Freedom and Responsibility in Music Making

Source: Sarah Richter/Pixabay

There is an experience of abundant warmth that I encounter. This feeling is one of being emotionally complete, of being right where I belong at that moment, of being “at one” with my world. I encounter this experience while I am floating on my surfboard, out beyond the breaks, looking in on the sandy coastline. I also encounter this feeling in the middle of winter while on an afternoon walk in the forest. The experience often happens when I am with my instrument, making tones that somehow feel perfectly as they should be at that moment.

To invite this experience into one’s life, to set the conditions for it and to be receptive to it, is one of the greatest joys we can have. Yet it requires one of the greatest responsibilities we can encounter in living. This freedom is a consequence of our responsibility to choose the conditions within which we make ourselves vulnerable to receiving the world while being at ease within it.

The mood quickly changes when we choose to impose conditions upon our experience. We suddenly consider some judgment of what we should be doing. Some person watching from the beach or someone in the audience whom we perceive has not come to listen but has come to judge.

Although it is true that we will necessarily encounter this judgemental disruption from our experience of completeness, often it is an internal event that is imagined, rather than a reality imposed upon us from another. Whether we are blissfully floating in the ocean or floating upon harmonic tensions and resolutions, that experience of freedom is largely our own choice and responsibility.

I sit in the late summer night, listening to the tree frogs groaning out a regular eighth-note pulse. I can mark time with their drone, open to their groove, setting the tempo of the evening. If I listen closely enough, and if I can quiet myself, I can riff with them. Chords on a piano, a melody line, a rhythmic pattern on a drum emerges from their rhythmic throbbing. This requires an openness to reception, a willful encounter with not only hearing but listening to that which surrounds us, and a volitional choice to encounter those sounds.

The idea of choice and responsibility in one’s creative or daily life can seem distant to us. The idea that we are responsible for the conditions of this encounter, rather than being some kind of recipient of it, can be very threatening. Freedom can be one of the most dreaded conditions of existence. We actively avoid this freedom through a variety of well-studied mechanisms. We play a victim game (If it weren’t for…) or a copping out game (If only I had another hour in the day…) to avoid the risk of freedom. Ultimately, taking the risk of freedom requires us to do away with pointing fingers of blame for not being what we think we should be, and instead accepting what we are. When we encounter what we are, we begin to be receptive to what we have to offer, rather than dismissing it merely because it is our own without struggle.

The ability to appreciate and enjoy some aspect of ourselves that is present without struggle is a characteristic of creative freedom and responsibility. We come to appreciate our experience now, without conditions, and challenge the notion that only that which is beyond our reach is of value. We choose to embrace that which comes naturally to us, rather than dismiss it as worthless. The moral sadomasochist is one who embraces the idea that worth only comes from meeting some expectation of another.

How does one cultivate this experience musically? I believe that it begins with a life practice that will eventually affect our musical practice. Taking a walk in the forest and being receptive to the sounds and colors will inform our music-making. Feeling the pulsation of the ocean carrying us into shore, not merely being taken by it, but actively setting-up the conditions for being taken, shows up in our making music with others. The conditions for receptive authenticity are choices we make to see, smell, hear, and taste the world.

To acknowledge a choice to structure the event (such as playing a manuscripted composition) or to free oneself to create the conditions of spontaneous responsibility (such as free-improvisation) is a matter of choice. One can decide what one does with their musical time not based on expectation, but based on the freedom to choose. This response-ability begins with awareness and freedom in our everyday life, and manifests in our studio.

This feeling of abundant warmth that I describe is not something one stumbles upon. It is not something one is given from something or someone else. It is a choice that one makes to cultivate the conditions for receptivity and creative interaction with the world.