Creator

I have a hard time relaxing.  There is always something that I think I should be doing.  I often feel guilty when I'm not doing something that could be construed as "productive" on some level.  And there is never a time when the list of potentially productive things runs out.  One friend told me that marathon runners don't train for a marathon all the time.  Balanced training involves periods of activity and periods of inactivity.  That made sense, until I started drawing lines of comparison.

Nothing in my life right now really looks like a marathon.  I don't have an event for which I am aiming, I don't have a destination, an endpoint.  I have several ongoing projects that are literally open-ended, on-my-own-schedule kind of affairs.  I am creating various things, and I am in the enviable position of having a great deal of time to indulge those creative processes.  But during the moments when I am not immersed in the creative process, I have a tendency to beat myself up a bit.  I call it laziness, but it really isn't.  I think part of me at some point in time got confused about the difference between busyness and meaningful activity.


* * * * * * * * *

I said to a close friend, "I have a feeling that I was supposed to be more important."

My friend's reply was, "I've always had the impression that you didn't care what other people think, as long as you're happy with what you're doing."

It seemed like a kind of non sequitur, but I followed his meaning.  If I don't care what other people think, then who am I expecting to be important to, aside from myself?  Well, the truth of the matter is that I do care what other people think.  I want to be connected to other people.  I want what I do to have a positive impact.  I just don't want to make decisions for my life based on what other people believe.

Over the course of a couple of days following that conversation, a few people unexpectedly sought my counsel about different issues in their lives.  So, at least in some moments, I am important to some people.  I felt flattered and honored in those moments, and yet it wasn't quite the answer part of me wanted.  Part of me was defining "important" as "broadly impactful" or something along those lines.  And I don't believe that defines my life right now.  It's an issue of identity.

I've tried making meaningful contributions as a part of other organizations, places where I could have a broader impact because of an existing framework.  Somehow, I've wound up not having the sort of impact I wanted.  A lot of times it can be chalked up to personality clashes, but I also think that there is something more.  I may be dead wrong here, but I think that many people have a difficult time visualizing what something new will be like until it's created.  Once it's created, they don't have to visualize it, because it's right there in front of them.  But a lot of energy gets spent trying to defend an idea to people who simply can't envision what it will look like.  It's hard to have a positive impact on people who are afraid of what they can't imagine.


The direct end result for me is that people often do not see what I have to offer the way I would like them to, and I am unable to rely on participation in an organization as a means of identity.  The organization does not provide a meaningful purpose for me.  Honestly, I believe that some of my ideas could have profoundly positive transformative impact, but I don't enjoy the often exhausting battle of defending myself and my ideas to people who clearly are not open to those possibilities.  It isn't worth it to me, no matter how "important" I think an idea could be.  When I think about it in those terms, I don't really want to be "important" badly enough to define my life by the process of proving myself.  But I do want a clearly-defined over-arching identity than what I've been allowing myself in the enviably nebulous existence I currently inhabit.

* * * * * * * * *

I think one of the reasons I find it so easy to flagellate myself about perceived laziness is that I don't currently have an endpoint, a goal, a clear and overarching sense of purpose behind everything that I do.  Individual projects may have goals and purposes, but they are nebulous or far into the future. What I have sought through my involvement in other organizations is something I can provide for myself.


In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron talks about the Creator, and she encourages placing a lot of spiritual value on being both created and creator.  I don't believe in an actual Creator per se, but the poetic example of the act of creation at the very beginning of the Bible has some very valuable tidbits.  Actually, a lot of creation myths do.  They always involve effort on the part of the creator(s), and there is always a process by which that creation takes shape.

I am a creator.  It's what I do.  I create music.  I create sometimes coherent prose.  I use my imagination well.  On a certain level, I think everyone creates, but it isn't everyone's defining characteristic.  That may not make me important to a lot of people.  I'm alright with that, honestly.  What I was couching as a desire for importance was actually a desire for someone else to provide a meaningful identity, and when I am honest about what matters to me, I can do that for myself.  I have done that for myself.

