Creativity, Chaos Theory And The Space Between The Notes- Nancy Hillis, MD and Bruce Sawhill, PhD
Creativity, Chaos Theory & The Space Between The Notes
The following blog post is constructed from conversations between myself and my partner, Dr. Bruce Sawhill, Stanford educated theoretical physicist and mathematician.
Every day we fall asleep and wake up to a strange calm. A calm created by the absence of the familiar.
Even awake the world feels half asleep, a dreamlike flow of small and quiet motions- no appointments to go to, urgencies dulled, all interactions mediated by electronics.
It’s like being underwater, ambient sounds distorted and muffled by the ocean’s depths. Or perhaps waking after an overnight snowfall, sounds hushed by a deep blanket of white, all the edges of the world rounded and indistinct.
Winter Landscape
As a musician, Bruce lives much of his life through his ears, and the complex mix of sound has changed because of COVID-19.
He sniffs sound with twitching ears like a dog’s nose senses odors, and small changes reverberate through his psyche. His ears have been busy of late.
Lots of people listen for things, but it takes significant practice to listen for the absence of things.
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of Silver Blaze, the following conversation takes place:
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
The real mystery is why the dog didn’t bark. The absence of things can be as powerful as the presence of them.
Mozart, Debussy and Miles Davis are all credited with the saying,
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
The pianist Alfred Brendel said,
‘Silent’ has the same letters as ‘listen’.
Listen and not play
COVID-19 makes one aware of the absence of things, obvious like parties, subtle like daily cursory interactions foregone.
Things you don’t miss or even think about until they’re absent, like chats in checkout lines at the grocery store, handshakes, and many other small and seemingly insignificant interactions.
But they add up.
With all of that, not only can you now hear yourself think, sometimes it’s deafening.
Creativity is about the spaces between the notes, where the Adjacent Possible resides. It is the pregnant pause, the indrawn breath, the vanishingly thin moment when the world could take a slightly different path, the knife-edge of otherness.
The sonic atmosphere around here is not silent, but it is quieter and different than it was before. We savor it like a delicate wine, not a meaty Zinfandel or Cabernet Sauvignon, but a light and shimmering Pinot Grigio.
We hear birdsong that we were unaware of before.
At night there is the baleful hoot of an owl, it might even be in our big tree in the front yard.
The enormous tulip tree that grew to such a size by having its feet in the water of an underground river flowing off of the 200 foot high ancient limestone marine terrace nearby, drinking deeply of ancient water that has spent thousands of years in darkness.
The terrace, camouflaged by greenery, reminds us that things were once quite different and will be again.
What is now 300 feet above sea level was once underwater. A very different world hides just under the surface, if one only cares to look.
Kelp forest
Coyotes are exploring the tangled wooded canyon that cuts through the terrace, a nighttime highway of furtive rustlings. Their nighttime choruses are both spooky and thrilling, a wildness that makes one grateful for walls and roofs,
Shifting Sands
Life in our part of the world had reached a fever pitch before the virus hit.
People rushing frantically about in the Bay Area like ants on amphetamines, lunging after what felt like the last chances of an economically comfortable life, addled by competition, all of that driving energy and just plain driving generating a kind of din of inequity.
We felt that the current trajectory was not sustainable.
As the economist Herbert Stein obviously but still quotably said,
If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.
The society felt like a toddler full of sugar and energy, growing louder and louder and more frantic until she runs into a piece of furniture full-tilt and dissolves into a crying fit, resulting in a reset in the form of being carried to bed for a nap.
Recently, we explored history and hysteresis, the idea that if a system gets a big enough shove, it will not return to where it started from but instead will move to a new set point.
There is a great deal of current speculation about whether or not we will return to where we were before, and if it is desirable or not.
Complex systems science, as is often the case in these blog posts, has something to say about perturbed (nudged) systems.
Chaos Theory
The science of complex systems inherited a substantial intellectual bequest from chaos theory, the study of systems that display behavior that looks random even though they are governed by precise rules.
Like many scientific advances, chaos theory owes much to an original stroke of luck.
In 1961, a scientist named Edward Lorenz at MIT was studying very simplified models of the Earth’s atmosphere with a view towards understanding more about weather.
The equations Lorenz was using required a computer to solve, and the computer he was using was large and finicky, though it was advertised as being svelte and “smaller than a desk,” a real selling point at a time when computers might occupy entire multi-story buildings.
This humming pile of vacuum tubes and ironmongery had less computational power than a modern digital watch, so it took a while to work through Lorenz’s equations. It often had to be turned off to fix or adjust things.
