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Guest post by Jill Timmons, DMA

These days, Creativity is trending as the new fashionable buzzword and answer to the many challenges that we face in midlife. Be creative and you will find happiness! It has even become a kind of “rebranding” tool for product marketing: our school, our company, our products are grounded in a commitment to Creativity. It leaves one wondering what they are talking about.

Creativity, however, is the unique imprint of our humanity. And from this personal expression of our very essence, we can discover most powerfully at midlife a way to recast and renew our potent purpose and meaning in life.

By midlife, most of us have had our share of disappointments, losses, or abysmal calamities, engendering a kind of liminal space—betwixt and between. Moreover, in meeting the challenge of this turbulent time, we may discover that metrics from an earlier period no longer serve us. We can be thrust into an ardent search for new meaning and purpose. It is through the discovery and application of our innate creative nature that we can recast our life journey.

As musicians know, one’s mode of creative expression is a deeply subjective choice, and one that can morph over time. There are, however, principles and processes that are embedded in most any given art form. For example, I launch a creative act with first experiencing desire, noticing what I am drawn to, and where my curiosity lies. Something within me creates a spark of attention. There is energy, illumination, and clarity as to what attracts me. I want to explore, develop, form, craft, or generate something new. I feel a certain intensity or passion in following this engagement. Consequently, I discover a rightness to what I am doing. I cannot not do it. As a musician, for example, I encounter moments of grace and ecstasy that may be in tandem with frustration, doubt, or discouragement. Preparing for a performance requires long hours of study and rehearsal. Then in that temporal moment of live performance, I must be fully present to my rigorous preparation. In wrestling with this creative process, I discover, nevertheless, that there can be flow to what I am doing. Even though the way can often be uncertain, I bear a deep awareness of inevitability as the course of events unfolds. These are the markers of an authentic integral creative act.

You might ask, how does this matter? It matters because Creativity requires an intrinsic perseverance, faith in the eventual outcome however it manifests, and tensile strength to sculpt and sustain an artistic vision and plan over an indeterminant period. Aren’t these the essential qualities for artfully navigating midlife and into the elder years, creating a potent all-in life?

Everyone has a creative impulse. On the other hand, in our noisy distracted world it can sometimes be difficult to simply hear our own thoughts. If you are seeking a new creative vision, one that can reveal renewed meaning and purpose to your life, my recommendation is to first start by carving out a personal retreat for at least a few days. In my experience, this requires digital celibacy. Spend time in nature, notice your surroundings, and if you feel inclined, walk to nowhere. What do you notice? Write freely about this, perhaps in a journal. What would you do if you didn’t have to earn a living? In the quiet of your retreat and in answering this question, you will undoubtedly find a new creative path, something that has piqued your excitement and curiosity. From there, you can build the edifice of a strategic action plan.

As an additional thought, a few words about purpose. We often hear about the importance of purpose in life. Certainly, purpose can give focus to how we choose to live. But purpose without deeply held meaning can become stale, dry to the touch. Unchecked it can be the genesis and breeding ground for “burnout.”

For example, let’s imagine for a moment the following scenario. For many years, as a pianist I taught and performed as a university professor and resident artist. That savoury work became my professional purpose. Nevertheless, I discovered that the meaning of that purpose shifted roughly every seven years. Invariably, I longed for some fresh creative path, one where I could be newly challenged and inspired. Inevitably, the consequence of this search was an infusion of new meaning. While I have remained in the music profession, the meaning of how and why I serve continues to evolve.

Lastly, harnessing your own brand of Creativity may also extend your life. Recently, researchers from the University College of London analysed survey data from a long-term study in the United Kingdom which included some 3,500 adults who ranged from very engaged in the arts to those who chose minimal involvement. Professor Daisy Fancourt reported the research team’s findings: “We found in this study that ‘arts engagement’ was related to 4% slower ageing rates, meaning people were about a year younger, biologically, if they were regularly engaged in the arts. This is actually the same reduction in biological ageing that we saw for physical activity,” she says. These findings are published in the journal Innovation in Ageing.

At midlife and into our elder years it is through harnessing the power of our own Creativity that we discover a way forward in answering the search for new meaning, purpose, and greater authenticity. In doing so, we can also enrich the lives of those around us. Consequently, that purposeful life then becomes our legacy—a gift to the collective.

Jill Timmon’s latest book Variations on Life after 50: A Field Guide to Harnessing the Power of Creativity, Purpose, and Legacy in Midlife is available now. Find out more

Jill Timmons is a leading international arts consultant

www.artsmentor.com

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Frances Wilson ON MUSIC & WRITING

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Guest post by Aïda Lahlou

During a practice rut that felt particularly more existential than others, I became obsessed with one question: ‘Can classical musicians ever graduate from their role as ‘craftsman/craftswoman onto that of creative artists? And if so, how may this be done?’

