Sitting And Playing
John L. Waters
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Sitting And Playing
Copyright 2000 by John L. Waters.
All Rights Reserved.
John L. Waters
May 13, 2000
For many years I have spent a lot of time just sitting and
playing on a typewriter, a word processor, a computer, or a
musical keyboard. In this way I have gotten some new ideas which
I wouldn't have gotten if I'd not been playing in this way.
I wake up and I lie in bed and get ideas. I have an active
mind. But my mind is more active when I sit and play on a
keyboard. That is I really don't think well unless I am sitting
and playing on a keyboard. This is just the way I have developed
as a thinker and as a creative person. A keyboard is a tool or a
device which I use in order to help myself think more than I
would if I didn't use a keyboard.
The downside to this is that once I've finished a piece of music
or a piece of writing I forget all about it, and I forget about
the ideas I had as I was composing. This clears the way for more
ideas. So I sometimes sit and compose for many hours in a day.
And this produces a lot of new works, but I have no memory of
what I've done.
This is not the kind of mind a professor has. A professor keeps
many ideas and facts consciously in his mind. He knows before
going to class what he is going to talk about. He is like a
musical composer who already knows what he is going to compose
before he sits down at the keyboard. But you see, this just
isn't the way my mind works. I have a different kind of mind.
Now I can say that probably if I'd lived in an age when there
were no typewriters or musical keyboards, that I wouldn't have
become so accustomed to just sitting and writing or just sitting
and playing music. But since I lived in an age in which there
were keyboards, I discovered my different kind of mind at a
fairly young age and I became increasingly accustomed to using a
keyboard in order to think more. So if there were some other
occupation for me, I'm not sure what it would be. I wouldn't be
apt to think of it, since most of the thinking I do is when I am
sitting and manipulating a keyboard.
The way I am playing now, I am sitting and playing the electronic
keyboard on a word processor as I listen to a cassette recording
of me playing a Yamaha PSS-470 keyboard. Words come out as I
listen to music. The musical keyboard and the word processor
both help me to think. And what I think comes out in words which
you can review one word at a time. I'm conscious mainly of the
music and the words which flow out of me as I'm conscious of the
music. The flow of thoughts is dependent upon the music and the
word processor. If I couldn't sit and play the musical keyboard,
and sit and play on the word processor, these thoughts just never
would be expressed by me or through me. This is just the kind of
mind I have. It's not really a professorial kind of mind.
Now this brings up the idea that modern schools present teachers
or professors who stand before the class and promote the
professorial type of mind. Schools feature the professorial type
of mind and the good student can become a teacher if he or she
really wants to study about how to teach and how to prepare
lesson plans. And I can say that I did well in college and I
became a school teacher but I never wrote up a lesson plan. And
I never studied a course on how to teach. I was an improviser
even then. And even when I was a university student I spent
quite a lot of time playing the piano by ear. But mainly I just
played tunes I learned off records or by playing my guitar and
singing the tunes out loud. I hadn't really become creative
using a keyboard.
Before I learned to think the way I think now I had to lose my
old mind. I mean my old mind had to be converted to my new
mind.
I had spent my life going to school and learning how to be a good
teacher. I learned to be a good teacher just by going to
school. I had talent for teaching. But as my life worked out, I
became more and more creative. You might say I had a weakness
for playing the keyboard like some people have a weakness for
chocolate or for alcohol. I just came to enjoy sitting down at a
keyboard and playing the instrument. And as I typed more and
more I got more and more ideas, and some of these ideas were
rather unusual. And in this way I've been able to more or less
document the changes in my mind over the years. These documents
contain a large number of words. These documents fill about
ninety large cardboard cartons. In this way the conversion of a
professorial authoritarian teacher type of mind into a "clear"
creative type of mind is documented. These are two definitely
different types of mind!
The authoritarian teacher type of mind retains information and
helps other persons learn that information. Then for you I write
or tell facts or rules for relating facts. As a clear-creative
type of mind I am not conscious of facts at all except as I
produce writing or speech. I relate different facts as I speak
or write, but I have no conscious plan or outline which is
guiding the flow of my ideation. A process is working in me
which is different from the process which guides the writing or
the speech of an authoritarian teacher. I do not require or
expect that you will agree 100% with what I say or try and commit
everything I say to memory. This writing is just like a speech I
give, which is guiding me to some glorious new idea!
When I sit and play music, when I am really inspired then I play
music I've never played before. And when I sit and type and I'm
really inspired, I get an idea I've never had before. And in
this way I progress in my thinking, so that I can better explain
the "conversion" process whereby a person loses his old mind and
gets a new mind, or loses an old opinion and takes up a new
opinion. This is hard for some people to do!
Now when I am inspired, I sit and get new music without having to
make a conscious effort. The new ideas come spontaneously. All
I have to do is sit and play the keyboard. And when I am
inspired, I sit and type without having to make a conscious
effort. My hands dance over the keyboard and I don't have to
think at all. The process is automatic.