So how does fully claiming my identity as a creator keep me from beating myself up in the times when I am not actively creating?  That's where the creation myths come in handy.  For example, in the biblical myth, God didn't create everything in one fell swoop.  He just did a bit at a time, and then he stood back and acknowledged his work.  And then, as many people have pointed out, he took time to rest.  There are a lot of similar lessons in creation myths from all over the world, and they amount to four basic principles I'm going to be following:

(1) Know what you're creating.  If you don't know what you're making, take a step back and figure that out first.

(2) Be wildly imaginative.  Don't restrain yourself with imaginary judgments and limitations.

(3) Acknowledge what you've created, even mid-process.  Recognize the value of your creation.

(4) Rest.  Rest is not laziness.  Rest is the time when you allow something within you to start creating the things you don't consciously know about yet. 

So, I have had a tendency to want to have an identity handed to me, and I have wrestled with the idea of being important.  I have justified or criticized my existence based on the amount of money I was making, the amount of things I had gotten accomplished, the number of ideas that actually took root somewhere, the number of performances of my music, and on and on. Even when I've realized how ludicrous some of those conclusions are, I have kept going back to them because they are easy judgments.  Now I have one more bit of truth about me, one more turn around the spiral: I am a creator.  I am defined by the fact that I create.  

I know this was a long one.  Hopefully it kept your interest.  I started this blog because I wanted what I see and learn to be able to have a positive impact on other people's lives.  On some level, I wanted to be important.  I assumed that I was not the only person in the process of learning more and creating more in my life, and I still believe that to be the case.  In spite of the value I have gotten from a weekly commitment to write down my thoughts, this will be my last entry for awhile.  I may come back to this venue at some point, in which case it will be tweeted and Facebooked and whatever else technology makes possible for me.  In the meantime, thank you for being along on this leg of the journey.  I hope you have learned as much about yourself as you have about me, and that we will all continue along that path of learning for as far as it carries us.

Farewell for now,
Randy Partain, creator

Creativity Breeds Creativity



Sometimes creativity is like a
hidden staircase.



Last week, I finished a theater piece for woodwind quintet.  At times during the process of composing it, I struggled with the idea that being creative means not being responsible or dependable.  I have this idea in my head that one can potentially lose oneself in creative pursuits -- that giving in too much to creativity can lead one far from "normal" society.  I know this is a ridiculous thing for a composer to believe, but since I was raised with the idea that it's very important to be a responsible, mature person, it's a challenge when creativity seems to threaten that.

I'm probably a bit more conscientious than necessary most of the time.  Truth be told, I'm not at risk for being labeled unreliable by anyone who knows me.  When I was in the midst of this woodwind quintet piece and I felt that I was limiting myself, caging in what I allowed myself to create, I made a different decision than what I have sometimes made.  I leapt over the precipice of creativity without worrying about any beliefs that might tether me in some imaginary place of safety.

Something happened.  Not only am I very satisfied with the piece I just completed, but in the past few days, I composed a set of improvisatory miniatures.  I just followed a little germ of inspiration and allowed my creativity to be important.  I've also started formulating a plan to find or assemble an ensemble in Fort Worth, I'm continuing to move forward with a libretto for a first opera, and I've begun to assemble some writing for self-publication.  I also started a new blog a couple of weeks back to articulate some thoughts about spirituality.  And all of these projects are stimulating and exciting.

Fully claiming the identity of creator disallows feeble excuses and supercharges intention.  Instead of complaining that a certain situation doesn't exist or may be difficult to find, I'm realizing (again) that I'm responsible for creating the situations I want in my life.  And being creative with one thing has sparked my creativity across the board.  I haven't heard any reports that I've become unreliable or irresponsible.  What I am in this space is more reliable and responsible to myself.  I know that there will be challenges at some point, but it's always easier to return to something once I know what it feels like.

A Real Job

When I was on the threshold of adulthood (on which I sometimes feel like I'm yet lingering), my stepfather asked one evening, "When are you going to stop this music crap and get a real job?"  Or something to that effect.  My mind may not accurately recall his exact words, but I do remember him suggesting that I could be a dishwasher for a local restaurant if that's what it took.  Although at the time my reaction was fueled by teenage rebelliousness, there are still moments when I struggle with that question.  I have nothing against dishwashers, but after earning a doctorate degree, teaching at colleges, and directing a multi-disciplinary, inter-generational arts program, expecting to thrive on creating music sometimes seems like cheating somehow.

