Do you ever feel like your time is limited on earth?
I always knew that I won’t live forever but this idea wasn’t part of my reality. I knew that other people will die but I would probably live indefinitely. Funny, isn’t it? I first started to realize that I too am going to die only a few years ago. I didn’t even internalize it when my dad died back in 2012. So now I feel the passing of time much more closely than before. And I’m scared of one thing. That when the time comes for me to go, I won’t have created everything I wanted to create. As Todd Henry says in his book, I want to die empty. Not to leave any songs inside me. Instead, I want to let them out into the world. It doesn’t matter if they are good, it doesn’t matter if people resonate with them, but I have to let them out before it’s too late. A lot of people live their lives without this idea. A lot of people carry a painting, a novel, a musical composition, a business idea inside them without even realizing this. And when they finally lie on their deathbed, they have this regret. I wish I didn’t keep my songs inside me. I hope you’re not one of them.
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Have you ever observed kids play? You surely have noticed the amount of focus and immersion required in these fun activities. And the same amount of focus for them goes into drawing, reading a comic book, or building something.
What would happen if we didn’t allow kids to play? That’s right, no more running, hiding, fighting, building, exploring, having adventures until they are 18! That would be insane… In fact, cartoonist Lynda Barry argues that without play, children would go crazy. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why there are dysfunctional families, psychopaths, entire generations and countries where people live in war zones who have seemingly lost their humanity. Play is a basic human act, primary to our psychological and physical survival. Creativity is primary to our survival too because brain activity when someone writes or draws or plays an instrument is similar to when kids play with each other. Play inevitably produces laughter which has all kinds of healing benefits. Kids laugh 300 times on average and adults - only 5 times on average. Who is happier on average? We as adults don’t play that much anymore. If we had to give an answer, the most obvious would be - we don’t have the time. We have to make a living. I haven’t played for fun a few months now. The last time I remember was with Ausra’s brother’s dog. We ran around our garden like crazy. It was so much fun. Exhausting but really fun. The kind of fun you wish it could continue indefinitely. Instead of playing, I had to find other ways to have fun and laugh. We watch movies a lot. Especially comedies. After a couple of hours of a good stand up or a comedy, I feel whole again. I feel the same when I draw Pinky and Spiky comic strips. I like to laugh at those silly characters and their actions. When I start drawing them, at first I don’t know what they will say. But as soon as they appear on the paper, they start interact with each other. Actually, I have to make them stop because they won’t shut up. I also try to live my days while looking for those moments around me which could go into Pinky and Spiky comic strips. Doing this, also helps me resolve conflicts and dramas with kind of self-irony and don’t overreact, sometimes even don’t engage with toxic people (although I still have plenty to learn in this area). When I see myself or others do or say something annoying, I make a mental note, sometimes a real note in my notebook and wait for the moment to turn it into a comic strip. It is fun. I’ll tell what else is fun for me - improvising on the organ. While I do this, I can be myself, completely relaxed, detached from the outside world and forget everything. Nowadays drawing and improvisation are my favorite forms of play. What is yours? Do you remember that voice in your head when you were a little kid which said that all the world around you is full of wonders?
You could stare at stars and think about the miraculous infinity of the universe. You can watch the clouds and discover strange beasts which kept constantly changing. You could even hear this voice asking do we all really exist or all of this is just a mirage? This voice is still inside you no matter how old you are now. Maybe it is buried deep inside underneath daily worries and insecurities, maybe it’s barely audible at times but it’s still there. And it is indispensable in the process of creating art because it helps you feel constant curiosity about the world. So we have to remember something important we forgot since childhood. Making art helps you do it. Making art helps you immerse yourself in the fantasy world that you had as a child. Making art helps you forget the sorrows of the world. Making art helps us play. It’s a little difficult for me to answer this question because I’ve been creating every day since Christmas 2011. And played organ long before that too. At first, I wrote blog posts, then created videos, then courses for my subscribers. Later I started to compose, improvise and draw. I also started creating podcasts. Well, maybe not every day.