Lorenz’ computer
One day, Lorenz had to stop the computer in the middle of a “run” for maintenance. The next day, he wanted to re-start his simulation.
He didn’t want to waste the days he’d already spent on it, but he, being a careful scientist, didn’t want to just start exactly where he left off, either. He wanted to confirm his previous work.
He looked at his data on reams of folded paper printouts and went back a day or so and figured he’d start the simulation there just to check that he set it up right and could reproduce a day’s worth of data.
The pertinent numbers he needed to enter in had many digits, and he figured that he didn’t need all of those digits because this experiment was about something as sloppy and squishy as weather, not something precise and inevitable like planetary orbits.
He was after general behavior, not precise predictions, because he knew his model was way too simple for useful predictive purposes.
And then a strange thing happened.
The results were the same for a little while, then a little bit different, then a lot different, then completely different!
Divergent Paths
Very different than something like a planetary orbit, where a little nudge produces a little difference that generally stays small or only slowly increases.
Chaos Theory, The Butterfly Effect & Sensitive Dependence On Initial Conditions
This phenomenon became known as the butterfly effect, the scientific folk tale that says a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might produce a hurricane in Florida two months later.
Practitioners know it as sensitive dependence on initial conditions, one of the cornerstones of chaos theory.
Later researchers discovered additional features of complex systems that built on what Lorenz had found- they weren’t utterly random like TV snow (blog post), but rather they had structure.
After nudging a simulated system inside a computer, it might eventually settle down to a certain pattern.
Often these simulated complex systems had a multitude of patterns that they could settle in to, and the right kind of nudge could cause them to move from one pattern into a different pattern and stay there.
Subsequent studies showed that there was an underlying structure of initial conditions taking you to final conditions.
Imagine a drop of water placed on the landscape below- a small difference in where the drop is placed could result in a big difference as to where it ends up.
Mountain Landscape
Likewise, where you start has an effect on where you end up.
The poet Robert Frost captured this feeling with these words:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
In painting, how you begin the work has implications for how the painting evolves. Each move you make opens up the next possibility, the adjacent possible.
Sometimes, a very small move on your painting makes a big difference.
Attractors & The Spaces Between
Patterns of initial conditions having an effect on final conditions, which are also known as attractors of the dynamics. In simple systems, there is usually just one attractor.
Complex systems can have many attractors.
An example of a simple attractor is the spiral wishing well seen in science museums where a little steel ball or a coin spirals down and down a conical structure and disappears through the hole in the bottom, which is the attractor of the dynamics.
Spiral wishing well
This hole is called an attractor of the dynamics because wherever you start the ball or coin, it still ends up there.
It’s as if it’s magnetic. Initial conditions don’t matter much at all. It has the kind of inevitability usually associated with death and taxes.
More complicated systems can have more than one attractor.
The idea of attractors of the dynamics found resonance across many fields, from economics to ecology and became one of the intellectual pillars of the Santa Fe Institute, Bruce’s alma mater.
People built mathematical models to describe systems in those fields, which turned out to draw from the same lexicon of behavior as Lorenz’s mathematical model.
Is COVID-19 the kind of nudge that will cause our civilization to land in a different attractor?
A growing chorus of voices says yes.
Whether or not that is true, this calm in the storm may be the nudge that causes you to land in a different attractor in terms of your creativity.
What will that attractor look like? What will its properties be? How will it affect your life and art?
Will you create differently? Try new mediums? Finally develop a robust studio practice?
What are your deepest desires for your art, creativity and life?
Are you finally saying yes to your dreams? Or are you refusing the siren call of your soul’s longings?
As Winston Churchill said and we often quote,
Most people, when they stumble over the truth, pick themselves and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill
Since we’re all more or less housebound, that makes hurrying off less likely, both physically and metaphorically, and increases the chance that we might surprise ourself with what we find, listening to the sounds and voices that are usually drowned out.
And especially the silences.
Quiet forest
With gratitude from my studio to yours,
Nancy
If you like this, you’ll love the books. Get your copy at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop Santa Cruz or Book Depository.
The Artist’s Journey: Creativity Reflection Journal– Nancy Hillis, MD
The Artist’s Journey books-Nancy Hillis MD
P.S. We have a few days left for the COVID Scholarship which ends on Tuesday, May 20, 2020 at 11:59 PM PST.
The Artists Journey Creators Challenge and COVID Scholarship
Jump into our Creator’s Challenge and access the COVID Scholarship.
