I have been talking with musicians on the podcast for six years(!) now. Nerding out about songwriting, the creative process, what makes a song work, why we remember certain songs, certain lines, certain musical phrases. I spend a lot of time discussing, reading about, and pondering creativity. But take a look at this:

What the heck is going on here? Well, this is part of the recent creative output of the spiritual advisor to this newsletter, the supreme executive editor of Tell You What! Enterprises, the endlessly surprising Susan Clabby.

On our recent excursion to New Zealand/Australia, we found ourselves in the studio of the most excellent artist Martin “The Robot Man” Horspool. Susan was inspired by some little figurines he had reimagined, and she has since been creating her own versions. These are small Hummell collectible figures, or their dime store facsimiles, picked up at garage sales and goodwill shops. The heads are then unceremoniously removed and new heads are attached along with various accessories cannibalized from old mechanical devices and the like. (In the above example, a fabulous halo/parasol is attached, which originated as part of a 1960’s era flash attachment contraption.)

These creations strike me as the embodiment of one of the basic definitions of creative work: effective surprise. This is a hallmark of the creative endeavor, and these little statues literally show us why they work so well. The surprise is obvious: here we see a cat’s head on a human body (in this particular case it was Jesus who was beheaded). The “effective” part of the surprise is key here-connections are made between things that had not been made before. This strikes near the essence of the creative act.

There are only so many notes in the scale, so many keys on the piano, etc. How do so many great songs continue to be written, paintings painted etc?

By making new connections between things not connected before.

An interesting observation is that once the connection is made, it seems almost obvious, there is a “why didn’t I think of that/see that/write that” reaction. In the case of the figures, a common response is “It seems like that cat’s head (or whatever) was meant to be there all along”

Our knowledge base is additive-we learn things, add them to our brain pile and there they are. (I can’t recall where my keys are currently but the information is available to my brain somewhere). We cannot now imagine not seeing the cat’s head/Jesus body, or the time before we heard the Beatles sing “eight days a week”; that phrase seems like it always existed, but someone thought it up and wrote it and sang it for us. (I think Sir Paul says that he overheard it from a driver who gave him a ride).

A critical skill of the creative process is recognizing the novel idea when it appears and placing it in the right context.

The use of metaphor would maybe be the intellectual way to describe what is going on here, our tendency to understand something more clearly when it is described in terms of something else.

Our brains are pattern recognition machines-for better or worse-the dang things in our head always try to predict what we see/hear etc. by comparing it to what we already know. This is where the surprise aspect comes in-the pattern recognition machine up there goes to put the image/sound etc into the proper box, and there is a moment of stoppage, the hey wait a second I thought… and then whoa cool!

A new little synaptical line of connection is formed, we get a little dopamine hit for the effort, and the song sticks in our head a bit.

I read somewhere (wrote it down but without attribution sorry) that our reliance on habit is an enemy of creativity. To try to get in touch with our creative selves, we need to do things a little differently-walk a different way to the store, listen to different music, do our regular tasks at different times of the day. This hopefully will allow for us to be faced with new combinations of sensations and inputs, facilitate making connections between disparate things, or just surprise ourselves with novels ideas and imagery.

(I am sitting now in the fifth in a series of coffee shops I have been walking to in the mornings lately in the hopes of coming up with something interesting to say/sing/write. How am I doing?).

I will add that I have realized this is one of the reasons it is fun hanging out with children-a four, five, six year old kid has not built up their reliance on the pattern recognition machine yet. Filters are not yet in place. They will compare things, create things, describe things in new and often hilarious ways without hesitation.

Anyway I find it helpful to consider these things as I continue to explore and discover new music (and other stuff, like whatever appears lately out of Susan’s workshop.) Realizing and appreciating how or why certain music/art is appealing is part of the fun-to let my brain be tricked or surprised at first, and then ponder how this thing worked-what was the new connection that caught my brain?

I will leave you with one of my favorite lyrics from one of my favorite lyricists, Paul Westerberg. Among his gifts is twisting common phrases in surprising ways, or placing cliches in novel and startlingly effective contexts. We started our little essay with a visual Jesus reference so here is a callback (another creative device that plays with our old brain’s pattern recognition department):

“Jesus rides beside me,
he never buys any smokes”
The Replacements, Can’t Hardly Wait