Sometimes Ausra and I produce a few of the posts and podcast episodes back to back and schedule them to be published in advance. Our subscribers receive them every day but we don’t have to actually record them every day. On the days I don’t record anything, I try to at least create Pinky and Spiky comic strip and write a blog post, and of course play the organ. My recent memory of not creating almost anything perhaps was in London when Ausra and I played organ duet recital at St Paul’s Cathedral. I didn’t take my laptop with me to that trip, prepared a few blog posts in advance for our subscribers and had only my pocket notebook and a black pen. I didn’t want to miss creating during this trip so I at least drew a comic strip once a day. To find a day of not creating, I actually should dig deeper into my memory. Maybe on the days when I was sick, maybe when I had a lot of errands to run. I don’t remember exactly when such rare occasions happened but I do remember the feeling from these days. I would be grumpy, even angry with family members and I definitely felt that something important was missing in my day. Even now I don’t necessarily compose music every day. This bothers me. I don’t have any excuses for this, of course. Like many people, I still hesitate. And when I don’t compose, I don’t feel whole. I feel like I’m not living up to my potential. I feel like the days go by too easily. I should be more tired before going to bed. Like an empty cup, to be refilled during the night. Do you have this feeling when you don’t create? Sure, physically and emotionally your day might be exhausting, you might get a lot of things done and be spent like a sponge at the end of the day, but if you don’t have anything to show for yourself and others what you have created, how does it make you feel? I’m pretty sure not everybody feels this emptiness. People who have silenced this childish voice of curiosity long time ago and buried it underneath all the mundane worries and fears might not even remember how it sounds. They might look at the sunset or sunrise and don’t feel the awe at the beauty of nature. So naturally they don’t feel any urge to create and express this beauty which is all around them and actually inside them. To them the world is not a happy place, a place for sorrows, worries and fears. They don’t have anything to hope for. But even for them the miracle can happen. I believe everyone is capable of seeing the beauty of the world and expressing it in art. Sometimes all it takes is one life-changing moment or event and the world will never be the same for them. But if you are a creator, if you feel that deep down you have something to say and offer to the world and you’re not doing it, how does it make you feel? Or if you are doing the bare minimum and you know you could create more, do you feel like cheating? Because I do. And I hate this feeling. That’s what helped me to pick up that pocket notebook and a pen and create a comic strip about Pinky, Spiky and the dancing shoes yesterday. I woke up this morning not knowing what to write today. Usually I have some ideas from the day before but this time I felt really empty. Maybe it was the result of rather mentally strenuous day yesterday when I published our 10th e-book "Understanding What French Organ Registrations Mean" on Amazon Kindle. The contents from this book have been created long time ago during our #AskVidasAndAusra Podcast.
Whatever the case might be the first thing in the morning for me wasn’t writing. But I had to do something… I felt the urge to work on our 11th e-book "Why Do You Need The Music In Front Of You?" Maybe this was a distraction. I don’t know. But I compiled and published this e-book all the while feeling that I don’t have anything to say today yet. I felt the same when Ausra and I practiced playing organ duets for our upcoming concert. When I drew a comic strip about Pinky and Spiky meeting Pegasus, I felt empty. When we recorded one podcast episode, I felt empty too. When we ate lunch at Ausra’s parents house, I had the same feeling. When we played cards there, I felt the same. Even when I drew a comic strip about Pinky and Spiky and the dancing shoes, I felt empty. I felt empty also when we came back home and recorded three more podcast episodes. The same was when I was working on my business side of blogging. Then something strange happened. I decided it’s time for me to enter at least a title of today’s post on Scrivener which is what I use for my blogging. But I still felt empty. I still didn’t know what to write about. What I did right at that moment, though, changed everything. I stood up and decided to eat a juicy peach. I moved! I still remember the moment when this idea came to me like an insight. That’s what I have to write about today! About the importance of moving in order to get your creative juices flowing. Even better, it was also the time to pick up fallen apples in our garden and water the plants and the grass. So I moved again! Now I’m writing these words to you while sitting in our garden watching how beautifully the plants look after they had a drink… Even now I move from time to time to place the watering hose in a different spot. So if you struggle with your creativity today and don’t know what you should do, simply get moving. Go for a walk, run, do some exercises, stretch, do some household chores. You can be certain, the idea will come to you while you are moving. Why does this work? It’s really simple. Moving gets our blood circulation going, increases oxygen level in our blood cells, raises body temperature and at the same time increases brain activity. Sure, you can say, I can increase my brain activity while banging my head at the blank screen and trying to come up with ideas. But this is more natural way. More pleasant way. Saves a lot of frustration. Because movement brings change. Change brings awareness of new things. Awareness brings inspiration. When we first start our creative journey, we are impressed by what other masters living or dead are doing. Not only impressed but inspired. Not only inspired but actually we want to become somewhat similar to them.