You might be thinking…I’m just too blocked, too down, too scared or frozen….or even just shy….
You may be feeling that you can’t create now….
But I say to you that you’re a creator…you’re an artist and artists create.
And there are many ways to create and be creative….
So, I invite you to join us in this Creators Challenge….
Here’s what you’ll do:
- Create something whether it’s a painting, a sculpture, a musical note or anything.
- Take a picture of your creation and post it on your FB page with #creatorschallenge @NancyHillisStudio
- Join the FB group (Studio Den) and then share your post there.If you’re not on FB, post your creation on Pinterest or Instagram with the tag #creatorschallenge then email us a link to your post at support@nancyhillis.com
And that’s it.
For Anyone who completes this challenge, I’m awarding COVID scholarships valued at $200 off for our foundational courses (The Artist’s Journey® and Studio Journey) and 20% off any other courses which will end on May 20. Find out more by joining the challenge.
… have lost ‘my place’ for this, so it goes here – not completely unrelated: you said in/with creativity we are between order and chaos… or words to that effect. My instinct to disagree has not gone away, and, tentatively I put it into words like this: If there is an adjacent possible, there is potentially a new order (yet to be found). Isn’t that what every small or big ‘aha’ moment signifies? Even if it points to Life as its own Symbol (Raimon Panikkar).
… minor or major aha… would have been better.
Thank you everyone. The biggest gift to me during this lockdown has been the silence…..what a wonderful thing to listen to!
Thank you for being here and for writing Sabrina.
Dear Nancy, I was interupted when I first started reading this post and I am so grateful that I only came back to it now as it is really relevant to me this morning. These past few days I have found myself anxious with a feeling of being overwhelmed by silly things like keeping the house perfectly clean while working remotely and creating MY art, through watercolours, drawing, pastels and even knitting and crochet. Before the lock down I would get up at 5.30 each day, write in my journal and meditate but i stopped and i am not sure why. Yesterday I realised that I need to write my thoughts down again and it is essential that I have those times of silence to listen to the Universal Spirit. Your blog reinforced that need to bring myself to this new normal. I believe that what is happening was long overdue and we will emerge eventually into a better world. I am 72 years old so I am not really sure if I will see this new “normal” world, but that is okay too. I feel so priveledged to have lived through and taken the time to notice all the changes in the world since I was born. An amazing journey and this virus is part of it. Thank you for your blogs Nancy. I sent your blog on AI to my daughter. She went to art school and her tertiary education started in music but she then moved on to mathematics and quantum computing and last year received her Masters. She is now registered to do a PHD in physics.
Dear Diane,
Thank you for your lovely note. It sure is an amazing journey. I resonate very much to what you said about getting back to your journal in the morning. I’ve been doing that as well and find it meaningful. Wow! Congratulations to your daughter! She’s got a fabulous range of education. I love that intersection of art and science.
Warmly,
Nancy
Hi Nancy etc al.
I read your blog today after I helped a new being into this world. This may have been my last birth as I am retiring soon, as a newborn artist your post touched me deeply.
I am a midwife in Canada and so much of what you have written about is true about the most intense rite of passage. It is the silence between the birth song howled by the mother. It fills the composition and provides so much information to the attending. It’s the smell and the observation, the vibration and the data. Of course the mother’s triumphant face and the newborn’s happy conversation with me after is the best Silence (or cry!). So much of your post can be said for birth ( you even used pregnant pause! ) . I don’t yet do instagram or face book but it’s part of my journey soon! I have some lovely fabric art placentas to show.. Namaste.
Hi there!
I got goosebumps reading your post about bringing a new being into the world. Years ago, I was 23 and a junior in medical school. I had the privilege of delivering 12 babies while on obstetrics rotation. One birth I’ll never forget- as I delivered the baby’s head, occiput posterior, and before delivering the shoulders, he opened his eyes and blinked with a look of wonder. Astonished by his presence and the magical moment, tears streamed down my face. I looked up at the mother and father, silently, our eyes meeting with tears of elation.
Thank you for being here, for writing and for reminding me of that miraculous moment.
Warmly,
Nancy
Dear Nancy,
I wish that I could express my response to your posts in words that would let you understand the profundity of my feelings. Each sentence/paragraph/topic stirs within me & releases random thoughts & feelings that have accumulated over a lifetime and remind me of who I truly am. This has all been exacerbated by the Covid19 guidelines, but in fact began for me 2 years ago when my husband of almost 60 years received a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer and passed away 2 months later. This catapulted me into unknown territory and forced me to examine many things, especially my identity. I realized as you wrote about the attractor that the obvious one (for me ) is death and I am getting closer & closer to the hole. I don’t mean this in a morbid way but as an inspiration.