My stepfather's question made perfect sense to him at the time.  He chose a profession that reflects his strong work ethic, the kind of blue-collar career in which you know that you've been working at the end of the day.  He respects people that stand on their own two feet, people who are responsible for themselves.  A music career equated with a pipe dream of fame and fortune, slightly more respectable than winning the lottery, but less likely to happen.  Especially in the small town where we lived.  It has its own share of culture, but it simply lacks the critical mass of population to attract much attention.  No wonder he would suggest a more realistic course than being a musician.

Even then, I didn't see a music career quite the same way as he.  I simply wanted to get paid for creating music, in whatever forms that would take.  It wasn't as though I wanted to be handed something for nothing, I just wanted to make money doing what I loved to do.  Recently, I have made decisions as if I needed to earn money somehow so I could indulge in creating music.  I could see music as a luxurious destination, but not the path.  Somewhere along the way, I became unconvinced of the feasibility of just creating music and getting paid enough as a result.  Even though that had been the reality previously in my life.  Bizarre.

Relocation was an opportunity for me to hit the reset button on a few things, though.  I decided to identify myself (to myself and to others) first and foremost as a pianist and composer, and to trust that to be enough.  I don't need to add anything or take anything away from that.  It is an act of faith, and it is an act of authenticity.  At the same time, it is based in reality.  There are certainly people of my skill level and less who are doing just fine in music careers.  Perhaps partly because they believe it's possible to do so, at least most days.


Now I believe that it really boils down to authenticity.  I don't quite believe in "Do what you love and the money will follow."  I do, however, believe in "Do what you love and the satisfaction of doing what you love will follow."  I think that when people are doing something that has personal value, they will do it well enough to be satisfied.  Different people are satisfied by different levels of success, of course.  My stepfather is satisfied, at least in part, by doing something at which he excels, with the confidence that his effort is worth his compensation.  As it turns out, we have that in common.

The Year in Review

Earlier this week, when I inquired about purchasing some lily essential oil (for a little "aromachology" exercise), the gentleman behind the counter said, "You won't find that here or anywhere else for that matter... genuine lily essential oil is highly poisonous and is absorbed easily through the skin.  You may want some lily fragrance oil instead."  Immediately, I felt very ashamed for not having had that knowledge, and I remember being in classroom situations in which I was expected to arrive with built-in knowledge rather than actually learn.  I quickly realized, however, that the only way to learn something is to admit that you don't already know it.  As someone who values learning, it is something of a gift to realize that there will always be something I don't know.  The humility to admit that I don't know something opens the door for me to keep learning.

That little lesson got me looking back at what I have learned over the past year, and so I share with you now just a few of the things that have stuck with me from my journey of the last several months.  I'll go ahead and start with: It's alright to admit I don't know something.  It bears repeating, for my own sake at least.

Another big one from 2010 is: Money isn't everything.  So many of the paths I have started down over the past year have ultimately been about finances.  I wanted to be a responsible person, I wanted to monetize my passions, I sought guidance from a variety of sources, and ultimately I have come to realize that, for me, it doesn't work for me to focus on a dollar figure.  The things that matter most to me are not things I can purchase, and when I become focused on the financial equation, it's easy to lose focus on the things that matter most to me.  I have learned a lot about money this year, and I have crossed some thresholds in how I think about money.  I know now that it isn't something that I want to pursue.  Money is merely a byproduct.

There are a lot of voices chattering about money, though.  And they chatter about success and freedom and all sorts of other topics.  Testing what people say and observing the results in their own lives is a great way to confirm who to trust.  Sometimes I really want to trust what someone is saying, and sometimes there is something within me that just cringes at a particular idea or individual.  Without any actual data, I'm just going on my own intuition, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but data helps cement my trust of a concept.  The challenge is that sometimes the data goes against someone or something I had really wanted to trust.  As difficult as it may be to admit it, if a hypothesis doesn't hold true in the laboratory of my life, honesty with myself is still the best policy.

