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This is my entry for the Information Finding Championship Season 2 Round 6 (run by @ifc and @apolymask), with the topic of "Inspiration".

As a musician (or anyone working in any field!), it is important to continually find joy and playfulness within your work, this is the place where new and daring ideas can be found, and more importantly, it guards against boredom and routine. Now, when your work is also your passion, it can be a dangerous thing... as you will often be required to conform to creative ideas and visions that you may not whole-heartedly agree with. Now, this is not a bad thing either.. in music, we produce performances as part of a team, and working together as a team requires the balancing between the collective vision and the individual vision of the piece.

However, something that I have seen in other musicians (both old and young), is a distancing of themselves away from ideas and performances that they are part of, but might not consider the "ideal" vision. This is a horrible thing to see, as it is a fundamental rejection of the art that you are producing... and whether or not it is your personal "best" vision is irrelevant, you are part of the performance! And once you get in the habit of disowning your creative work... it very quickly becomes "work", dull and lifeless with no joy or inspiration... routine.

So, in this post, I'm writing about the various things in my professional life that help me keep inspired, to take ownership of my performances, and to remember to find the joy and playfulness that is the life of any endeavour!

Being inspired from above!

By Paul Ruet - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Well, I have one particular boss in mind when I write this section. This man, Ton Koopman is one of the bastions and founding members of my particular field of music. It wouldn't be an understatement to describe him as an absolute giant of the field. So, it is with great pride and surprise that I found myself accepted into his orchestra some years ago....

Different leaders have different styles, but that is a post for a different time. With this guy, he is full of joy for the music... perhaps not as exact or precise as other players/leaders... but the pure joy and playfulness in his playing and the daring risks that he takes... well, let's just say that it is truly inspirational for someone like me! This is the way that I want my own playing to be balanced towards... technique and accuracy is fundamental, but need to be second place tools to unlock the joy, playfulness and daring in your performance! Quite often, it can be seen that the balance of priorities is the wrong way around (not just in music...).

Even as he nears his 70's he is still full of energy and life... it is like he is still a teenager, discovering the music that he has played for the last half century for the first time! It is this sort of leadership in a creative field that truly inspires you to play your best and to contribute your utmost to the collective vision!

Being inspired from below!

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In a job that is top level, it is easy to be inspired by the entire situation and just be dragged along passively (although, you shoudn't be passive!). In a lower level performance, you do sometimes need to search a little bit harder for that inspiration (the choice of NOT searching is that horrible pitfall habit!).

We all remember the first time that we did something... everything is just that little bit more vivid, every step is new and exciting! After the twentieth time (or more...), it is all too easy to forget that first joy of discovery. When I'm playing in a group that is either accompanying amateurs or in a group with less experienced musicians, I love to watch and feed off the enthusiasm that the people who are new to the piece or the situation (a concert...).

For a professional, it is normal to be doing a concert (or more...) every week... and so, it is all too easy to forget what a rush and how important it is for someone who is doing it for the first time... or that only does a concert once a year or once every few months! This excitement and joy is something that is quite infectious if you don't close yourself off from it...

Being inspired from within!

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However, it is dangerous to rely solely upon outside sources to inspire yourself... A more reliable source of inspiration is the one that has it's source from within yourself. In all professions and processes, there is a wealth of intricacy that is apparent to the outsider, but as a practitioner, you start to forget how complex any task (however simple seeming...) is! The things that you take for granted, because you have spent hours, days, weeks, years honing your skills to the point that it is instinctive and habitual can lead you down the path of forgetting...

However, these skills are the starting point for the joy of true discovery... the moment that you need to stop thinking about how to mechanically move your feet to keep balance is the moment that you can begin to dance! Likewise, once your skills in a certain area (for me it is music... on the instruments that I am fluent on!) approach a point where it is subconscious, you have reached a point where you can either take joy and be brave in playing with the tools at your disposal... or to use your skills to stay safe in a comfortable zone.

For me, this is the critical choice... to continually inspire yourself, you do need to push the boundaries of your bravery, not so much that you make a complete disaster, bu enough to give you that feeling of newness. To stay forever in the comfortable zone is not a path that lends itself to inspiring yourself (and by extension, others...), but a path that leads to routine and habit. Of course, that said, there is a balance... you can't forever stand in the risky zone, you extend by building outwards from strength, which means that you also need some part of yourself rooted in the comfortable zone!

Concluding...

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These are the sources of inspiration that I find in my work... sometimes from outside sources, but more importantly from within. Central to all of it, is to actively find the moments of joy and playfulness in the performances that I'm part of. Sometimes that is an easy thing to do... other times, you need to look a bit (alot...) deeper. However, these things are always there to inspire us... and to forget to look for them is the beginning of the slide down to lack of care and ownership.

Now, in this post, I gave examples from my own experience... which is heavily based upon music performance. It is easier to see parallels in similar creative fields, however, I do know that the same sort of idea applies in Science, where great ideas are born from the playfulness of scientists and engineers. Likewise, it is a concept that I think applies to every aspect of our life... things that seem routine and habitual, can contain much much more interest and complexity than we remember, it is just the will to look and discover it has disappeared...