(no subject)

[kradeelav]

whenever i take a little break from playing piano, i’m always surprised at how much… better i sound afterwards?

to be clear—usually my accuracy is down (missing more notes or whatever), but my overall expression/flow for whatever piece i’m working on goes way up.  the piece makes more “sense,” feels nicer under my fingers, i’ve got a clearer picture of what elements i want to bring out, how to balance weight between the melody and other parts of the piece, etc

friendos who do creative stuff: do you notice a similar phenomenon?  (or, y’know, am i full of shit, i’m just curious to hear from the cheap seats lol)
 

[ raises hand! ] for sure, and it's neat to see the phenomenon extends across other senses and mediums.

it always puzzled me for ages to sort of ... map out the levels of when I felt like I was improving in art. Not necessarily the fundementals (that was more or less a steady line) but the more abstract mental breakthroughs, when cranking out pages felt like a rush of a river rather than a dam of a blockage. When drawing a figure came out without thinking, versus having to re-draw a simple head-circle 50 times.

 Over time it seemed like a fairly consistent cycle of a sprint > block > sprint > block usually alternating months on both parts. Even more consistent was the *immediate* first rush being a notable improvement on even the good-times before then.

One of my favorite explanations was a metaphor to seasons, paraphrased in - 'every year has its winter'. There's something to nature and cycles, imo.

Comments

[sokol]

thinking about this a lot lately. relevant as ever. trying to learn to weather my winter.

[kradeelav]

hugs right back at you. <3

[flowersforgraves]

dunno how relevant it is but this also tracks with burnout for me. the cycle of "I can write words and not hate them" vs "I can squeeze out like 2 words and they both suck" happens, but I also feel very obligated to take advantage of the first phase, which speeds the winter on its way. then I burn out and stop writing, and then when I come back I feel much better and like I've actually been able to get closer to "the flow".

[kradeelav]

it's so weird how it works like that, yeah? totally feel you what with the sheer difference of that two-phase cycle, especially with the burnout at the end but then looping back and eventually feeling better about your work.

hope it's going well on that end. <3

[inkblackichor]

I feel this so much, for the longest time my approach to blocks was to just try to power through them and it always ended up making everything worse; lately I've been trying to learn how to accept them instead which has been such a struggle but I feel like it's definitely been paying off more and more.

[kradeelav]

I'm glad to hear that it's paying off! Nothing like experimenting with various creative methods.

[queenlua]

tyty for sharing <3