Creative exorcism

I had an interesting conversation with the great drummer Matt Brown recently. I made the rather glib remark about music that ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’, or words to that effect, and he responded that he has to believe that originality is possible, that we can create new things in music. This got me thinking a lot over the next few days, because of course he’s right and I’m wrong, and I knew it as soon as he said it, but I wasn’t quite sure why.

I’m reminded of a time years ago at the 606 club where I was listening to a trumpet-led band which had Liam Noble on piano. It was in a sort of Miles 60s quintet vein (but with no saxophone), and in the break the bass player was chatting to us and he joked that the band sound was like ‘Miles, Ron, Tony (referring to Miles Davis, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) and Liam’. The joke being that because Liam has such a fresh and original voice on the piano that he couldn’t be compared to another pianist (which would have been, in this context, Herbie Hancock). Probably, with transcription and study one can find particular things that Liam does which are ‘new’, but maybe that's not the point. Even if there are no notes or rhythms that he plays that haven’t been played before by someone, he has a quality of individuality. He’s sometimes compared to Monk and Ellington, but he doesn’t really sound like either of them as much as he sounds like Liam. Kenny Werner calls this ‘the Monk effect’ - the capacity to make music that is assertively individual, where the musician determines the right notes rather than searches for them.

 In psychotherapy there’s Yalom’s concept of the here-and-now, which might be a useful referent. There can sometimes be a criticism of psychoanalysis that it dwells on the past, and the therapy should be about the present. Yalom recommends overtly bringing the present into the therapy space, ‘checking in’ with what’s happening right now in the room. But let’s also remember that when the past comes into therapy, it’s still happening in the present. The recalling is occurring in the room, and this is because it has relevance and agency in determining present feelings and maybe actions. This might imply that even when we are trying to recreate music from the past, we are still doing something new, by default. But on the other hand, intention might be important. Maybe, whether Matt is making new sounds or not, it makes a difference that he has the intention to be original, as in Miles' well-used quote, 'don't play what's there, play what's not there'.

In music therapy, the music, the improvisation, happens now. Even when recordings are being used, the improvised listening is happening now. When it comes down to it, there is only now. That’s it. There is also this thing called spontaneity, where we are able to be in the now, to intend to do something new, rather than to recreate something old. Much of psychotherapy is about exorcising demons from the past, as many people have pointed out. When we play, and also when we play (in Winnicott's sense), we need to be in the now, and being musically in the now also means exorcising the demons of the past, whether they are good demons, like Miles, Ron and Tony, or not-so-good. Everything’s new under the sun.