- Title
- Unknowing the Knowing in Creative Practice: Zen and the Creative System in Action
- Creator
- McIntyre, Phillip
- Relation
- The Elephant’s Leg: Adventures in the Creative Industries p. 381-401
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.18848/978-1-86335-244-4/CGP
- Publisher
- Common Ground Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Nothing exists in a vacuum. Nothing ever could. Robert Pirsig’s classic text Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (1974) is a very good case in point. His book, despite his disclaimers, also played on the ideas found in the highly influential book Zen in the Art of Archery (1948) written by the German philosopher, Eugen Herrigel. Herrigel was intrigued by Zen. He wanted to know how, after years of practice, the effort required to do something becomes effortless as though one had to learn and then unlearn the practice, as it were, until an almost spiritual ease was achieved. With these ideas in hand the question must inevitably arise of how one might be able to marry a rational account of this activity with an apparently metaphysical one and, from there, whether one can ever reconcile the apparent binary opposites the West depends on for its explanations while gaining deep insights into the complementarity of creative action? In their article ‘The Philosophical Roots of Western and Eastern Conceptions of Creativity’, Niu and Sternberg noted that Taoist thinking and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism have both conceived of the creative act in similar ways. They also assert that “a modern psychologist, Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1997, 1999), has proposed a similar theory about the creative process” (2006, p. 32). If this is the case, we can take these ideas a step further. If the methods of acquiring enough skill to meet the challenges one faces in creative practice are employed to set up the possibility of entering the flow state (Csikszetnmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi 1988a), these methods must also be similar to the motor learning Herrigel described. From this perspective, the system of creativity, the source of both skill and challenge, must be absorbed if one wishes to not only enter flow but also attain mastery. In the process of gaining mastery of the system, demonstrated in creative action, the system must eventually become invisible to the practitioner. To examine these ideas in some depth the author will take this thinking and apply it to his own songwriting practice using a Practitioner Based Enquiry (PBE) approach. At the same time, he will also draw on related data from his extensive research work into the art of songwriting.
- Subject
- creative practice; musical performance; reflective practitioner; systems theory
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1450351
- Identifier
- uon:43908
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781863352444
- Language
- eng
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