Covid ‘sheltering in place’ has afforded me the luxury to do many things I never seemed to get around to before like watching online dvds by multiple artists & participating in online challenge groups to learning to worship in a new format & taking time to connect to neighbors & loved ones in creative ways. I have felt a sense of freedom & been amazed that I have only had rare moments when I felt isolated or alone. My relationships with my God & my loved ones is probably stronger than it’s ever been and I am excited about my new normal! Your words expressed all this & more for me & for that I’m eternally grateful.
Thank you for sharing your gift with us.
To use your phrase,
Warmly,
Trisha
Dear Patricia,
Thank you so much. I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your husband two years ago. You make an interesting point about death being the attractor. I think death awareness and the deathbed thought experiment is a potent practice for becoming aware of that which is most meaningful. Meditating on death can paradoxically bring us alive.
Thank you for being here and for writing about your experience. I appreciate you!
Warmly,
Nancy
Dearest Nancy
Your writing ,as always is exquisite! I love how you grab information from science and math & world experience and make sense out of all of it especially silence & listening and this big nudge! I also listen to Carolyn Myss & she has said that people are expecting to go “back” to the way they were! However this pandemic has changed a trajectory & there is no going back only “forward” into an unknown that we will be creating consciously or unconscious together! Your writing about the scientist Computer study of the weather says the same thing! Remarkable, exciting, scary just like starting a new art work! It takes a lot to muster up the courage to accept this change! And stay awake!
Love you dear Nancy! Thank you for sharing your amazing writing gift with us! You’re the best!
???
Suzan
Dearest Suzan,
Thank you so much. It’s in the conversation with Bruce that these amazing concepts from math and science intersect with art and creativity and psychology and emerge in the writing. I read Carolyn Myss long ago and really enjoyed her work. It will be interesting to see what emerges as we continually step into the unknown. Thank you for being on this journey with me!
Love,
Nancy
Eloquently written and provocative!
Moved by the noticeable difference of the “silence” in our lives during this COVID pandemic, now spreading across a three month period. I enjoy the freedom of silence too, and the heightened awareness of anticipating what comes next. The melody created between juxtaposing notes and silence and the space between the two is where the music plays! Too much of either can result in a lack of interest (such as a painting with no variation or a musical piece written with one never-ending note) fosters the conditions for dullness. Thankfully, that dullness or boredom nudges us to push out, too in fact take all that which we have known and choose the journey of the path not known. I have done this is a few ways (spiritual, philosophical, etc.) which I won’t speak of here. However, in my art work I have just begun to learn some new techniques, a little photoshop, and now how to create a material collage (which I posted in the AJS Den) It has become a way to break the silence and repetition of my usual “go to” giving me yet another “canvas” for self expression. While I don’t like the restrictions we are all held captive by to flatten the curve of this virus, I do appreciate the gift of time, and the emergence of that creative striving to re-arrange/ re-compose/recombine old form into new and unfamiliar possibilities. Although this is a tiny example of the way in which we adapt to change, your blog resonated with me and caused me to reflect on the varied ways I have had to adapt in order to survive and to thrive!
Appreciating the whole concept of “The Adjacent Possible” ……
Thank you Denise. Yes- stepping into the unknown, accessing the adjacent possible and realizing the gift of time…what an amazing life we live. Thank you for being in my life and on this journey.
Warmly,
Nancy
Perfect post at the perfect time as many of them have been. I don’t comment most of the time, but I read every one. I’m hypersensitive and so I’m always seeking the calm. It has been hard to find until now.
Attractors. This got me to thinking about consciousness and choice. Many attractors, many decisions, many things that will disrupt, appeal, or not, to the nature of the ‘system‘, be it an individual or a culture. We can not necessarily predict the outcome of every decision, all it does is set in motion things that will be affected by timing, environment and many other factors, obviously too numerous to calculate. That may explain my difficulty with abstraction. I struggle with awaiting the pattern to emerge, I want to have some sort of plan in there, to see it and deliberately pursue it. In painting in some stages (and any art), that inflexibility can be lethal. And yet we don’t want too much chaos in architecture and engineering! I’m rambling… thanks for these wonderful posts.
