Creativity is Creativity

is creativity

I have a photographic memory. It doesn’t work like in the movies, but it’s helpful. You can imagine that it is, at times, a curse.

When I have an idea for a song, I get a piece of paper. It can be a napkin. A post-it note. A paper bag. If I’m lucky, it’s a notebook. If I write it down, I may never need to look at it again.

“Love-in-a-mist,” also known as Devil in the bush, Ragged lady, Bird’s nest, Blue crown, Blue spiderflower, Chase-the-devil, Devil in a bush, Garden fennel, Jack in prison, Jack in the green, Katherine’s flower, Kiss-me-twice-before-i-rise, Lady in the bower, Love-in-a-puzzle, Love-in-a-tangle, St. Catherine’s flower.

When I started learning calculus and physics, some small voice in my head said, This is a problem. Maybe because I’m an artist, I listen to the little voices, but I couldn’t figure out why it was a problem. The quadratic equation, trig substitutions, and Gaussian integrals—all in Appendix B right behind my eyes. Seemed like a superpower to me.

When I taught songwriting, there was always an evolution in students from “What’s the process?” to understanding that there isn’t a process. There’s just a blank page and the still air, and you have to fill it with something.

But with math and science, there’s a process, right? You learn the rules and equations, and you apply them.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the problem. I excelled in Calculus I, II, and III, and Physics I and II. Every now and then, I really struggled with something, and the voice said, This. This is the problem. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was different about those particular things. I made 100s on exams. Summa cum laude. President’s List. Phi Theta Kappa.

This semester, I made 60s on midterms. I had an hour and fifteen minutes to solve three problems, and I got my butt kicked. I’d go home, rewrite the exam from memory, and work on it until I solved everything. It took me half the semester to realize that the correct answer was often worth a single point on a ten-point question. A sketch of the problem, a written commitment to a strategy, and an evaluation of the solution were worth all the remaining points. I could literally get no correct answers and still make a 90, except I didn’t. I tried so hard to get the right answers, I ran out of time to do the things that mattered.

Once or twice a week, a student would ask the professor a question they couldn’t answer. Often, the answer was simply unknown. It all started making sense.

I realized that, metaphorically, during the first two years of college, I was just practicing chords. Learning covers. Now, I was being trained to do things no one had done before. Knowing the answer wasn’t just unimportant. It wasn’t even possible. But how do you practice doing something no one has ever done?

I started studying by speedrunning problems. If I got them right or wrong, I moved on. If I knew immediately how to solve it, I would try a different approach. I stopped writing equations on my exam notes and started writing things like:

• Does the force depend on time?

• What happens at zero and infinity?

• What’s the most interesting thing about this problem?

I kept a few equations, but much of my exam notes became questions.

I haven’t used a calculator in months, not even on an exam. This is, in fact, a picture of a midterm from Thermal Physics. The only numbers (besides the occasional zero) are the grading marks.

My final exam in Mechanics had six problems. I was given three hours and forty-five minutes. I sat down with a blank page and the still air, and filled it with something. I made a 79.2 on the exam, and I am grateful. It was my best exam grade of the semester.

I passed all my classes. The hardest lesson so far has been adapting to a new way of learning. There’s no cheap dopamine hit of getting it right. There’s just this feeling that I did a very difficult thing, survived, and came away changed in some very small but important way. I’m grateful.

Like songwriting—maybe like life—it’s tempting to think there is a process, but that’s at best a mental trick to get you started. Sometimes, my photographic memory still comes in handy—I can write something that looks like the solution and work backward. I certainly identify with my songwriting students about how terrifying the emptiness and silence are. Sometimes, the only thing that helps is writing down something stupid. I look at how stupid it is, and think, I wonder if I can beat that?

The answer doesn’t matter. Can the question be better?

Your fan,

Jonathan Byrd

---

PS: I’m playing a show!
Jonathan Byrd and Wes Collins
SonArk Media
5245 Sonark Ln
Hillsborough, NC 27278
$25 in advance/$30 at the door
https://www.sonarkfarms.com/event-details/jonathan-byrd-and-wes-collins-the-bar-n-at-sonark-farms
https://www.facebook.com/events/1526849852210249/