrating myself to be a prodigy. Although I did display some aptitude for music at a fairly young age, I lacked the discipline to pursue it in depth. I mostly enjoyed all the great sounds I could…
Adaptive Thinking
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. Talk about creativity. Lately there seems to be a tidal wave of people changing their minds. Some of the same people who compared President Barack Obama to Hitler by way of opposition are now of the opinion that maybe Hitler wasn't such a bad guy, after all. People…
Craft vs. Attitude
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. In a previous post I mentioned the book Conversations with Charlie Haden, a series of interviews with the great musician conducted by Josef Woodard. Haden had a long working relationship with another legendary musician, Pat Metheny, and Metheny participates in one of the interviews in the book. In…
Creativity is People!
I'll be the first to admit I'm not a people person.
Creative Comebacks
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently came across a compact disc recording of Elvis Presley's comeback special (officially titled "Singer Presents...Elvis!") that aired on NBC in December, 1968. Presley hadn't performed before a live audience in years. It was a dramatic example of a career comeback that, for a few years at…
Schedule Some Rejection
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been reading a history of western classical music recently. In a chapter on Johannes Brahms, I found this passage very interesting. It's from an 1859 letter Brahms wrote to his friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, following one of the early performances of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in…
Concentrate Your Fire
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been reading Dr. Maxwell Maltz's 1960 book Psycho-Cybernetics. While the book occasionally strays into the neighborhood I call "crackpottery," there is a lot of useful information. I'm not a fan of the term "self-help," but it's the term that's commonly accepted, so we'll go with that. If…
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