As tends to often be the case with this particular friend, I agree with 90% of what he says, and yet find the 10% compelling enough that I want to mention it.
I'll take his idea, call and raise. I'm a believer in the idea that one is a creator. I believe *everyone* has that drive.
I don't mean that in some happy flowers-and-sunshine Saturday-morning-edutainment-puppet-show "everyone can be a creator!" sort of way; I refer to fundamental human instinct. I believe everyone has the intrinsic desire to create some external expression of the self. Some are compelled to write, some to play music. Some are just as equally passionate about being an auto mechanic or a carpenter. Some have children. The drive is the same, and it's in all of us. All that differs is the mode of expression. Your environment, your circumstances past and present, and to some degree your inherent talent determines the method you choose. (To cement my claim that this is no flowers-and-sunshine idea, I'll note as an aside that talent is by far the least important factor one takes into account when determining the mode of expression. I know -- we all know -- plenty of aspiring musicians/writers/mechanics/parents that really aren't particularly good at their craft. It takes little observation to realize that their lack of talent does paltry little to quench their muse's fire.)
Perhaps that shouldn't be a parenthetical, because it leads well into the second point. I think many of us, at some point, pick *our* art and commit to it. We define ourselves as artists in a particular concentration. But I can only hope it doesn't stop there.
Like I mentioned, my friend spoke of learning to be your own driving force in your art -- to create of your own, instead of being driven by others -- as a step forward in one's progress as a creator.
That reminded me of another friend, from longer ago. I went to the University of Tulsa for a while before moving back to Texas, and as frustrating and restrictive as I found the academic experience, it was ameliorated by the amazing people that I got the opportunity to call friends. One of them was -- well, my years after TU were spent at the University of North Texas, and I can comfortably say that taking that time into account, this guy is possibly the best trumpet player I've ever heard. I mean, having devoted some serious time in the music department in both schools, I've gotten to hear some remarkable technical players since then, and if there was some faster-and-higher contest between the trumpet players I've known, I imagine that, no, maybe this guy wouldn't take the gold. I'm also pretty confident that he wouldn't give a damn. But if you were to listen to the guy in a combo setting -- man, he shone. He was the first person I knew personally that I felt awed by musically. (I don't think he knew that, come to think.) He could speak through his instrument. He could create this intricate weave of thoughts and feelings that somehow the audience could understand inherently, as if he were somehow serving as both writer and translator of what is for many a foreign tongue. I've seen very few instrumentalists that could enrapture an audience like he could. He was, to me, the essential trumpet player.
Which is, I suppose, the lesson -- because I didn't get it. He spoke so naturally through his trumpet that I couldn't picture him without it. It was, no doubt, his art -- his life's calling, as others may see writing or woodwork or architecture, I suppose.
I don't remember how the topic of music-related injuries came up at some point over a beer or two. As usual, it doesn't really matter. In the course of that conversation, I asked him what he would do if he, a smoker (as are all the best trumpet players, it would seem), ended up with gum cancer -- or, who knows, perhaps had some sort of accident or who knows what, and ended up unable to play the trumpet from then on out.
I suppose I thought it a fascinating question to ask of someone who I defined in my mind as the consummate trumpet player. I don't think he found it all that interesting, though. He hardly seemed to need any serious amount of time pondering the matter, as he answered matter-of-factly, "Well, I guess I'd have to learn the piano, then."
It still took a while for that to click for me. I mean, I got the fact that he was a musician -- it was pretty much instantly clear to me that he saw the trumpet as just a medium, and that as long as he got to say what he wanted to say with the instrument in his hands, what instrument it was hardly mattered. He wasn't the consummate trumpet player; he was the consummate musician. I could grok that.
What I didn't get until later was that he may has well have said, "Well, I guess I'd have to learn to sing, then." Or "I guess I'd have to learn to write poetry." Or sculpt, or paint... Leaving the trumpet behind for him, I knew, would be a life-changing endeavor for someone so naturally proficient in it to take on. But it hardly took him any thought to come up with the realization that, trumpet or not, he had to create. If his medium for doing so was taken away from him, he'd simply have to find another.
I imagine that it sounds a bit cliche to come at this from the "there is art in every endeavor" angle. Seems that way to me, anyway; gawd knows it's been done often enough. Perhaps it would suffice to say that I think that's a sentiment often stated, but rarely understood. And it was then, when speaking to him, that I finally think I started to get it. There *is* art in every endeavor, but not because it is intrinsic to the endeavor itself. One could make a mechanical habit of playing the trumpet just as easily as they could of repairing a car. The reason there is art in every endeavor is because we put it there -- or, more precisely, because we *have* to put it there. We are all creators; we all have the drive to externalize a part of ourselves by way of our actions. But if we are the ones putting art in the endeavors, that takes it out of the specific media we choose to use to express that creative instinct. What method we use to fulfill the need to create is largely arbitrary. Perhaps committing to one over another is a utilitarian decision, born of the need to be fluent enough in the chosen language to be able to express themselves with the desired complexity or intricacy. And the particular one chosen is pretty much a function of environmentally influenced desires and interests. But creation is creation, and we all have to do it, and we as creators will find ways to do it within the scope of whatever application is available to us at the time.
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