When I started to improvise, I wanted to do it like the great Bach. I even memorized a few of my pieces to the degree that they really sounded in that style. What came out was not really like Bach, more like his student, Krebs. When I became fascinated with Seth Godin for his blogging ideas, I tried to write in the style of those vague philosophical posts for a while. I even marveled how he manages to write 3 posts a day, publishes only one and discards the other two (or so he said in one of the podcast interviews). When I read a book “Choose Yourself” by James Altucher, I tried to write 2000+ word posts every morning. I only lasted a week or less. When cartoonist Hugh Macleod came into my radar, I tried to draw some wiggly-looking shapes, like he does in his cartoons on the back of the business cards. When I was introduced to the works of cartoonist Lynda Barry, I tried to draw some square four-panel comic strips like she did with her Marlys comics. When I saw and listened to Gary Vaynerchuk videos and podcasts, I tried to create multiple videos documenting my day. It was exhausting. Here’s the thing. None of the above masters live in my shoes. I can’t be one of them because there is already one Seth Godin and he’s still busy writing his blog posts every day. I can’t be James Altucher, Hugh Macleod, Lynda Barry or Gary Vaynerchuk either because they are still creating their art. And we only see the results of their art online, we don’t know what goes into making it. We don’t know how many people or systems are working for these big gurus. The same goes for improvisations in the Bach style. It didn’t feel like it was my voice, something that is true. It felt forced. Then I relaxed. I wanted to use my own voice and started improvising something which came naturally to me. Sure, it might remind of some French modal music of 20th century masters but in general, I don’t copy anyone with my music. I just use the musical materials in the way I know best. With blog posts I try to share things that I notice, things that I do, things that bother me. One thing that Gary Vaynerchuk teaches still resonates with me - document, not create. But I don’t have to do it the way he does, I can find my own style that feels comfortable to me. Do I regard my previous creative experiences as a mistake? No, not at all. They are part of the creative process too. We are all inspired and influenced by some creators. To be inspired is good. But to be envious of their achievements or disappointed in our efforts is counterproductive. We have to find our own path. I know, it’s scary. I know, it feels like we don’t know what we’re doing. But it’s the only way. To combine many people’s ideas and produce something that is yours and yours alone. Yes, your style will change because your experiences and influences will change. This is OK. Don’t even worry about the style. When you draw, nobody can create a line like you can. This is your voice, right? When you write, write what you know. Like the great Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” Do you know the term overnight success? It’s sexy, it implies the person is so talented and lucky that in a short amount of time (literally overnight) the world picks them and they receive all the success they wanted.
You write a book and publishers line up at your door. You create a drawing or a painting and art collectors and gallery representatives start calling you. You compose a piece of music and performers from all over the world want to play it. I could go on but you get the idea. It rarely works that way. A few days ago I met my friend composer Ad Wammes from the Netherlands whose music I really enjoy playing. We walked in the old town of Vilnius and talked about his music. I asked him how does he find commissions. He said, he doesn’t look for them, they come to him. At this stage of life, he doesn’t have to worry about getting clients. With his world-wide reputation his music is played all over the world. I wanted to know if there was a big overnight success moment sometime in the past for him. No, he said, the sales and commissions increased very gradually from the beginning. And I believe him. This feels like reality for most people. First, you have to work diligently, create good art, get better with each piece, share it and little by little other people will start paying attention. It takes years, decades even to reach overnight success. Anybody who wants it overnight will be disappointed and quit. It’s better to focus on the process of creating art and sharing it with the world a little every day. Success will be the by-product of this attitude. I’m writing to you this morning a little bit in a hurry because there will be no electricity from 9 am and I still need to play the organ and have breakfast before that. So this will be quick.