Turns out that this question was an urgent one and resonated with every strand of the classical music industry, from my student peers at London conservatoires to the musical stars of today. Famous pianist Kirill Gerstein posed this exact question to his guest, legendary artist Ai Wei Wei in one of his online seminars for the Krönberg Academy, where the latter had spoken at length about the responsibility of artists to shape the world through creation. I noticed a frustration amongst classical music interpreters of seemingly being some of the only artists deprived of the right to create. In reality of course they are not the only ones: classical actors, dancers, and interpreters of all types share this condition. The question is one of relevance: if classical performers are unable to create, how can they be instrumental in shaping culture and the world? How are they relevant as a cultural force?

For classical music performer, this inability to create in a poietic way (this means ‘to create something original’ as opposed to creating a variation on something that already exists, like an interpretation of a piece for example) is unhelpfully combined with a certain disdain of the profession towards behaviours that could bring attention to oneself, due to a conflation, in the minds of many people in the profession, of the presence or lack of interpretative integrity with certain onstage and offstage behaviours.

To be a classical performer is to be a professional interpreter. When interpreting a score, it is useful to forego one’s subjectivity and replace it by a more appropriate subjectivity instead in order to get closer to capturing what the composer had in mind. When we read Beethoven it is useful to park our most immediate instincts for a moment and try to figure out what Beethoven might have meant by his markings using not our contemporary understanding of the markings but a ‘historically informed’ (for lack of a better expression) reading of those same markings. In a way, at the point of exegesis of the musical text, this process is indeed one of – momentary – self-effacement. But in classical music, for some reason, we have collectively decided to performatively self-efface in a more general sense, ad absurdum, to show our audience just how committed we are to the process of conscientious interpretation.* Thus, anything that a performer does that might be considered to bring too much attention to themselves, such as flashy concert clothes or unconventional programming will elicit suspicion on their ability to sufficiently remove their ‘self’ when they sit to study a score. If you don’t believe that this is a common amalgamation, read this disturbing Norman Lebrecht article about how Yuja Wang would do herself a favour by dressing more soberly: people would then be able to recognise her for the true master that she is. If she were to do that, according to him, she ‘could be a sensation’ (!).

It’s difficult to say for sure whether classical musicians are generally less free to express themselves than classical actors or dancers. Take political views, for example. New York Times

journalist Zachary Woolfe describes pianist and activist Igor Levitt by contrasting him to the other ‘classical artists, [who] by and large, remain publicly reticent about their politics — this isn’t Hollywood’. Whilst actors are considered free, classical dancers seem to be in a similar situation to classical musicians: choreographers talk about things they care about aside from dance, but very few dancers do. The unfortunate consequence of classical music’s effacement ideal is that many classical music interpreters feel not only that they cannot create but also a frustration about not being able to express their full selves, on and offstage, or they might be thought less of.

As I ventured on this strange undertaking of combining Stand Up comedy with straight, serious classical piano performance, I found that talking to an audience about your quotidian as a classical musician in a funny way does much more than get them to feel more engaged. It makes them see you as a person. It means that people don’t just see you as the vehicle for a moving musical message, but they also see you: a partaker of the human condition, which I think has equal potential to move as ultimately we are all vulnerable little chickpeas trying to navigate the huge harira soup that is the world, and it is moving to see another person like us striving, trying, struggling. Just like classical music masterpieces have the power to tear us to pieces telling us things about ourselves that we didn’t even know (Robert Levin’s beautiful phrase), stand up comedy has the power to reveal aspects of ourselves, feelings and emotions that were a part of us all along but we had not noticed until now. It shows us that despite our differences, we are all moved or amused by the same things, and that many of the things we love and care about are the same. Laughing through difficulties gives us the strength to resist until we might see another happy day. Sublimation of pain is something that is very much shared between these two artforms.

On a separate note, breaking free of concert conventions for this show did make me feel like I was creating on a poietic level, and personally much more aligned with my work. I hope that the classical music world will become more open to making this kind of creation for available interpreters should they choose to (as opposed to reserving it for composers), as this will benefit both performers who will be able to be more fulfilled, and audiences who will benefit from the authenticity of these new exchanges. At the moment, it seems that the industry favours a model that seeks to create highly reproducible events so agents can rotate their roster artists from concert to concert without anyone noticing. It’s about time we recognise what we have to gain by granting performers more agency in how they present the pieces that they are interpreting.

*Musicologist Nicholas Cook talks about this in his book Music: A very short introduction (Oxford: 2000

Aïda Lahlou will be performing her Stand Up Comedy Meets Classical Piano and her Mirrors: A Recital with a Story shows in London this October as part of the Bloomsbury Festival (14/10 and 21/10 respectively). Tickets on sale here.

Aïda Lahlou is an up-and-coming Moroccan pianist and one of the most exciting talents of her generation.

Following a BA in Music at St John’s College, Cambridge,  throughout which she studied with Caroline Palmer, Aïda is currently enrolled for a Masters in Piano Performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, studying with Peter Bithell and Ronan O’Hora.

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Aïda blogs about art, lifestyle, and creativity as The Thought Fox on Substack

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In the latest episode of my Piano101 Podcast series, I meet Marc Yeats, landscape artist and composer, to talk about creativity, interpretation, artistic intent and more…..

Find previous episodes here

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