Get Back to go Forward: N M Browne

 I have never been a particular Beatles fan. I like their music but  I am too young to have been aware of

them in their heyday and too old to have rediscovered them as something extraordinary and inspirational as a younger generation have done. I did however watch 'Get Back' the eight hour documentary that showed them rehearsing for what became their final and very brief live concert on the roof of the 'Apple' building.      It was at once blindingly dull and totally gripping: watching creative people procrastinate, muck about, fail to organise themselves or make any real decisions was like watching my own head in action or rather inaction. Then there were the strange moments when mucking about suddenly transformed into the creation of something. Watching Paul McCartney noodling around on guitar and producing 'Get Back' was electrifying, like watching a familiar sculpture being chiselled into being from raw concrete.

   It got me thinking about creativity how often it comes from boredom, from procrastination and dissatisfaction and yet depends on structure. I thought perhaps that the whole messy business exemplified some general truths about creativity. 

1 Mostly they turned up each day. Lennon was perhaps less than fully present, Harrison went awol for a few days but otherwise the group turned up with instruments and a vague intention to work most of the time. They didn't necessarily start early and there were lunch breaks from which they did not always return, but they turned up in the studio and made noise.

2 When something started to work they honed it. They didn't necessarily go with the first idea but experimented to 'make it better.' They worked at it. 

3 They were playful there was a kind of openness to whatever emerged and I don't think they wrote off ideas too quickly ( unless they came from George Harrison) 

4 They loved it. Sometimes. A lot of the time they were clearly bored and irritated by the whole business. They didn't always want to be there and things didn't work and then there were moments when everything worked and you could see it on their faces - pure pleasure. 

Of course after that roof top concert they never played live again so it wasn't all great, but they wrote a lot of songs in all the chaos of these sessions so it wasn't all bad either. Maybe that also exemplifies the creative experience? Always a little bit curate's egg, always a long and winding road?