Whenever you don’t have any ideas what to write about today, I have a suggestion for you. These 4 questions will put you on the creative path in no time: 1. What did I learn about myself today? 2. What do I need to improve? 3. Did I meet somebody today? 4. Did I create something today? So for me, because I’m writing these words in the morning, I can think about what happened yesterday. 1. What did I learn about myself yesterday? I learned that I can create even with my sleepy head, even when I went to bed too late the night before. In the evening I read a few chapters of my favorite spy thriller about John Wells after which my eyes already were heavy. So it was no coincidence that they felt heavy in the morning too. But this wasn’t an excuse for me to skip a day without creating. I also learned that I have a hard time sticking to the eating plan that is healthy for me. I wanted to skip dinner but couldn’t resist. These stuffed zucchinis that Ausra’s mom made tasted and looked too good. 2. What do I need to improve? Obviously I need to improve my sleeping habits. I need to be in bed before 10 PM. Not reading but ready to sleep. I did this yesterday. That’s why I’m feeling much better this morning in comparison with yesterday morning. I’m also challenging myself to skip dinner tonight and letting you guys know in advance. This is good for accountability. Tomorrow I will report back if I succeeded or not. 3. Did I meet somebody yesterday? Yesterday was a big day in terms of meeting someone interesting. I met my friend and composer from the Netherlands Ad Wammes who came to the Baltics with his wife Inge. I played a few of his organ compositions before and liked them very much. Ad was also my guest on Secrets of Organ Playing podcast a few years ago. So yesterday we met at the Cathedral and we climbed the bell tower of Vilnius University St John’s church, the highest point in Vilnius old town. We had coffee and cheesecake and visited many churches all the while talking about his music. It was inspiring to meet a living composer who can make a living from his compositions. 4. Did I create something today? Yesterday in the morning I wrote the post about creativity and distractions and in the evening created a comic strip about Pinky and Spiky the punk rockers. I also arranged for our organ duet double choir motet by Hans Leo Hassler Tibi laus, tibi gloria which will be part of our program for the upcoming early music festival Banchetto Musicale in Vilnius. When we played it together, Ausra seemed pleased. This meant a lot. So you see, you too can find some interesting things to talk about your day and yourself and I hope this was helpful to you. Now let’s see if I can still have quick breakfast and play the organ until 9 am when the electricity disappears. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in my garden while watering the plants with the sprinkler. The weather was hot but I was sitting in the shade just finished eating a juicy apple fallen from the tree. Hmm… Life felt good.
With this optimistic mood I decided I want to work on my organ recital proposals for 15 minutes. So I took out my laptop and fired it up. I wanted to find some venues to submit for my and Ausra’s organ duet recitals for the upcoming years. The best place to look seemed social media. I opened Facebook and scrolled a bit to see if any of my friends are playing any interesting organs. My plan was to contact those places where regular organ recitals are being held over the year. Simple enough. But when I saw my Facebook feed, I got distracted by ads and by other irrelevant posts from my network. Before I knew it, my 15 minutes were up but I haven’t done anything yet to get me closer to my goal of scheduling some organ duet recitals for the upcoming years. You see, how dangerous it is to start social media. You can be distracted from whatever it is you want to do creatively - write, draw, compose music, create a video. And it’s so difficult to go back to work. On Facebook, for example, I saw this curious ad about a new tablet perfect for hand drawing that imitates paper. Although I’m actually happy of using my pocket notebook for my Pinky and Spiky comic strips I felt really intrigued by the ad. I clicked through, even read a blog post on the site while knowing deep down I won’t buy it. Because I don’t need it. But my feeling was I wanted it. So another 15 minutes passed and I didn’t actually do anything about those organ duet recital proposals I initially opened Facebook for. There you go - 30 minutes of fooling around thanks to constant distractions. Luckily my garden was still being watered so I decided to give my search on Facebook one last time for another 15 minutes. This time for real. Right there on the top of my Facebook feed I saw that one of my friends played a recital in one of the interesting churches in Germany. With all my will power I resisted the temptation to scroll through my feed again and searched for this church on Google. I then found church’s website and organist’s contact information after which I wrote an email to him with my proposal. That’s it. It took me 5 minutes of real work. OK, now I had 10 more minutes left and so I went back to Facebook and saw another photo about organ recital. This time it was a festival in the US. It was easy to contact the organizers because they had a Facebook page and I sent a message to them directly about my organ improvisation recital. Another 5 minutes passed - 5 more to go. As I was so quick with finding organ recital opportunities through Facebook, I checked again and sure enough, another photo with organ festival in Poland came up. This time I checked Google for the festival website and with a couple of more clicks I was able to send them an