Buddhism & Creativity

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Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and applying Zen principles to modern. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Creativity. 

This episode will be a little bit of a freestyle. The last couple episodes I've had a bit of a agenda that I follow . 

 I want to come into this conversation with you from a place of stillness, from a place of. No agenda and I wanna see what happens. So thanks for joining this creative experiment with me.

 My talks are edited, usually in between what I'm saying there is long pauses quiet, where I sit with what I'm about to say or allow what I'm about to say to come up. You may not actually hear it in the edited recordings, but there's a lot of space in between.

What I say,

 Through stillness. We're able to connect with the source of creativity through life. Creative ideas don't really come from thinking and overthinking something, having a big agenda. What color should I use? What notes should I use? What note goes here? What note goes there? 

 My proudest creative moments have come from a place of stillness. I listened to a podcast. Joe Rogan interviewed Rick Rub. Rick Rubin is a major producer and he's been on many major records. Everything from, top hiphop albums to, heavy metal to pop. He's done a lot of projects and this is a really inspiring podcast episode . He talked about how a lot of the times the best stuff that he's done has come from a place of letting go and tuning into the creative.

There's a process in recording where you turn on a microphone and you have the song playing through , maybe it's a 4 0 4 thing. Dun it dun, it dun. And over the top. They will start to record and they might just say words of gibberish like, Yeah, you, I been new, often falling.

You record over the top of the song as many times as you want. These are all recorded in their own separate takes where you could go back and listen to each individual one. From this process, you go in and you start to notice real words that you started.

In that thing that I just did, I said a lot of gibberish, but then maybe I said, taken down you, and so they start to pick out these actual words or they start to say, Well, what did that sound like? It could have said. From that they write these lyrics sometimes these lyrics turn out to be powerful, profound, and inspired , many people think, , to write something like that or to create something of meaning, I have to use my brain, I have to really think about it.

 I have to overthink it and I have to apply all this mind energy to creating something. What I'm finding and a lot of other creatives are finding is that when they tap into the stream of creativity in their art amazing inspired moments happen.

 From stillness, we may create something or we may not, in this age of. So much being created, so much being made, so much noise. Someone being quiet and holding that space for a time is a greater gift.

 The most creative, ingenious people that we hold on high pedestals talk about their greatest ideas coming to them in moments of rest the space in between thinking. It was Einstein that would talk about some of the greatest ideas he ever had coming to him. Between that moment of sleep and waking

 He would have this big flash of insight of creativity that would hit him in that moment when the thinking mind quieted down enough to. The subconscious or life's creativity, whatever you wanna call it, come through with a breakthrough

 We talked about hustle culture a few episodes back, this has a lot to do with where our creativity is now as a society, I notice a lot of stuff is very algorithmic, people say, Oh, well I like all the music except country. But if you listen to country today, how different is it than pop?

How different is it than mainstream rock? When you really get down into the nitty gritty of the mechanics of what's going on in the music, you have the same instruments, guitar, bass, drums, maybe a synthesizer or a sample, and a. Well, that's all the same. Then you have mostly the same parts. You have intro verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus.

 There may be some differences between songs. Some songs don't have a pre chorus, but, okay. Pretty much the same instruments, the same song structures, everybody's singing in English, at least in American Top 50 Music. A lot of songs are about love or the loss of love. Okay, that's pretty much the same.

Well then what really differentiates pop from country these days or country from rock, the lines are becoming more and more blurred, a lot of this comes down to record companies tuning into the songs that people get hooked on, the songs that people will play over and over, or the songs that get stuck in people's head.

There's chemistry that's in this music, the pop song structure,

Many times I've likened it to you fast food. A regular burger, you make on the barbecue, you flip over a couple times, you put some garlic, salt and pepper on it, and you toast the bun, throw some cheese on and some ketchup. It's delicious.

And you go to McDonald's, you order a burger, and you eat it. And is it good? Is it good? Is it, is it addicting? Is it what's going on inside? Is it satisfying, like a burger? From the barbecue or is there something else going on in there? Is it this chemical level attraction?

You can only answer that for yourself, many times when I eat fast food, I get that sense. I'm like, this like firing certain triggers in my. That, make me want more of it. It has high sodium, high fat , carbs and it has a certain flavor profile that, , it's not really any depth to it, but it definitely is quote unquote good.

So I've compared this to music a lot of the times. , the producers record labels and just everyday musicians have started to lock. These addictive qualities. Like in fast food you have high sodium, fat and carbs. And so in music, a lot of the people tuning into that are like, Oh, okay, well, people like love songs.

Okay, we're gonna do a love song. Oh, people really like, This pop song structure, which we've talked about. Verse chorus. Verse chorus, bridge chorus. People like songs in this Beats per minute. People like four. Four, while all these popular songs are in four. Four, Okay, great. Okay. People like a male singer kind of in the mid range.

