I often think that September is really the start of the psychological New Year. All those years of back to school.... The summer break that re-energizes. [This is clearly temperate climate, northern hemisphere thinking, so global readers are invited to translate into suitable metaphors!]
I was thinking of this today when I got this quote from Franca Leeson, one of the Mindcamp organizers. The quote is from Oliver Schroer, a violinist and composer who wrote this not long before he died of leukemia. It speaks to creativity in a different way, by talking about accepting all the ideas, even the things that look like mistakes.
"A few years ago, I reached a point in my music making that I called Total Music. For me that meant, when I played, particularly in improvs and such, there were no more mistakes because I could use everything ... in my own playing, I was not rejecting anything that came up. It was all valid, because it could all be contextualized to make sense, to be meaningful and useful and musical. Well, maybe I have reached a point in my life where it is Total Life. As in, all of what I am going through can be used; none of it need be rejected. This is a very freeing perspective. It means you can stop editing your life and the bits you don't want, because you realize you have been given these things, and strange as it may seem, they are actually gifts ... Use it all, I say. And don't wait, either." -- Oliver Schroer
Wishing you a happy psychological New Year.