email with my organ duet recital proposal. Now my 15 minutes were over. As I was ready to close my laptop, my eye caught a new message on Facebook from the organ festival organizers in the US. It was a short message saying that my organ improvisation proposal was interesting to them and that they will get back to me in a few weeks when their plans for the next year will be clear. At the same time this organist from Germany replied saying that he would love to host our organ duet in his church but he also asked for an exchange for him to play in our church. We’ll see what we can do about it. You see what happened after those 15 minutes of real work? 2 of the 3 contacts had positive replies. Imagine if I had worked for real those 30 minutes at the beginning when I was just distracted by Facebook posts and ads about a wonderful drawing tablet? I’m not saying I might have gotten 4 more positive replies but I would have sent for sure 6 more organ duet or organ improvisation recital proposals. So, this is just my experience from yesterday. Imagine how much time we waste every week. 6 times 7 is 42 unsent proposals. Multiply that from 4 and I would get a staggering number of 160. In a month! And do the math - in one year (160 x 12) I’m missing out on over 1900 unsent emails and messages. If just 1 percent of those proposals went through, Ausra and I could play 19 more recitals and likely much much more. Actually more than we could handle because with each rejection message I get I would learn to improve my proposal instead of writing the organizers the same message over and over. So this is just my example with organ recital proposals. What about any other creative activity that I and you do every day - write, draw, play, improvise, compose? And what about the other distractions beside Facebook (TV, meetings, surfing the web, YouTube, Email)? We surely are wasting multiple hours every single day. The same hours which we could spend doing our creative activities which would get us closer to our goals. I’m not saying we should only work and create. No, some downtime is good for creativity too because we can get inspired sometimes with new ideas for our work. But we can certainly keep the distractions to the healthy level. The good news is that we can constantly catch ourselves being distracted and gently remind ourselves to go back to work. That’s all it takes. And it’s probably the only important difference besides prioritizing their activities between people who make it and those who don’t. Yesterday I wrote a bunch of organ duet recital proposals for organ festivals in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and other European countries. One wrote back saying to remind them around Christmas when they know their budget for the next couple of years. This is a promising sign.
But most of them won’t even reply, I know this in advance. A couple of organizers wrote back saying that organ duets weren’t what they were looking for, that they are working with soloists. I tried to answer them with proposals for Ausra’s and my solo recitals but I knew deep down that it’s a polite way for them to give somebody a rejection. Otherwise they would have already suggested this option to me first. So rejections don’t feel good, do they? You start doubting yourself, perhaps you’re doing something wrong, perhaps you’re not worthy of success. Sometimes you may even quit. I quit many times luckily to pick up after a while again. In my creative life rejections are everyday thing. Just yesterday somebody canceled their Total Organist subscription. Total Organist is my membership course where people can get every course and training that I create. So this cancellation means that either organ playing is no longer important enough to my students or they didn’t have enough time to practice or didn’t have enough money to pay me or no longer liked the program. Sometimes they explain the situation to me when canceling, sometimes they don’t. Either way, any cancellation doesn’t feel good. Rejections might happen in the form of silence, too. Blog posts that don’t resonate with people and they leave no feedback. Sometimes this happen too. I create a Pinky and Spiky comic strip, post it online and nobody notices it or doesn’t bother to say what they think. There are more rejections happening in my other creative activities too. When people first visit my Secrets of Organ Playing blog, majority move on, they don’t spend on the site more than a few seconds. Only a part of them chooses to read a post or two, even fewer choose to subscribe and even a lesser percentage chooses to buy something from me, either training and scores directly or become members of Total Organist. Concerts I play sometimes are not well attended. Some concerts which are scheduled even get canceled. Videos I post don’t always receive likes or thumbs up. Many compositions I create remain invisible to people. So that’s another form of rejection, right? So you see, most people who find out about me, reject me. That’s part of the cycle, I guess. You can’t be liked by everybody. That’s one thing we have to get used to. But rejection from most people means you will get emails from some with extremely positive feedback too, such as this: “[I’m] very happy. [Total Organist] is helping to keep the organ in front of me every day. I have a tendency to procrastinate, and when I procrastinate enough, I forget. This helps a lot. I like the course I'm taking right now on transposition, and look forward to others in the future. Thank you, Vidas and Ausra!” (Laurie) So maybe what I need is actually more rejections. Maybe I need to reach even more people, so that even more of them would reject me but also more would say “yes”. Maybe you would need this too? |