Lee Barry's Blog, page 36

Phase Changes in Creativity

Like phase changes in matter, people involved with creativity deal with them as well. Composers have been known to have revivals of what they valued before, such as neoclassicism, or in art, a return to representation. Music as a vaporMusic production is a simulation of the listening brain into distinct and digestible inputs. Music production is kind of like a "vapor" (not considering the genre

R.I.P. Little Richard (On Generations)

R.I.P. Little Richard (On Generations)Little Richard is one of the last pop artists from the Silent Generation, 1925-1945. In his case, he defined the zeitgeist of a generation. He represented the feeling we wanted to express but couldn't, and then many did. My Dynaxioms with the word "generation", "cool" and "nostalgia" in them, 1990-present.:(For an excellent analysis of the effect of "cool", I

R.I.P. Florian Schneider

I realized that Kraftwerk was one of the first bands to use electronic instruments as a proxy for the electric guitar in a completely new way. They weren't imitating guitars at all, but rather using them as another variation of an instrument that you could strap on, and not have to sit down to play. I love this clip because it demonstrates this effect when guitar-based music was exploding, and

On Polymathy and Creativity

After reading The Polymath I thought about how I've always approached creativity. We aren't born specialists. The brain naturally operates in a polymathic framework.

As I recall, even as recent as the mid-late 80s in my own life, people always had myriad interests. Simply being a student makes you a potentially more interesting person, or a person more capable of finding more interests than

The Work of Playing (Cont.)

On the reciprocal nature of creativity.



I am on a revival of playing and practicing instead of just writing because I realize the value of a creative process that includes manual skill. All levels of creativity are valid;  It doesn't matter where you start, but matters where you go with it--up until the point it's finished and beyond when it is re-arranged, remixed, re-mastered, and so

Music After All

You've answered the "why" but you've only convinced yourself of it, not necessarily anyone else. The expectation is that there has to be some linearity to life deeply ingrained in our brains that controls everything top-down: Things must be linear and logical in order to mesh them with the stories we want to tell about our own lives. But for artists that work in many domains, we have to

Covidism

A Movement is Born: Covidism 

April 27, 2037

A strange psychological change occurs when fiction becomes fact--even to the writer of the fiction. It makes the novel more journalistic; Reporting is vastly different because you're an "embed" as a kind of war correspondent. In 2020, everyone thought they were experiencing what might be read in a dystopian novel, which gave life a surrealistic

TV Hearth/Cool Campfire

The good thing about the old days of TV with 3 or 4 channels and a few on UHF was that it gave us something to rally around as a nation in front of the TV fire. I recall calling friends to remind them that there was something on TV that they should watch. Before having the ability to purchase it on videotape, or perhaps record it. it was a completely missed opportunity. Now we just share links,

Watching How Life Used To Be

Untitled (Girl in Window) (1999), Gregory Crewdson

(a la Robert Hughes)

All film-watching is now nostalgic because it is the way the world was. Social-distancing in any films that are theatrical in nature can’t exist as before, evincing the over-the-shoulder shot, with characters in a blurred pull-focus, large wide-angle shots with just a few people in the distance, or the “0-Shot” (

Watching Life of How Life Used To Be

Untitled (Girl in Window) (1999), Gregory Crewdson

(a la Robert Hughes)

All film-watching is now nostalgic because it is the way the world was. Social-distancing in any films that are theatrical in nature can’t exist as before, evincing the over-the-shoulder shot, with characters in a blurred pull-focus, large wide-angle shots with just a few people in the distance, or the “0-Shot” (