I've also come to realize that: Fiefdoms aren't worth the battle.  In different roles, in different organizations, I have encountered people who operate as if they are running their own little kingdom.  While I may have something of value to add to the organization, and while I may get something out of my participation, when it comes down to it, it's a poor use of my energy to challenge someone behaving like a local lord.  It's easy for a person rooted in their beliefs and their pockets of power to develop a closed mind.

This has come up for me in part because I have begun to really understand for the first time that: It's good to play out loud.  As a pianist, I have constantly found myself in places where I am asked to back off on the volume.  Sometimes, as a thinker I have met with similar resistance.  Recently, I have had a few opportunities where I was urged to play out louder as a musician, and it has been a lot of fun.  There is a tremendous amount of freedom when I know I can play loud, and it is immensely satisfying to know that people genuinely want to hear what I have to offer.

Which is why: It's important to find a place where loud is accepted.  After hearing for so long that I need to be a bit softer, it sometimes bleeds into my own personal evaluation of myself.  In my own life at least, I want to encourage my own peak volume.  But there are other places, too, where people want to hear me, as a musician, as a composer, as a thinker.  Finding those places is more satisfying in the long run than screaming in a library.  Especially since, most of all, I believe that what I have to offer has value, and I would prefer to find ways for that value to be what people notice first.

So, that brings me to two last big ones that I have known for a long time, but have only started to really believe.  Focusing on what's most important to me is the best way to live a meaningful life.  Of course, it can be a challenge to know what's really most important, but for me it includes having creative outlets, making music, the connections that I have with other creative people.  It's important for me to respect and tolerate other people's spiritual expression, even as I seek an ideal way to define and live out my own spirituality. 

Lastly, as much as I want to be understood, admired, and respected, as much as I want to be able to use my strengths and capabilities in service to others, my first priority is to live in a way that makes sense to me.  To live in a way that I understand and admire and respect.  To make choices that magnify my strengths and capabilities.  I don't have to justify my life or choices to anyone, but I want to be act with integrity in accordance with who I am at my core.  When I choose things that don't really make sense to me, why would I expect to be understood, admired, or respected by anyone else?  Harmony within hopefully paves the way for harmony without.

It has been a very fruitful and satisfying year, all things considered.  If you stick around on the journey, we'll see how many of these lessons I keep learning further up the spiral...

Unseen Influence

Seeker's Journey will most likely resume its course at some point, but I want to share with you some of the big pieces that are falling into place in this time of transition (more on that in a moment).

Having never been to Fort Worth, I was delighted to find that people there were very connecting and warm.  In a conversation with someone on the Texas Christian University campus, I remarked on this and related my experience in a grocery store that morning.  I had popped in on that Tuesday morning to grab some juice, and half a dozen other shoppers greeted me over the course of that visit, some with a purposeful nod and smile and others with a verbal Hello or Good morning.  One person even complimented my tie.  This sort of thing has never happened to me in Houston, and I took it to mean something about me and something about the people of Fort Worth.

The person with whom I was speaking remarked, "The purple in your tie may have had something to do with it."

I glanced down and glibly commented, "Well, I do have some ties that tend to make me stand out in a crowd."

With a patient smile, the individual explained, "Well, purple is the school color.  You see a lot of it around TCU.  It's kind of a sacred color around here."

Of course, I laughed a bit at my own assumptions.  I don't doubt that Fort Worth residents are warm and friendly, and expect to find that they are so even when I am not clad in a sacred color.  But there was something at work of which I was not aware during my little grocery store stroll.  Although I knew purple was associated with TCU, I hadn't intentionally picked that tie because of its color.  Somewhere in the back of my subconscious I may have thought it was a splendid idea, but I certainly wasn't thinking of that connection even when someone directly complimented my tie. 

That experience has me thinking about other unseen influences.  Not fairies or guardian angels or ghosts, but the conscious and unconscious systems at work within ourselves or within other people (or groups of people) to which we are blind.  We operate on a great deal of assumption most of the time.  If we always assume the best about people, someone may take advantage of us at some point.  But if we assume the worst about people, we will likely see adversaries where there are none. 

