Scales

At the end of her career, the pianist Lili Kraus came to Swarthmore, when I was a student there, to play a concert. For reasons not worth mentioning here, I was around the music building at about 9am the day of her concert. I heard what sounded like a child playing the concert piano on the stage, so I peeked in. It was Ms. Kraus, beginning to warm up. Her hands were so gnarled with arthritis that they were almost like claws. But she was forcing herself to play scales with them, despite the fact that she sounded (almost) as bad as I would have. I learned later that she had to begin to warm up almost 12 hours before every concert so that she could work her fingers and hands into a suitable dexterity to play the bright, fluid, fast Mozart that she was famous for.

I went to the concert that evening and was amazed that the stooped old lady I had heard that morning clawing at the Bosendorfer was flying through piece after piece, as wild and merry as you'd imagine Mozart himself. She was about 80 at the time, but still wore her hair in braids on the top of her head, like a girl.

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Listen: your creative skills are not running water. Unless you are having a terrific day, they will not simply flow out of you when you arrive in the rehearsal room. We pay a lot of lip service to warming up, but we often make due with tongue-twisters and stretching, as if our abilities to churn out the material results of our work are the only preparation we need to make. They are not. Even Ms. Kraus was not only soothing her buckled knuckles; she was awakening herself each day to the possibility of possessing the brightness of spirit to let Mozart breathe through her.

Today, design a set of "scales" that can serve you in your creative work. Commit to spending 30-60 minutes in a series of exercises that will wake up in you what you require. Involve your whole body in some of this work, even (or particularly) if your work is sedentary. If you choose to do physical exercises, commit yourself to using those to awaken other aspects of yourself as well. (Play actions as you do your jumping jacks; dance your way through a range of spheres.)

Your scales needn't be only physically-based warming up. You could decide to animate an object, create a puppet-scene with quick drawings; sit quietly listening to the ambient sounds outside with your eyes closed, attentive to whatever images come.

Include some things you know how to do. Invent some new things. Spend some time working on each of 8-10 little scales, then end with a multi-minute open improvisation in which you give yourself permission to do/pursue anything that comes to you, without forcing anything.

Then you'll be ready to go to work.

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