following in joy

Talking about ‘ tuning into joy’ and allowing joy to take the lead and picturing your soul as a guide dog, leads inevitably to talking about the concept of ‘ following’.

But wait a second here....!

Wasn’t I a producer for Food for Thought?
Was I not inviting you to think for yourself, to make up your own mind?
Didn’t I imply that that would be beneficial to enhance the quality of your life?

How does ‘following’ fit into al that then?
How free are you if you decide to tune into joy and follow it wherever its quirky meanderings take you?

How are you supposed to shape your life, when following the lead of some ‘energy pattern’?
Where is my own creativity in this?

Such good questions (smiley)!

My take on it, is shaped in an analogy, one of my favourites: a music analogy.

What if ......you are playing your instrument as part of an orchestra...?

Would it be beneficial to play at the same speed, following the beat?
Would it be beneficial to be in tune, play in the same key as the others do, for the result  to stand any chance of being harmonious?

Any musician enjoying the interplay of playing in a group, will agree on this being not only beneficial for everybody to enjoy the process of making music together, but also quite fundamental.

Would it be beneficial to have a partition in front of you, to have clues to follow on what you are playing here?
Would it be beneficial to follow directions from the conductor, when there is one, for the finer nuances of the interpretation of the piece at hand?

Well... yes.... it is quite common practise to follow these meandering movements ( moving arms, music notes on bars on paper) in order to experience the co-creation of the performance of a piece of music. It seems to work well..... also for the individual musicians to develop  their skills on playing their own instrument.

When groups play more complex compositions, it is possible to add more depth, relief and variety to it, since various people are playing various melody-lines at the same time.
The result sounds as one coherent piece of music, but  there may be more than 10 different music patterns (partitions) being played simultaneously.
Playing as a group is adding options and possibilities to the creative pallet. The group can achieve to perform something together that none of the musicians, no matter how talented, is likely to achieve all by himself.

Are the musicians just drones, following orders then?
Ask a musician who plays in a band or orchestra to find out, if you’re curious if they perceive it like that.

But.. playing music doesn’t stop here.

By the time you are mastering your instrument to a certain extend and you’ve developed some feel for what it takes to play together, even the partitions can go.

Not simply because you know them by heart after many weeks of practise. No, it is possible to ‘improvise’,  to ‘ compose on the fly’, to play together in jam-sessions.

Either as a free part within a composition:

• an ‘ad lib’ where you can just meander at will-either following the melody or even in various ways countering it-
• 8 bars of solo for the saxophone in a jazz piece

or .............. completely jamming freely.

But the ad libs, the 8 bars of solo, as well as the jam-session are all in relation to an undercurrent, to the music that went on before and forming a bridge to what is coming next.
Also the free jamming is not completely random and the musicians need to tune into a common undercurrent to make the whole experience joyful.
They will usually not only play in the same beat and the same key, but also pick up on newly invented melody lines, repeat then in a question and answer type style, until another patterns take over. They will know, without saying a word, when its time for a solo of one of the instruments and the others will know when that ends and they’ll join in.

Where is the creativity in such a process?
Still afraid of losing your identity in following an invisible undercurrent called joy, containing peace, pleasure and harmoney?
Afraid of not being able to develop yourself, your skills using your instrument?
Afraid of missing out on possibilities to  stand out from the crowd?
Of losing your freedom?