The free exercise of creativity
Thoughts on joining the collective unconscious
As newsletter editor for our local Jazz Society, I have the joy of bringing jazz to players from junior to professional, listeners from avid fans to “what the heck is this racket?”
I also have the sad duty of announcing deaths. Recently a beloved member of our community, Prince Lawsha, died of cancer. I talked often to Prince at our jams, and the last time I saw him, a year ago, he told me that he was in remission and doing well. When another board member, Kathy Blackburn, and I were texting about the death notice for the newsletter, I sent her a link to Prince’s website. Kathy said this:
“I didn’t realize what an impressive career and life he had. This is yet another humbling lesson to me that when people age we don’t often realize what powerhouses they are.”
The creative impulse
Kathy’s response feeds right into the show that I’m working on for our June release. I interviewed creativity specialist Joanne Foster and writer/artist Patrice Vecchione about creativity—what it is, how it can be stifled, how we can use it to navigate challenges in life. Our jazz jam is a microcosm of the range of creative expression across humanity:
We regularly have professionals and esteemed elders in our community who sit in. These players practice creativity at a level most don’t reach—think about how effortless the work of a professional musician can seem. Even when they’re working hard, the music (or whatever art they’re practicing) seems to flow through them.
Most of our participants are somewhere in the range of skilled amateur. We are people who have been playing for a while, who have skills that show that we can use the language of jazz creatively, but we’re still working, always practicing even when we’re performing. Playing for us is about creative expression and community.
One of the most important functions of our Jazz Society is to nurture beginners, some young but most older people who are discovering or returning to music at an age when many people stop stretching themselves. We create a welcoming space where a novice player can step onstage with others whose skills they may never reach or, in some cases, they will someday surpass by miles.1
What all of us share is our creative effort, whether it’s the work of our life, a current passion, or a casual pastime we use to stay active in our later years. Creative arts are often practiced alone, so the community allows us to share what we nurture in solitude.
In creativity, we’re all in it together
When it comes to creativity practiced well, we can all experience the encounter that Patrice describes here:
I think we have to look at, what does the experience of making art give us? What do we get from that encounter? I do see it as an encounter—it's an encounter with ourselves, but it's also an encounter with what Jung called the collective unconscious.
No one plays jazz for fame and glory; these days when a player actually becomes a household name it’s usually because of their work in a more popular genre. And those of us who will never become full-time professionals have no illusions: we are true amateurs even when we make a few bucks in tips. So what are we doing spending our Sunday afternoons playing our hearts out in a Hawaiian restaurant in Santa Cruz? I think we are, in fact, taking part in that collective unconscious.
amateur (n.) late 18th century: from French, from Italian amatore, from Latin amator ‘lover’, from amare ‘to love’.
However, we only bring parts of ourselves to this particular creative endeavor. Our players may have successful careers, but they come to us only as musicians. In casual conversation, I’ve found out that we’ve got members who are doctors, lawyers, and at least one shipwright. But onstage, we bring only what skills we have been able to muster along with our creative expression.
Where’s the shame?
I wrote recently about using shame as a handy tool, but there’s also a lot of corrosive shame that keeps us from expressing our creativity. I can’t tell you how many times a novice spoke to me apologetically about their lack of jazz chops. But wait, didn’t I say we were all amateurs—lovers—sharing a collective unconscious? Yes, but sometimes our conscious, what as a writer I call “the editor on my shoulder,” whispers walls between us, our creativity, and our ability to take part in the collective.
I return to Prince here, because, as Kathy pointed out, many of us didn’t know much about his life. He came to our jams to sing; I didn’t know he had worked as a pro, nor did I know that he came to singing later in life. He came to the jams as himself as he was that day; most of us had no idea about his musical lineage and that he grew up around jazz greats. The last time he came to our jam, he came, as we all do, as a community member. As himself without the baggage that he might have carried in this life. And he sang.
He sang beautifully, but even if he hadn’t, he would have been taking part in the great creative endeavor that showcases the best of humanity. On that stage, Prince wasn’t in remission from cancer, he wasn’t his father’s son, he wasn’t a business owner—he was music, which he offered freely to every ear in the room.
How do you express your creativity?
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When we are visited by local high school (and sometimes middle school) players, that’s another lesson in humility. These kids are absorbing jazz through their pores! Amongst them might be the next Donny McCaslin, a local boy gone bigtime… And this is a footnote to this footnote: McCaslin is best known, you might guess, for his work with David Bowie. For all their brilliance in the field of jazz, what you often hear about in mainstream media is a jazz musician’s work in the pop realm.