But with the music there are no words to it. The domain of
ideation is different from the domain of ideation in talking and
in writing. And how can the musician explain how he is able to
get new music so easily? The musician hasn't learned to use an
alphanumeric keyboard in the same inspired state he feels when he
is producing his inspired music. And this inspired musician
isn't functioning as a professor of music. And a teacher of
music might become an improviser from time to time but when he is
teaching music, unless he is teaching improvisation, he is having
to use the mind of an authoritarian teacher. His students expect
him to teach with authority. If he doesn't lead with his
authoritarian professorial mind, then his students will be
disappointed in him.
This might explain why so many educated persons just have a lot
of difficulty in that they tend to be stubborn and they tend to
have difficulty in getting new ideas. On the other hand, the
person whose mind readily changes may get many ideas but which
ideas are correct? Which ideas are good? The non-professorial
mind which isn't the kind of mind emphasized in school may find
it hard to impress educated people who "know what is good". Do
you see why?
The "clear" mind has access to lots more ideas than the educated
minds have. The problem is that education blocks young minds
because educators want children to remember all they are told.
But the "clear" mind works by forgetting everything. It is only
when the mind is "clear" that the fresh new melody can spring
into being. If the new melody is committed to memory, then this
just makes it harder to get more new melodies. And so by
"clearing" the mind, one begins to open up the mind to get lots
of new ideas in a short time. And all of a sudden the person who
has "cleared" his mind is getting these ideas which seem to be
coming from nowhere. And the authoritarian mind is called upon
to explain this rather amazing event!
So you need to picture this person who was educated along with
all of his peers, and expected to be a normal, authoritarian
adult, and maybe he is a normal, authoritarian adult until he is
thirty years old or forty years old but then rather suddenly, he
loses his old authoritarian, retentive, educated mind and he
produces hundreds of new ideas a day or thousands of new ideas in
a week. And no one can explain the source of these ideas or the
reason why this educated man has "lost his mind". He's just not
the same person.
In the old days the "cleared" mind was the result of witchcraft
or demonic possession, or else possession by a god or by a
genius. The world was inhabited by spirits and the "cleared"
mind was explained in this way. The inspired man was being led
by the devil or he was being led by God. And a few persons who
had "clear" minds were hailed as messengers from God or as
incarnations of God. In this way the old authoritarian mind
tried to explain the "cleared" mind.
I believe that in his lifetime Stephen Foster composed five
hundred and fifty songs. Out of all these songs, fewer than
fifty of Steven Foster's songs are sung today, and I doubt if you
can personally remember the names of five of Stephen Foster's
songs. You might prove me wrong. But if I am right then even if
you are recognized as a great songwriter, It's likely that fewer
than one percent of your songs are going to be popular
favorites. You've got to get used to letting go of the
professorial need to always be right, and always be on target.
If you are going to be very creative, then most of your works are
going to fall flat and seem dull or repetitive to people.
The professor can sift through whole libraries of other people's
work and select the cleverest ideas and present these from memory
to his class. This is the way the professorial mind works. He
may remember lots of jokes as well, and be a good entertainer.
But the "clear" mind doesn't work this way. And in our society,
that is in our authoritarian culture, children just don't meet a
lot of people who are not authoritarians.
In school, the children are taught what authoritarians consider
correct and good. A child who is more creative will say, do, and
write some things which are not considered correct or good. And
so the more creative child will sometimes be told that his work
is not good or not correct. And in time he may cease to care.
And if a person doesn't care then he will cease to strive to do
well. And even if a person is creative, if he doesn't care, and
if he doesn't strive to do well, then the chances are he will
fail. From this line of reasoning we are led to the idea that
quite a lot of unsuccessful persons are really exceptionally
creative but they never learned the secret. That is they never
learned to distinguish the authoritative retentive type mind from
the "clear" mind. And they never were taught ways to "clear" the
mind so that new ideas can be free to come up into
consciousness. For after all, if you are proving your worth by
just remembering, then any new ideas which you might originate
just are blocked. They are like logs which are floating under
the ice, which you can't get to because the ice is covering all
the water in which these logs are floating.
We might imagine a new school in which children are given lots of
time each day to "clear" their minds so that they can get some
new ideas for art, for music, or for writing, or for some other
new invention. This would be in addition to their ordinary
school training which training which is like the training you
and I received in school.
In my own case, the teachings of authoritarian persons just
weren't adequate for my needs, and I had to "clear" my mind so
that I could get the ideas I needed to survive. Then, when I had
"cleared" my mind, people were concerned about my behavior. I
was expected to "explain" my unusual behavior to authoritarian
persons who had never studied the "clear" mind. So this has made
it necessary for me to spend a great deal of time and energy in
making this subject crystal clear. And my continual outpourings
of new works in art, music, and writing are just the result of
this non-authoritative, non-professorial state of mind which is
so radically different from the state of mind emphasized in both
the public schools and the independent schools.
11:03PM Saturday, May 13, 2000
John L. Waters
johnlwaters@yahoo.com
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