Create first, analyze later: a lesson from John Cage

There is a gold mine out there for artists of all kinds.

John Cage's 10 Rules for Students and Teachers.

The composer who revolutionized music in the twentieth century, at a time when innovation seemed to have reached a dead end, was also a remarkable pedagogue.

You'll find the full list of rules at the bottom of this page, but take a look at Rule No. 8:

Playing while thinking "I'm not sounding that good". Being disappointed with this note or that passage. "This isn't how I wanted it to sound." "It's not going so well today."

Cage told us precisely not to do that.

But it isn't easy.

Rule No. 8 takes discipline.

Not struggle. Not even "hard work."

Simply discipline.

Which means we first need to rethink what it means to play music. Then remember that vision while practicing, while continuing to explore it.

Do you remember drawing scribbles in the margins of your notebook while bored in school?

Or making random shapes on paper while waiting on hold with Con Edison?

That is creating without analyzing.

Children are especially good at it.

Most of us remember moments when we were making something and time simply disappeared. Building a sandcastle. Making a clay figurine. Solving a puzzle.

Then, somewhere along the way, evaluation stopped waiting for its turn.

We began asking whether what we were making was good while we were still making it.

That was the trap.

The more you evaluate your creation while you're creating it, the less likely it is to become something alive.

This doesn't mean ignoring quality, or spending hours making something mediocre.

The key is simple: create first, analyze later.

The difference lies in the duration of the creating-analyzing cycle.

While practicing, you can—and should—alternate between brief moments of creation and brief moments of analysis.

Practicing, by its very nature, implies a short creating-analyzing cycle. It might last the duration of a single note, a shift, a phrase, or an entire run-through.

Performance is different.

Performance asks you to create continuously, from beginning to end.

It requires a kind of presence that leaves no room for analysis.

If judgment does appear, it can simply be let go of like a helium balloon—by returning to hearing, touch, and radical acceptance.

The difference between practicing and performing is not one of quality of attention.

The difference is in the length of the creating-analyzing cycle.

Practice alternates between creating and analyzing.

Performance remains inside creation.

Analysis is indispensable. It simply has to wait its turn.