Reflecting

On Style

[Please click the landscape photo above to hear "Brief Song No. 1," composed by the author for early ochestra.]

It takes time to develop a personal style in the arts. Experimenting can be fascinating in itself, and seduce us into fearing ever "arriving." But finding our style is not an end. It is a necessary step toward greater creativity and, hence, greater freedom.

Valid art always seeks. With a signature style our seeking becomes focused. We learn to eschew dead-ends, approaches we have, with time, come to recognize as leading us not we want to go. We prefer instead those paths that lead to clear vistas.

At such vistas we have by no means "arrived." We gain, rather, a sense, seeing the topography, of where we would like to go.

Countless doors remain to be opened, just not EVERY door. One can hear through most that the voices on the other side may speak theirs, but not our truth.

I say this having spent years trying on different shoes. But most gave me bunions. I have come, only after walking in them awhile, to favor those that fit my stride.

There's no one "right" style, no one correct art. But there is that style that lets one's unique voice speak clearly.

None of this is to disparage a long time trying different approaches. Without doing so one can never discover those that let one's art grow more fruitful. Given my history, it would be hypocrisy to suggest anyone stop seeking until they find means by which their inner, creative voice becomes the words they speak to world.

This is no loss of artistic freedom. It's like a river meandering across a broad plain. The miller cannot harvest its power there. He looks instead for where the waters narrow to a swift channel, and there constructs his waterwheel and mill. So too must the power of our words be focused to do the most good

The miller's search is trivial compared to those of we artists seeking channels through which to share with the world who we are.

Don't be put off by the difficulty of this search. Seek and ye shall find. Seek until ye find! No rush. No worries. In art, finding our voice is no end to freedom and creativity. It is, rather, a fertile, glorious, and self-renewing beginning.