Learning to Unlearn

I've been unlearning. Habits can be great for accomplishing things efficiently. But there is much to learn in our creative practice that benefits from inefficiency. New discoveries and surprises don't often come from familiar places, or when they occasionally do it is because we take time to notice what is interesting about the accidents we make along the way. It's easier to force accidents when we step out of the habits into unfamiliar practices.

In psychology the term, heuristics, refers to our mental shortcuts. These reduce the cognitive load of "thinking" about everything we experience. In my creative practice, this is exactly what I'm trying to short-circuit: the shortcut. It's about eliminating assumptions so that familiar things become unfamiliar again.

I've adopted this practice in innovation and design consulting as well as in my personal art. I can see how this might look naive. After all, if you've spent years developing a practice with consistent results, why would you step away from it? But if you've ever wondered how a new product can address such an "obvious" need that was, until then, overlooked, or a poet can make grass interesting, or how a musician can make your spine tingle with a G-chord—a chord you've probably heard hundreds of times before–you might see the value in this approach.

From the creator's perspective, while some of the skillset expertise is shelved, they are seeing the world again with fresh eyes while having the benefit of deep mastery. Understanding how to notice which mistakes are important and what new experiences are remarkable takes years of expertise, as does recognizing patterns in other life experiences or seeing the familiar in the unfamiliar.

This past winter I chose to live in Reykjavík for a few months in order to break my own patterns and see things anew. During this time I made a sonic journal of my impressions. This was a new practice for me. Rather than documenting my experiences with words, I used music—songs I would write at the end of the day to capture the emotions I had experienced.?

Since it was a new activity, I gave myself a framework that was both theoretical and practical. I decided to write in a non-linear fashion, composing the songs with layers rather than narrative. These layers were atmosphere, ground and sub terrain. I matched frequencies and other characteristics to these layers. Emotions made them differ in mood and timbre.

I also used digital instruments that I had not previously tried. This forced me to think differently. For example, if I had used a guitar, my hands had familiar transitions they would naturally follow. But on the device I had, which was kind of like a squishy piano which I often referred to as "the squid", I was in completely new territory.

I'm excited to share the results of this unlearning today. It's called Blindur. I've selected?eight instrumentals from the diary. They represent an intention and a particular time while illustrating a particularly kind of mastery too.

I hope they inspire you, encourage you to explore, and challenge you to unlearn.

File under: ambient, instrumental, dream pop

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/blindur/1700144119

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3UgDbP8LiMJRMTyL5139aS?si=OjLVrjIgTG2JL3IGrf3q-w