Thoughts on being creative
After watching this interview with Diego Stocco (thanks to CDM), I’ve started wondering about sound design, music and the whole creative process. What gets you in a creative mood? Is there something (or someone) that inspires you to create a piece of music and paint, sculpt and so on? This brings me to the word genius.
In ancient Rome, the genius (plural genii) was the guiding spirit or tutelary deity of a person, family (gens), or place (genius loci). The noun is related to the Latin verb gigno, genui, genitus, “to bring into being, create, produce.”
Now that’s an interesting thing because I witnessed this a couple of times. I normally keep all my gear in one place. I don’t travel a lot, meaning that I don’t need portable equipment. But when I do travel, I often find myself being inspired. It’s not as if I hear music in my head suddenly, since that happens all the time. On the contrary! Everything goes silent, I open up a sequencer and start throwing in sounds. No outboard, nothing. Just a laptop and headphones. I keep doing this for a few hours until my creativity begins to fade away. At this point, I’m almost done with all the major elements. This happens most of the times in which I’m (far) away from my studio. That’s not to say that I never get any inspiration while I’m in the studio, it just doesn’t happen that often. I’m still searching for possible explanations.
So what gets you inspired? What (or who) are your genii?