A lot of the songs will follow this algorithm and you could lay two songs next to each other and look at the commonalities between them, whether it's in two very different genres like top chart rock or Top chart country. It's pretty much the same shit.

 Saying all this, I'm talking about creativity and connecting with stillness and a deeper part of ourselves, a deeper part of life, where that creativity comes from . The creativity will be hindered the more that we enslave ourselves to the algorithm that already exists.

 Whatever type of art we're doing, whether that's visual, art, music architecture, we aren't creating something original that is connected with the mind of God or if that term scares you the creativity of life that is always changing. You look out there and it's like how many different types of birds are out there that have existed in time that exist now?

Well man, you can create that many variations of a winged animal. Some of them fly, some of them don't, some have colors that we can't see, but apparently other birds can see. Life is this grand display of creativity all these different variations,  we'd be much better off as a culture, as a society if our musicians, artists, photographers, architecture people practiced this present moment, awareness, connecting with stillness, connecting with the source of life before they create.

 Have you heard of Dolly Two or Mid Journey? These are visual AI assistants where they take prompts from the person, you or me that's sitting at the computer and you could type in Buddha sitting in Misty clouds above futuristic city, red, black, detailed, HD painted sky.

 I've played with this for a couple months now, and it's unbelievable what the AI is able to create, especially mid journey, it's can be scary. I'm glad I didn't go to school to be a visual artist because this is just insane. The amount of art that you can come up with, with this thing is beyond what any human could come up with in the same amount.

 For musicians, there's AI and music. 

 Capital Records signed virtual AI rapper FN Mecca. So AI is starting to enter the creative realm, and it starts to push people to ask, , what's creativity then if AI is able to be quote unquote creative what does that mean about my own creativity? Eventually the AI's gonna get so good at doing what I already do.

 In music, you're doing the intro verse, pre chorus, chorus, algorithm. Now the AI's doing that and it's doing it better than I could do. It's writing better love songs than I can write. It's playing better traditional chord structures than I can write.

So what happens to me as a musician? What's the point?

 The most valuable thing in art going forward as the AI does become more prevalent, is the human aspect of connecting with the flow of creativity in life. God, mind or stillness connecting with that and then creating something that hasn't.

Made as much, I'm not gonna say never been heard before because a lot has been done already, but creating a variation of something that hasn't really been heard as much, hasn't been around as much. A sound that hasn't had the opportunity to be in life as much. This will become the most valuable thing for artists, whether they're visual, audio, or.

I don't know, food. I, I don't know if AI will ever get involved with food,

 Have you ever heard someone talk about, Oh man, I had this idea five years ago, or three years ago, or three months ago and I didn't do it and now this guy's done it.

That's because these ideas exist outside of us. This is the universe communicating these ideas that it wants to exist in the world. Some people are more receptive to them some people have more means and abilities to. Execute these ideas.

 Look at, John Colt tree and her Miles Davis they recorded these monumental albums like John Coltrane's Giant Steps, or Miles Davis kind blue.

These albums stand out as huge artistic achievements. Revered for being the most creative, brilliant sessions . They went into this with a set of guidelines, different musical changes but a lot of it was riffing off the top.

John Coltrain, saxophone solos, those came out of this huge burst to creativity of present moment, awareness and moving with the music flowing from that place of creativity.

 John Coltrain, Miles Davis in the whole session group were some of the most accomplished musicians practicing their craft to the highest ability.

 Talking about the other side. There's a concept called outsider music. Outsider music is music made by people that are not very skilled as musicians. Outsider music is this genre or concept of musicians that created things from ,  a naive standpoint, not knowing much about music or structure.

One great example being the Shags three sisters, their dad got this reading as a young man and the woman had told him, the one that was giving him the reading, said, Hey, you're gonna get married to a redheaded woman and something else is gonna happen and then you're gonna have three daughters.

These three daughters are gonna become world famous musicians. They're gonna write a really , important record. Apparently he ended up marrying a red-headed woman and then this other thing came to pass, and then he ended up having three daughters. He had 'em practice pretty strictly for. A short amount of time. And then he put 'em in the studio and the recording technician was like, Hey, hey dad. These kids are not ready to record an album. The dad insisted that this had to happen

recorded this album called Philosophy of the World. Some major artists, accomplished musicians, heard this thing and were like, this is it. This is next level. This is so inspiring, so profound.

There's something about that raw creativity that's there. That hearkens back to us as musicians, our early days playing an instrument and that fun playing with your friends. It's something deeper, them being naive in a sense, not knowing a whole lot. It allowed something more real to come through in the music.

 I appreciate you stopping in and going along with me on this experiment

 I hope you have a wonderful week, and I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye.

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