10 rules - John Cage

I ran across these rules from John Cage, possibly from when he was working with Merce Cunningham.  They instantly struck a chord in me for our work as musicians.  I especially like rule 6: nothing is a mistake.  there is no win and no fail, there's only make.

Now, for practical purposes, I bet you're going to say "there's definitely a 'fail' that can happen".  I mean, you don't get the seat you want in orchestra, you don't win the job at the audition, you flub the passage you had nailed a hundred times in the practice room during your degree recital (think maybe I've experienced a few of these?)  But I say, if you're *in* the work, he's right.  There's no win, no fail, only "make".

What this means to me is that we need to stay in the frame of mind where we are directed toward a goal, but as we go about our work/practice, we need to stay open to the process along the way.  In finding my sound for the opening of Beethoven 5's third movement, I discovered all kinds of other sounds that didn't fit the bill, but were wonderful timbres in their own right.  Stay with the work in those moments: what about that sound "isn't right"?  What kind of sound *is* it?  And most importantly: how did you produce that sound in the first place?  As you go through that kind of process, you will eventually get to the sound you want, the original goal you had set up for yourself, but the better thing is that you will have focused on your ability to make a wide variety of sound and categorized your method of doing it.

I met a ceramicist (? pottery maker, is that what they're called?)  He had developed this wonderful technique of getting crystals in his final glaze, and it began as an experiment in something else.  But he saw the results, then really dug into the work of figuring out what he did, what variables he could control, and what outcomes they gave.  As he told me about this, he said other makers were able to do the same thing, but without any control.  And we both agreed, the fine line there is that art is both about discovering these magical moments, and being able to reproduce them consistently.

Here are some of my favorites of his work:

So, stay in the work, but allow yourself to hear your "mistakes" as opportunities to grow.

Gaelen