The Important Lessons I Found In The Creative Arts

Throughout high school, dance has never been something I could wrap my head around. It seemed to be the only type of performance that was inaccessible when interpreting its meaning.

Unlike music and art, it gets more flack. At first, I mocked how the janky idea of that meaning could be projected through the human body and movement. Especially with contemporary dancing, the meaning must be accompanied by a deliberate choice of music to achieve the entire message of the dance piece.

Technically, the medium can be treated as vigorous as a sport. The deliberate timing, placement and expression. Every part of the body has a role to play in conveying meaning. Whenever I get the chance to sit through a dance piece, I try to interpret the meaning. A responsibility as an audience member when presented with art in front of me.

Dance: just like art, music, and drama, is a creative outlet. The medium is different.

Like words, a framed painting, a bar of music, or a dance routine, they all project meaning. Objectively, a dance piece is just a bunch of humans moving, a painting is just a collection of brush strokes, and a song is just a bunch of sounds. But, the main lesson I learnt is humans' ability to associate meaning with specific objects and ideas makes it more than objective reality.

Let me take you through my creative career and the lessons it taught.

Being A Cellist

My reasoning for being a cellist has its naïve origins.

In grade 3, three or four girls would exit halfway through the lesson to attend their violin lessons. Skipping half of the class a week? Sign me up!

The following year, I applied to play an instrument. The forms to fill out let you number your preferred instrument from one to five. I think, what I remember, I picked a mixture of strings and woodwind instruments. So, you submit your form, and they let you know which one you'll play.

Thinking about it, the primary school music teachers might have influenced the instrument you played. Anyways, the strings teacher got me to play the cello.

I was excited!

To track our practice, my strings teacher got us to carry a book that recorded the time we practised. If you asked me how much I practised, I lied about it out of fear. The funny thing was we had to have our parents sign the amount of practice to be true. Then after the weekly cello lesson, you'd pass the book to the teacher as she carefully inspects it. Looking back at it, I think she knew I was bullshitting her. I'd write like 45 minutes some days, 15 minutes the next.

As a kid, there was no motivation to practice unless you loved to play the instrument. The word 'discipline' or 'craftsmanship' would not have been in our vocabularies. As a seventeen-year-old musician, I know how important it is to be disciplined with your practice and have a craftsman mindset.

Discipline is practising whether you feel like it or not. Knowing that half an hour more of practice is better than none. To get better, you must get through the repetition and frustrations that practising can be sometimes.

The craftsmanship mindset is getting better for the sake of getting better. Only in grade 11, when I substantially improved my skills, I became motivated for the betterment of myself. I did not act out of being passional. Because being passionate is wanting to play every day, and I have not yet received that impulse. But when I do play, I enjoy it. And I practice, so I improve.

If only I had told this to my younger self. Grade 7-8 is when I contemplated quitting cello. What do you expect? I only practised once a week, and it would be the night before orchestra and rehearsals. I stunted my growth, making me feel more disappointed by my lack of improvement. But for some reason, I stuck it out. I don't know why. I had an interest in creating music and playing for an audience. But the comfort and dissatisfaction as a failure for a music student did not make me quit.

For I did not play to prove others wrong, either. (Proving people seems to be a common motivator when I overhear some creative art students.) Perhaps, I'm trying to prove myself wrong. When I get up on that stage, I think of how I will perform with the rest of the group. The audience never seems to be in the equation. They are always in my peripheral vision, and I get nervous that what I have practised for countless hours will be shown on the stage with mistakes. But, as musicians and performers, we must continue to play.

Regarding performances, a rule my old strings teacher taught us: "Do not say your mistakes after a performance. Keep it to yourselves." I've kept the tradition even after she left. I find the value of it that it's in similar meaning to the phrase, "the audience will never know you made a mistake." Unless a keen listener in the audience is listening attentively for mistakes, the average listener will not notice. To say the flaws aloud admits faults in your performance.

From how I interpret the rule, it's to be rude and undermine the performance by criticising it and not acting on it: i.e. practice. To perform then immediately tell of your mistakes might spell that it was sabotage. However, I might be looking far into it. Out of politeness and principle to not criticise and point out the flaws in the work you had just performed.

Another lesson I learnt playing an instrument also teaches you to dread being late. Being late represents how you care about your time more than the one you agreed to meet. In class, you would have panic attacks tracking the time for when you leave for your instrumental lesson. You only had one half-hour session to learn and improve your instrument, so our teachers valued every minute of it.

