Emergent from the creative processAs a new song develops during my practice sessions, working the riffs feels both enticing and frustrating. Musical phrases emerge out of snippets of melody. Eventually a sequence of riffs begins to hang together. As I keep playing with those riffs, harmonic structures add depth and presence. Melody and harmony begin to gel into an arrangement that feels as though everything belongs. I play around with the tempo and rhythm. I try out different voicings for my digital keyboard to find the one that best compliments the harmonized riffs. A stable rendition gradually takes shape with each musical phrase contributing to a common emotional feeling. After a few weeks, it’s a song and ready to take to the coffeeshop. But that’s not the end of the song’s development. In subsequent months I find nuances in how those riffs can be played. In doing so, the characteristic feeling comes across more strongly. Listeners at the coffeeshop begin to respond, perhaps suddenly alerting to the music or staring toward the piano in concentration. One listener stated that my songs come across as if they were coming from my heart. Which indeed they do. For this blog I want to put a label on that characteristic feeling of a song: it is an emergent property which arises from a complex system of riffs, harmonies, rhythms, variations in timing, and the voicing of the digital keyboard. Different songs have different emergent properties. Some songs feel like being in a French cafe with a roving accordion player. Often coffeeshop patrons say that right away. Other songs feel like being in a piano bar of a classy hotel. And then there are the songs that transport one’s mind to a walk in nature. Each song has its own emergent property arising from its stable structure of musical elements. Some are similar, others break into their own distinct emotional territory. Last month I blogged about beauty, how it is more than an attribute or an aptitude but arises from the complex of context, relationship, perceiving and being. Two months ago I blogged about how my songs played the role of friends in helping with my moods and insomnia. Both of those blogs were about emergent properties arising from my music. That label, emergent property, is taken from the theory of complex systems. Complexity Theory provides a different way of thinking about the world around us and our experiences within it, not at all like the way I was trained to think as a psychologist. As a psychologist I was taught to think in terms of entities in categories (e.g. mental health disorders) linear causality (what changes what?) and stages (what is the progression?). This way of thinking forms the foundation for how the professional practice of psychology is regulated. And from what I gather, it continues to be the way the science of psychology is researched and taught. But over my career, I changed. The change arose from being a keen observer and doing my own critical thinking in the therapy room, a great place to observe the human condition. In the safety and privacy of therapy, hypotheses (or perhaps better said, hunches and intuitions) about human subjectivity and behaviour can be developed and then either confirmed or discarded. The ability to be an observer and critical thinker revealed me to be, at my core, a scientist. However, and even more compelling, alongside my scientist-self something else emerged, yet another emergent property of the complex system of which I was a part. The more I dealt with the human condition, the more strongly grew within me the humanistic elements of compassion, empathy, intuition, creativity and respect for individual autonomy. One of the little wisdoms I developed during four decades of being a psychotherapist was “it’s never just one thing”, clearly a nod to complexity theory. If you want to read more about complexity theory, check out my book review of Notes on Complexity by Neil Theise. His book illustrates complex systems in the natural sciences and philosophy. (https://www.twiltondale.ca/wiltons-reads.html). But before I go, let’s take another dip into the relationship of complexity theory to my creative process. My novels are the product of years of work. An early draft establishes the storyline with its characters. Then the work begins to construct the complex system to sustain it. I do dozens of rounds of editing, paying attention to how characters think and speak. I lay in contrasts, endeavour to create rhythm to the read. All of that work is to get the many elements of fiction, character and voice and circumstances and happenings, to gel into a stable structure that gives rise to an emergent experience of meaning and feeling for the reader. I’m aiming for a beauty that is different than prettiness. It is the beauty of human nature as it can emerge to be. Healing plays a strong role in my novels as I come to be an author after decades of helping clients heal from mental distress. And, you won’t be surprised that my characters become my friends. I feel their pain, I cry with them and celebrate their breakthroughs: friends, much like my songs in the night. I want to share a brief phrase from one of my current novels. The words are simple, ordinary even. But they always bring a tear to my eye and other readers have confessed the same. Here they are in their simplicity: “ … and whispered Merry Christmas in my ear.” The intense emotion these words create in the reader emerges after 150 pages of plot and character development. The stage for them had been set with an evocative description of the music at a Christmas concert in a jazz club. Readers are already well aware of struggles of the speaker and the one spoken to, the perplexities those two characters are facing. Arising from this complex system of character, plot, and setting, profound emotion and meaning are emergent from seven simple words. And with them, a tear runs down your cheek. Clickable links to previous blogs August 2024 On Beauty www.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/08-2024
July 2024 - Friends www.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/07-2024 June 2024 click-click www.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/06-2024 May 2024 - In the zone April 2024 - How creativity happens ... well, for me anywayclick-click.html March 2024 - Your bridge to cross February 2024 - A little Deeper into the human condition January 2024 - On Darkness December 2023 - Note Perfect ... or not! November 2023 - Just noteswww.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/04-2024 October 2023 - About endings September 2023 - Sacred ground August 2023 - Are we there yet? July 2023 - How smart is SMART? June 2023 - Only half there May 2023 - Who gets to write the story? April 2023 - Intersubjectivity. Hunh? March 2023 - A disturbing trend February 2023 - About being in the middle January 2023 - Can we have a little heart here please? December 2022 - A story about story November 2022 - Facing One's Fears October 2022 - Transitional folk September 2022 - Transitions August 2022 —At the other end of life's journey July 2022—The problem with what emerges. June 2022 — So who am I doing this for anyway? May 2022 - Wait for it ... wait ... April 2022 — Someone called me a Nazi. March 2022 — Shush! Don't tell anyone. February 2022 — So does life imitate art? Well, maybe sometimes. January 2022 — The two most powerful lines in the book. December 2021 — About time and being human. November 2021 — Not a tidy little murder mystery October 2021 — Flow versus focus. September 2021 -- It's beautiful because it tells the truth.
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