“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” Friedrich Nietzsche
This last week, I had the opportunity to spend a bit of time doing something I hadn’t done in a long time: Listening to LP’s. Not files from my iTunes, not CD’s, not cassettes (which I still have around), but fragile, easily scratched, warped, even melted LP’s, those space consuming ancient technologies that require a lot of attention and a steady hand to get them on an off a turntable.
And while, in the back of my mind, I thought, “What a hassle! What a hassle it is having to be careful, and get up and change each LP every thirty minutes or so,” what I discovered was something all together unexpected:
The experience was magnificent. The experience at its core, I later realized, was a wonderful and powerful ritual.
What I realize now is that LP’s create an experience, an experience that requires that the listeners invest significant awareness, care, and participation in order to make it work. You don’t just click a button, or let a machine randomize the output of music. You have to get up, contemplate, select an album by hand, pull it from the sleeve, place it on the turntable, clean it to get rid of dust, and place the needle on carefully, all the while knowing that one small mishandle can quickly render the LP unplayable.
In other words, you are required to use your awareness, your dexterity, and you physical body to make it all work.
Not only on that, you are require to do it over and over again. Forget trying to lay curled up on the couch like a zombie for the evening. LP’s make you work, allowing you to refresh you physical being again and by either getting off the couch, or by taking a rest from you madly inspired dance moves across the living room floor.
Not to mention the cover art! What a treat it was not be looking at microscopic thumbnails on an iPhone, and instead to be holding a physical object, a beautiful iconic art object, flipping it back an forth to see the front and back covers, open for the magnificent spreads on the double albums, tracing my finger across images I hadn’t seen in years, images that unlocked waves of forgotten memories, and with the memories, parts of my Self that I’d hadn’t experienced in years.
In essence, the listening to the LP’s brought forth a spontaneous ritual of sorts.
Rituals, as I see them, are the opposite of habits in that though they may involve repetition, they bring forth the fullness of one’s humanity, including the five senses, conceptual awareness, and, as with music, the animating of the space around you through the waves of sound pouring forth from the speakers.
And, for all of this, rituals are a great companion to creativity. Think of Julia Cameron’s advice to write 3 pages every morning without stopping. Such rituals take us out of the sense of looming deadlines, discursiveness, or outright doom and allow us re-engage with the ever-present aliveness this world has to offer.
And when we find ourselves in such a space, creativity isn’t something we need to generate; it expresses itself in everything we do. Life becomes art.
What sort of rituals have helped you to bring forth your creativity? I’d love to know!
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beautiful reminder Austin. I think we get so caught up in accelerating technological advances we sometimes lose substance in the process. My rituals involve writing, by hand and also on a Smith Corona typewriter from the 40’s. It’s not entirely ‘practical,’ but there is a magic, a rhythm, a realization that words are tangible; a commitment of sorts. So rituals perhaps by nature are impractical, in the sense that they are an act of slowing down and engaging the world differently for a time.
Thank you for your comments, Steven. I love writing by hand, too. I found it difficult to hash out a new idea on the computer. And indeed, there is magic to the “impractical”. Thank you again!
Thank you Austin, this was beautiful! I like what you said that by listening to the album and tracing your finger along the cover unleashes your forgotten memories, allowing you to experience parts of yourself you had forgotten. That really resonates with me. I feel that way when I spend time with an old friend, a friend that I’ve had since elementary school or even college days. It’s amazing to me how being in their presence brings back the memories of earlier times and allows me to get in touch with that part of myself.
My most favorite ritual and I didn’t think of it as a ritual until I saw this blog. Is of reading a book ( a real book that I get to hold in my hands) and then taking hand written notes about the story as I read each chapter. I love reviewing in my mind what I learned about the story and by writing it down on paper I remember it better. And maybe at a later time I use these ideas to link to something I’m writing or trying to better understand.
Watching this post has been a great way to start my day! Thank you!
Thank you Nina! Yes, I love reading books, too, a “real book” like you said, that I can hold in my hand. I have, in fact, yet to make a digital copy of The Shoreline of Wonder: On Being Creative simply because I value all the hard work my designers put into both the cover, the font selection, and the layout. And, after 8 years of writing it, I loved having those designers, who are best friends from high school, make a conceptual reality into a beautiful physical object that one can write all over and make it there own. Thank you so much for sharing!