Being A Pianist

With the potential of 88 different sounds, this one instrument could be the whole orchestra.

The piano has been mostly a solo endeavour of mine. I played for the school's jazz band, but most songs I have learnt intended for the piano to be by itself. This tends to make me think the piano, at times, can be a lonely instrument. Most music will only contain one piano part, while the others have their own sections.

Practising piano was never as easy as other single-note instruments. The piano is chordal, meaning multiple notes can be played simultaneously. For most, they play one or two notes at most at a time. Then, you have the left and right hands to worry about. They are both two moving parts. It takes repetition for the fingers to be used to the correct sequence of notes.

Sight reading on the piano is not my strong suit, either. I have not done enough hours to earn the skill of sight reading with both hands. One-handed reading is fine. But coordinating two moving parts while reading it at tempo is where I fall short. It's easier to play on one-note instruments because they play one note each time!

The piano also introduced me to the Japanese style of music. There is something in the use of chords that makes it sound oriental and not Western, like Beethoven or Chopin. I find more emotion in the Japanese songs, almost solace and melancholy. From what I've observed, that relationship with sadness is unique in Japanese culture. Even some of their pop songs are notorious for having upbeat rhythms and melodies whilst having a depressing undertone in their lyrics.

Joe Hisaishi and Ryuichi Sakamoto are two notable composers I like to play. Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, One Summer's Day, The Bygone Days and Summer are some of my favourites. Usually coming from a Studio Ghibli movie. Perhaps the association of the music with the motion pictures emanates more emotion for us. We saw the characters develop for the plot; we were temporarily immersed in the beautiful setting.

To learn these songs, I had to be mentored. During my time being privately taught, my piano teacher had a saying:

"An amateur practises the piano until they get it right; a professional practises until they can never get it wrong."

Play a piece repetitively: so it becomes impossible to play the wrong dynamic, note, rhythm etc. This is why I am no professional at the piano. I am not dedicated enough to the instrument to achieve that level of playing. I still make mistakes with songs I can play from start to finish. But I am happy with my ability to play the songs I can and want.

Being An Artist

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The meaning is up to interpretation.

Between grades 8-10, I did art as a subject in high school. I had the dream of being a cartoonist with his animated movie.

To me, art is the ability to replicate feeling and emotion from the mind onto paper or a physical medium. A manifestation that is not real in your mind then exists in reality. That's the cool thing I found about it. You could imagine a picture, an image you have never seen in real life, but replicate it as colours and strokes on a canvas.

Unlike most thought, art as an academic subject wasn't only about drawing. Of course, we had to write. And one of the skills we worked on was interpreting meaning using visual conventions.

Understand the language to use the language.

Although most didn't enjoy it, my ability to use my own beliefs and values to interpret meaning I thoroughly enjoyed. When an artist makes his art, it is the audience, just like any medium, to understand the meaning. The title of the art might point you in the right direction. But her signposting lies in the piece. You can see it, but the mind must make the connections. How has colour, line, shape, space, tone, texture, contrast, pattern, and movement all served the purpose of artistic expression?

An artist statement is usually the be-all and end-all of interpreting art. Who is to say the artist's interpretation of her own piece is wrong? Or has she created a composition of art that goes beyond her intended meaning? Everyone will have a different understanding of art. That's the beauty of it.

(Personally, if you asked me, my favourite art movement is Romanticism.)

The Arts Conveys The Subjective World

The artist's job is to convey meaning through the medium of the visual plane. The viewer's purpose is to interpret that meaning. Before one can interpret meaning, one must stop being objective.

I still find it amazing we can associate emotions with colour, symbols with ideas and techniques used as a collective effort in meaning. Although I have only mentioned art, dance and music, literature is under the same umbrella of creative achievement.

It takes some thinking to interpret meaning. One can be objective with the perception of reality but must be subjective in associating meanings of it. Science will tell you a tree has leaves and bark. Change its colours to the season. Grow taller to capture more light for the process of photosynthesis. However, will science know if you had climbed that tree as a kid? The same tree you hurt yourself playing games in the summer? Or the one you buried your beloved pet?

If scientific papers explain the physical world, art defines the metaphysical.

Objective thinking must be shunned aside for the subjective to take hold. The relationship does not need to be one-sided. The emotional can heighten or convey meaning beyond objectivity. Although, if one is too subjective with the perception of reality, they then operate under a false reality. Too objective, and the capacity for empathy and meaning diminishes.

Truthfully, without consciousness and the ability to associate meaning, we are no lesser than the animals that roam the earth.