Certainly other consequences abound from those extremes as well, but at the end of the day we must operate on some amount of assumption.  We can never actually know every single factor that will impact a result.  The secret as far as I am concerned is to maintain a willingness to evaluate and shift course when new information arises.  Which leads me to why I am suddenly moving to Fort Worth when I wasn't even considering doing so a month ago.

My wife, Joy, has accepted a job with Fort Worth Opera, doing something that she does well, connected to an art form she loves.  The whole process happened rather quickly, and I am proud of her for paying more attention to her hopes than her fears at the end of the day.  What it means for me is relocation to a place where I have no clear and definite plan, but there is some exciting freedom in that.  It will mean a rethinking of our finances, a retooling of how I spend my time and energy, and a chance to keep focusing on the things that matter most to me.  From what I can see right now, it appears that there will be immediate opportunities for me to be involved in the musical goings-on in Fort Worth, which can lead to new collaborations as a pianist and composer.  In a way, I've been preparing for this move for the past year.

Neither of us would have predicted a year ago (or even six weeks ago) that we would be relocating for Joy to take a position working once more in the opera field.  We had our perceptions of where various paths were leading, but we couldn't see everything influencing the direction of those paths.  The paths I have gone down over the past year have all taught me something valuable, even when I didn't stay on a path for very long.  I learned things I would never have truly learned otherwise, and some of those lessons have helped to define me.  Or, at least, they have helped me see the value in being honest about who I truly am.  I'll say more on this aspect of the journey next week.

What I want to clearly acknowledge right now is the importance of accepting that I do not see everything that goes on in other people's minds, and that I cannot know beyond a shadow of a doubt where a particular path will lead.  At a certain point, I have to decide whether or not to step forward on a path, with only partial knowledge of what may lie ahead.  But I can keep making that decision at every point along the way, taking in new information to guide my expectations and recognizing what I can do to contribute to the outcome I want.  If I want people to be friendly to me in a Forth Worth grocery store, I know now that wearing a purple tie will go a long way toward getting that outcome.  It might also work for me to walk into a place with a friendly greeting ready for the people I find there. 

Since we can never forecast every unseen influence, I think life becomes a bit of a game in which we win by doing our very best as consistently as we can.

What are you doing here?

I was at the end of a frustrating year of college at a school to which I didn't return. They had invited me to be a part of the inaugural year of their new honors program, and I spent the year growing up in a lot of ways. Musically, I had not grown much in those months, and one of my professors called me into his office one day as the spring semester was wrapping up. I had done well in his class, so I really didn't know what to expect. He started by asking a very direct question: "What are you doing here?"

He had seen some potential in me early in the academic year. In fact, he had considered splitting his large class into two sections with me leading the second section. That was quite a compliment, coming from an established professor, but the year passed without me ever really grasping and owning the potential he saw. This professor concluded that I was not being sufficiently challenged by the institution... that my full capability was not being nurtured. In some ways, it was easy for me not to thrive. Thus his question "What are you doing here?" was eventually followed by some suggestions of other (prestigious) schools that he thought would better sharpen me and call me fully forward.

I didn't take his advice on any of those schools, but his question stuck with me in more ways than one. Several years later, I was working in a church in a small town and a parishioner heard me practicing the piano one afternoon. Her question was identical to my professor's: What are you doing here? She saw something about me that I wasn't willing to see in myself, but the question immediately caught my attention.

I started waking up a bit that day, but I am only beginning to see how I have sold myself short in many ways for years. Perhaps it was because I didn't want to be driven by blind ambition, constantly striving to achieve more. More likely, it was plain fear that I wouldn't measure up to the challenge, that no amount of striving could compensate for my inadequacies. Sticking with what came easily seemed safer, but it wound up being ultimately less satisfying. It became rather like wearing clothes that are too small... I can completely fill them out, but there is more of me than what the clothes can contain. And it's not terribly comfortable.

Now I am being evoked again, and I am looking at myself with more honesty and less fear. Admitting my strengths and capabilities, I want a satisfying, sharpening environment that I have to stretch a little bit to fill out completely. I want to thrive. I can see many possibilities for how this can happen, and I am sure that there are possibilities I don't yet see. But if I remain willing to keep asking myself "What am I doing here?" and answer honestly, I believe those possibilities will become clearer and clearer.