I just finished the eleventh year of blues camp and as usual
the playing and songwriting from the campers was amazing, each year seems to
get better. All we do is let people create however that is easier said than
done and it involves psychological trickery for people to be allowed to be open
and creative. There are a number of times will we see them close down by
reverting to the default rational thinking even though they have been told that
is not where musical creativity comes from, if that was true they would already
be creative.
It does not take long for the most learned amongst them to
question the logic of what I am saying even though they are by their own
admission stuck musically and creatively and that is why they are there.
I have learned over the years that people fear change and
that is why someone will come for coaching but they will fight against the
change that is happening within them. There is a strong element of realising
deep down what they believe is not true this can be explained through maths and
I will hand over to Lionel Snell to put it more eloquently.
‘The rational view of the world is ultimately a logical one,
to admit one little miracle or inconsistency into a logical system is not as
harmless as you might think. It causes complete disruption.
An example of such a logical system is arithmetic. If we
obey all the rules of arithmetic but allow just one wrong result than any wrong
result can be proved. Let us say that we allow 5+7 = 10 therefore 12 = 10
therefore 12-10 = 0 therefore 2 = 0. Divide both sides by 2, 1 = 0 this means
that all numbers are now equal to 0 (e.g. multiply both sides by a hundred to
get hundred equals zero) and therefore all equal to each other in other words
the whole arithmetic collapses if we admit one single illogical result into the
system.
So when something is a rational mind take such pains to
avoid confrontation with the miraculous it’s not being awkward or deceptive and
is defending the conscious form from total chaos.’
So my experience here is how things that just need to be
understood in order for them to work end up being vigorously debated to how the
rationale works. I would even go further to say that a pseudo-rational is used
frequently in order to make sense of something. Often people will come up with
the phrase ‘scientists have found’ or ‘it is been proven scientifically that’,
frequently these claims are not true. Not only that science is a system, a
tool, not a philosophy and therefore the tool is used to do a job which
occasionally, and maybe not as occasional as we might realise, is the wrong
tool for the job particularly when we come to the area of creative thought. Creativity seems to be inhibited by the
rational leading to situations such as writers block, stage fright et cetera.
So give your rational thinking a break for a time and enter into some
unfettered creative thinking, no explaining, no limits in fact endless
possibilities that bend and warp reality and see what you come up with. No
explaining just an acceptance of unconscious understanding.
Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk
booking for next year both UK and France
go to the site for details
