Using improvisation to surface structure

This week we explore how to “find your voice,” when it feels as though everything has been done before. How do you create something to put you on par with masters like Michael Jordan, Miles Davis, and Van Gogh, who are instantly recognizable?

Finding one’s voice isn’t mysterious alchemy but a complex process of tapping into one’s unique, often blurry stream of thoughts.

Using Richard Feynman as an example of distinctive thinking, Dr. Kourosh Dini describes a practical method through music: improvising, then pausing to review recordings, identifying structures and connections, and consciously internalizing what has emerged unconsciously.

This deliberate cycle of play, study, and reflection builds a tangible conduit to deeper self and clearer communication.

We close the episode with an evolving piano piece, “Alight,” in F minor, 3/4 time.

Transcript

How do I create something new, something unique? How do I not sound like everyone else? Whether writing a piece of music, searching for a unique perspective at work, or even trying to write an interesting newsletter, it can be easy to fall into a sense that it's all been done before.

The common advice is to use your own unique perspective. In other words, find your voice. Great, but how?

Voices of the Masters at Their Crafts

Finding our voice is never simple. But we see it in the masters of any field. Watch a video of Michael Jordan playing basketball. You'll see no one plays like him.

You'll listen to Miles Davis and you know it's Miles Davis. You see a painting by Van Gogh, and you know it's Van Gogh.

Even when we copy them, emulate them, well it all came from that original voice.

You might think it's a matter of art, some secret alchemy bestowed on the blessed few that lets somebody create from some hidden spirit within. Well, if so, how do we tap into that world?

That voice, whatever it is within us, can be rather complex, and there are likely many paths to fostering and caring for that voice.

Richard Feynman's thoughts on thoughts

Richard Feynman, this brilliant quantum physicist who beyond his understanding of subatomic particles, had a wonderfully quirky approach to life and learning. He would often share how he thought.

I hear how he thinks and I hear a reflection of my own thoughts, my own deepest thoughts, not because I know much of anything about quantum physics, but because of the blur of ideas that can come to mind.

The process of organizing that and the like, and it's not at all simple, but the unique nature of thought, tapping into that, I believe this is where we find our voice.

Here is the link to Richard Feynman's "Fun to Imagine" talk.

ADHD and the Cauldron of Thought

ADHD, wandering minds, I believe we often share this sense of blurring rapid fire thought. This cauldron of the unconscious is what we often look at, whether we're saying we have a superpower or we're drowning in scatter.

I do believe there is a process in which we can organize in self-reflection, a sort of flywheel of building our voice.

I think it connects with this idea of voice itself, like, you know, what is that anyway though. I think it relates, if not, is, a sense of deep self. A sense of nature within embodied in the spirit of play and care among other emotions.

And connecting that self with the world that surrounds us as the practice of expressing that voice, whether the individual, the corporation, or any spirit, we can extrapolate this to any aspect of nature.

Trouble in Communicating with Others, an example in Music

Then there's this struggle in communicating with others. We need to not only understand our own jumble of thought, but the words that others use and the beliefs that others hold for us to have any chance at being understood, if not being understandable at all.

Well, maybe I can bring this somewhere concrete. Lemme give you an example in music. Sometimes I'll sit at the keys and create something, some improvisation, some structure, who knows?

It is a common cliche that artists channel something from somewhere they don't understand.

It's quite often a musician will create something and wonder, whoa, where did that come from? And wonder whether they could ever do it again. As unique as it makes the person, it creates this shared experience amongst us all.

Rarely after I've created something, can I reproduce it again as it was, at least not at first. I readily forget what I just made, if not how I made it.

My first response is to seek that feeling again, that feeling of creation because it's so much fun. And it can be useful certainly, but I've never found it to be a reliable path for reproduction.

Feelings rarely if ever bow to my conscious whim, and if they do, can only be for some short period of time, and even then demand some form of payment, whiplash of exhaustion, anger, or some opposite somewhere.

In the world of music, I generally just create a headache between the notes if I try to push myself in some direction. But if I rest my mind on what I created, maybe listening to the recording, feel out the structures, oh, this contrasts with that, oh, here there's a note that aligns with that.

This flows here and there. All these connections with what I already hold to be true within me. I grow this repository, this ball of understanding within. I often wonder at it, and my goodness, I wouldn't have consciously created such an intricate set of connections. And I wouldn't have.

But in that study of whatever it is that I had created from some unconscious realm, maybe spent in exhaustion, arrest my hands on the keys, and suddenly there's this new bursting forth, new ideas where I can create not only with whatever I had just made and learned again.

But now with variations and complexities and new structures. With the understanding of the internal I am building on my voice.

It seems strange to need to internalize what already seems internal, but this practice, whatever the method of reviewing what we've just done to create from there gives us a more tangible, visceral connection to whatever the materials are.

If I study and find somewhere within that I can play and I can move forward.

But if I can find what that play means to me, where that connects within what I understand in a way that means something to me in depth, I'm creating a conduit to my voice. I am building my voice even further.

No Longer a Passive Receptacle

We're no longer this passive receptacle. We're no longer connecting by rote. We're now taking the information and building from a deeper sense of self, one that's more accessible to our emotions of play and care.

It's a practice, not something given. It's not something that one either has or doesn't have.

Again, similar to playing an instrument of the piano, maybe as some of us start with a talent, but no matter where we begin, we still need to regularly connect with that field learning, engaging, being with internalizing.

And this is where beyond showing up to practice, we find a deliberate act. Sitting at the keys with the words, somewhere in the midst of work and play, might fall into this path of least resistance, seeking only the feeling. But in a pause, I can decide, ah, you know, I don't know where this came from, what that means.

Deliberately if I rest my mind in that blurry soup of thought and understanding and see where things resolve from confusion into clarity, I'm developing my voice.

When I remember to take my hands away from the keys, resting them in my lap for a moment, closing my eyes, maybe I picture the shapes and interactions of the sound, the rhythm, the harmony.

In doing so, I can return to the keys with new ideas, new energy. What was once unconscious is now conscious. Where I can more deeply connect and guide the sounds reflecting whatever universal spirits there are without getting in their way. Another trope of artistry.

Whatever I find will necessarily be attached to some unique voice because there's only one me, much as there's only one you.

A Take Away

So I guess if there's a takeaway here, is there some piece of play or work where you can pause, and for a moment, close your eyes and ask, what about this do I not understand? What can I reproduce from where I am? Can I rest my mind there and see what comes to mind? Can I find some ease within it? Some marker of mastery perhaps.

"Alight" - Music

The following piece of music is called "Alight". I may have even played it for you before. It's one of those pieces that have clear parts, but somehow those parts keep shifting in relationship to each other every time I play it.

And I like to explore those shifts, why is it that I do it two times there and three times there and, and, and not so much this time and more in that time, and who knows?

But if that didn't happen, if those shifts and changes didn't happen every time I played it, then I think the piece would probably die. I wouldn't wanna play it anymore. It's in F minor three quarters time. I hope you enjoy it.

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