Creative Cross Training (Fancy Shoes Optional)

I recently purchased a learn to play drums kind of kit from Border's. You might wonder why, if you know me well, why someone whose music teacher strongly encouraged her to pursue visual arts because of certain deficiencies in her musical talent, most notably an almost complete lack of rythm, would want to learn drums.

It's a whim, like glass blowing, beaded embellishment and embroidery, mythology, anthropology, astrology, and many other subjects that I have become temporarily passionate about. My dear ex-husband accused me repeatedly of never sticking with anything. I got the last laugh by not sticking with him. But, what he never got is that I have several core areas in which I like to express myself creatively - writing, metals, painting and drawing and photography. Those I stick with. While recently trying to explain my interest in drumming, although I knew that I wouldn't be exceptionally good at it, I happened to address the subject in the same conversation in which I had mentioned the five years I spent doing triathlons.

For those of you who are not triathletes, or athletes at all, let me briefly explain the concept of cross-training, which is the practice of enhancing ability in one area of athletics, say swimming, by training in another area, say cycling. The juxtoposittion of the subjects of triathlons and drumming led me to the perfect explanation for my whims.They are Creative Crosstraining. In some ways as an artist, everything is creative cross-training. For example, who knows when I might write a scene in a book where my experience with glass blowing might inform the action. Experience drumming may, I'm just guessing, change the way I perceive the rythm of words in writing. Sometimes, creative cross-training adds something definitive to core creative pursuits, such as how my understanding of the history of women in the healing arts has added depth to my creation of a fictional matriarchy. Sometimes it's a more elusive benefit. I think glass blowing, despite my utter lack of success at it, helped me understand the way materials heat up, making me a really good and intuitive solderer. I get the heat.

Sometimes, it's just that simple. It gives us the heat. The change of perspective lights our ignition, flips a switch, inspires us, charges us with a new idea, a new way of looking at art, a new way to combine ideas. It's all part of the essentially inscrutable jumble of forces at work in the creative brain. It feeds the way we see ourselves and the world, clarifies our driving ideals, sharpens our expression, paring away filler and filling it with substance. New experiences wake us up. Standing in the rain could inspire a song. It's not that all the ideas are new. No, most of them were there and the new input is what causes them to coalesce into a coherent expression.

So, climb a tree, climb a rock, listen to rock, listen to the wind, wind up a kid's toy, toy with drums, drum up some new ideas and influences. Integrate something new every day; add to yourself; add to your inner toolbox of ideas, emotions, expressions. Open up widely to all the ways that the world can feed us as artists. Boldly go where you've never gone before. Challenge yourself. Challenge your own creativity to grow. Find all the interesting thoughts that were already lurking in your fertile imagination and bring those seeds into the sunlight. Water them with fresh experiences, and then revel in the smell of the imaginary flowers that grow. It's like the Nike ads say: Just do it. And you don't even need the fancy shoes.