Thank you Michelle. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on attractors. Yes, it’s an interesting experience in abstract painting of the spontaneous and the considered- of allowing “not knowing’, of letting the spontaneous come through…and yet, also the “considered”. And yes- as far as architecture and structures like bridges, we definitely want the planned, the considered, the structurally sound. Thank you for your lovely and thoughtful comments.
Warmly,
Nancy
I meditate in silence a couple times a day—and sometimes fall asleep! Doesn’t matter. I have energy to create again after. Though I haven’t been painting lately; I’ve been learning how to create a platform for my new novel. At seventy-five I’ve been stuffing my brain full of learning, and blogging, as well as reconnecting with old friends. I’ve never been so busy as during Covid-19. Who knew?
Hi Karen,
Sounds wonderful! Congratulations on your new novel too. I’d love to hear about it. Yes, it’s an interesting paradox about being so busy during COVID-19.
Warmly,
Nancy
9 months ago I was invited to paint during the worship times at a large Christian gathering here in the UK. I said yes and then the nerves set in. I had never done this before, and I wondered if I were up to it. By God’s grace I did and in the corner painted an abstraction of a butterfly as I felt that what was happening at the conference, the things that were discussed and the prayer and worship that happened was a bit like the chaos theory. What was happening there would have an effect in the heavenly places. Your blog seemed to say all I wanted to say in explaining why I had put the butterfly in the painting which was rather abstract. Thank you so much. My ministry is using art to share my faith and this lockdown is proving a challenge. I am painting my window at the front of my house every week with an encouraging picture and message. This started after I did one a day throughout holy week. The response from my community has been amazing and I give God the glory and the praise.
Hi Janice,
Thank you for your lovely comments about your experience painting the abstracted butterfly during the gathering.
Warmly,
Nancy
What a lovely poetic post. It’s so important to stay connect with ones heart and it’s expressions.
Thank you Heather! It sure is- the heart has its reasons.
Warmly,
Nancy
What a beautiful piece!
I live in a small city of 3500 with a larger (10,000) coastal city 9 miles away. I live a much quieter life than most. Silence is familiar. It just occurred to me that noticing the silence is similar to noticing negative space. Once you become aware of it, you can experience it at any moment.
Thank you Barb!
Your home sounds lovely. Yes! Lovely observation about noticing negative space and the similarity with silence.
Warmly,
Nancy
This weeks blog resounded in me. Before, I painted (watercolors) from my own photos; they were ‘nice little paintings’ then recently I became tired of ‘copying’ and began doing abstracts and am loving the ‘freedom’ I find therein. It has taken me a long time to understand what ‘painting from your soul’ means and now I finally understand! My landscapes already DID that! There was a reason I took a photo of ‘a place’ and why I had chosen THAT photo to paint, thus when I did paint it…my soul shows through! Sometimes softly and others with a shout! Abstracts do the same things often with different means; with the whispers quietly supporting the backgrounds that are crowded with colors that may SEEM to clash with enthusiasm! A Good abstract must tame those lines and symbols into balance!
Thank you Margery. What a beautiful story of your revelations about painting from your soul.
I loved the analogy of a toddler full of sugar and energy needing to be carried off to a reset (a nap). Very thought provoking commentary.
Thank you Gretchen. I can relate to needing a reset! Thanks for being here.
Beautiful & thoughtful writing – thank you! Was quite the experience to read while half-listening to a zoom church service in the background – two sides of the same coin… Yesterday I listened to a podcast where an artist whose paintings are fairly traditional said he does not do a Notan before starting his painting as it is the unknown & accidental that helps keep painting interesting for him. I can relate. As for quarantine, I’m so into my own world now don’t know if I’ll ever re-emerge…
Thank you Susan. I love that- two sides of the same coin. And I love and relate to wanting be surprised, stepping into the unknown, allowing for “accidents” and “mistakes”. Ha! I know what you mean about ever re-emerging!
Excelent Nancy! Thank you so much!!!!
Rita from bs as , argentina ❤️
Thank you Rita! Thank you for being here.
the music is in the silence… I have experienced that physically. I used to love going to organ concerts, in my native country mostly held in churches, and with a slightly hushed atmosphere, although of course at the end people show their appreciation to the organist. Where I now live, I noticed that, even in churches people clap after every short section within a piece. It made me almost physically unwell. Once mentioned it to the organiser and they looked at me: Truly weird. Mmh –
Hi Barbara, I think Bruce would relate to your thoughts on this. He has played many organ concerts in the U.S. and Europe. There’s something transporting about allowing the sacred silence. Thank you for being here and for writing.
Warmly,
Nancy