PHOTO CREDIT: @katstokes_/Unsplash
The best creative minds are flexible, and spend quality time working alone, but they don’t ignore the value of other ideas.
n physics, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and James Clerk Maxwell, three of the greatest creative contributors, worked almost entirely alone.
They profited from other people’s ideas not in direct collaboration, but by reading research papers and books.
In music, Michael Jackson and Roger Waters needed the input of Quincy Jones and David Gilmour, respectively, to produce a great product.
For artist Louise Bourgeois, aloneness was the raw material of art.
She writes: “After the tremendous effort you put in here, solitude, even prolonged solitude, can only be of very great benefit. Your work may well be more arduous than it was in the studio, but it will also be more personal.”
You can lose yourself in your work, when you are consciously in the flow without distraction. Louise further says:
“Solitude, a rest from responsibilities, and peace of mind, will do you more good than the atmosphere of the studio and the conversations which, generally speaking, are a waste of time”.
Although this article from The Atlantic concerns the lesson author Dorthe Nors took from Ingmar Bergman, I think a lot of what was written can directly be applied to musicians. There is something about solitude and being alone that can make a big difference:
“And then there’s the fact that he emphasizes “solitude”—that the artistic process unfolds in the lonely hours. That’s when the work happens. You have to control the creative energy that you've got. You have to discipline yourself to fulfill it. And that work only happens alone.
Solitude, I think, heightens artistic receptivity in a way that can be challenging and painful. When you sit there, alone and working, you get thrown back on yourself. Your life and your emotions, what you think and what you feel, are constantly being thrown back on you. And then the “too much humanity” feeling is even stronger: you can't run away from yourself. You can't run away from your emotions and your memory and the material you're working on. Artistic solitude is a decision to turn and face these feelings, to sit with them for long periods of time.
