Key Concepts
Flow
In relation to art, flow is commonly defined to be the sensation where all blockages in the way of art production suddenly lift and you're capable of transferring your ideas form your mind onto paper flawlessly. Pitchfork defines creative flow as "the mental state where self-awareness begins to fade out and ideas stream fast and steady, seemingly on their own" (Pitchfork, 2017), which I feel aligns with my own personal experience of the flow state. There have been tangible moments, particularly recently now that I have been putting effort in to engage more with art and literature on a conscious level, where I have suddenly and jarringly shifted from being distracted and occupied whilst brainstorming ideas for a song into immediately distilling the gibberish in my brain to the exact structure and words that I was searching for prior. To relate precisely to the EP, flow state was not achieved during each recording session however there was an absolute presence of it during the recoridng of Away, Out which was recorded on the first take with both Sid and I managing to communicate the exact dynamics and lateral movements that we intended to simultaneously on the drums and guitar respectively, which was an experience that I can only describe as blissfully weightless and vacuous, rending anything that is not immediately within the scope of that exact musical endeavour and producing something absolutely etherreal with what feels like no effort at all; It simply flows from your fingers. As much as flow is something that is impossible to forcibly harness, I'd like to engage more with the possibilty of environment's impact on creative efficiency in future projects to see if it would be possible to regularly and consciously promote a flow state during recording and writing sessions like what occured with the session for Away, Out.
Habitus/Field
Habitus and Field are two separate yet similar theoretical propositions put forth by Bourdieu in 1984 and Toynbee in 2000 respectively. Firstly, habitus as an idea suggests that environmental factors such as but not limited to financial class, race or social climate places you in a certain group of people and you will carry similar motivations and behaviours to the other members of this group. Bourdieu relates this to art by insisting that these groups impact your creative output by laying out a predisposition to certain elements, or as Bourdieu himself puts it: "Acquired mostly in the early stages of life, which informs subjectivity and therefore actions" (pg 114. Bourdieu, P. 1984). To follow, Toynbee's field hypothesis proposes that one functions under the umbrella of what he terms as a "field", which represents the same idea that Bourdie's habitus suggested wherein an individual's environment directly impacts the creative output of said individual. Toynbee separated the fields into three primary categories; the field of economics, the field of production and the field of works, further giving these fields the collective denomination of The Radius Of Creativity. Relating the propositions of habitus and field to myself and my own creative output, I find it to carry weight as in my works I favour space and magnitude, something which is reflected in my upbringing as I have always lived in very open and barren countryside villages, surrounded by very little save for that aforementioned mass of space. In the past few years I've spent far more time in the city and experiencing nightlife and the dynamics of exisitng in a space populated by many other people and I feel confident in saying this has had an effect on my writing. The music I produce has become far more humourus and lighthearted, a major change from the serious and self-consumed art I was putting out prior to experiencing young-adulthood. using both of these examples and comparing them, it becomes clear to me that with changes in my field come changes in my artistic sensibilities and that despite this, thinking of habitus, my music still holds the dry contemplative qualities that country upbringing bestows upon you.
Aesthetics
In the modern day, you'll hear discussion of aesthetics frequently. However, the term in philosophical language differs from the blanket definition it's most commonly used for in today's casual discursive language. in terms of the creative field, aesthetics are the building blocks of an artistic movement or individual piece of art, referring chiefly to things such as technology, genre and styles. for instance, Shuker details that "aesthetics concentrates on the philosophical study of the work of art in and of itself (an emphasis on the context of artistic production...a set criteria to determine taste, beauty and meaning)" (pg. 2-3.Shuker, R. 2002.). What this tells us is that in art, aesthetics function as a mutually understood list of objectives that a piece of art must achieve in order to exist within a certain genre or understood movement, as well as determine the quality of said piece of art. In relation to my own work, I struggled with primarily the technological aspect of aesthetics, trying to work through exact executions to achieve precise ideas that would suit the genre and movement that I had assigned the music to in my head. The primary difficulty was with exactly how much post-production quantified "overproducing" the EP and adding too thick of a sheen over the initial recordings. I believe in the end we settled on a suitable mix and master that retained enough roughness around the edges to keep the music sounding intentionally lackadaisical and loose.
Constraints
Constraints as a concept in music relates to the idea of the innate qualities that dictate the art that said musician can create. A simple enough topic at a glance, as the idea includes simplistic limitations such as available instruments and equipment, while simultaneously referring to personal and mental constraints such as ego and habits within a musicians playing. Toynbee suggests the idea that a creator is "restricted in how much difference s/he can make at any given moment... in other words the unit of creativity is a small one." (pg. 35. Toynbee, J. 2000.). Whilst worded in a way that might aggravate an artist, it makes complete sense; An artist cannot create that which they cannot comprehend. Understanding that the music that I was going to produce most likely will not satisfy my ideal form of it was a difficult learning curve, but it aided my creative process in being constrained as it forced me to grow my understanding through processes such as trial and error, showing me alternate routes to achieving a goal that would cause the end product to hold even more importance than if it were magically the exact piece of art I had intended to create from the start.
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