If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
Neil PeartRead
I want to be an improviser, and I've worked very hard at that. It's an art. You don't just play whatever comes into your head; you have to be very deliberate about what you do.
Interpretation
Improvisation is a skill that requires intentionality and dedication to master.
In this quote, Neil Peart emphasizes the artistry involved in improvisation, which is often mistaken for spontaneity. He highlights that true improvisation is not merely about unplanned expression, but rather a thoughtful process that demands hard work and deliberate choices by the performer.
In practice
This quote could inspire musicians at a workshop on creative expression.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.
It seems to me that's the only way you can have a truly creative aggregate of people is if they're all contributing in different ways.
What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.
I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. I never understood that because, when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice.
I wake up every morning, and I go to ballet class no matter what's going on the night before. That's my priority, and that's what makes me feel sane and not removed from the realities of my world.
To be a film-maker, you are almost forced to be surrounded by contradictions... You must have talents of so many different kinds - talents that are contradictory.
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
I continue to write essays about art. The visual is always part of my work, and it gives me immense pleasure to make up the words of art and create them verbally rather than build them.
My dedication to trying to be a poet started very, very young, and I was very well encouraged by good teachers and by older friends and so on, so I think it is a benediction, and I also think it is a calling, a duty.
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
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