How to Find a Muse

1. How to Find a Muse: Are you feeling creatively parched, inspirationally barren? Happens to the best of us. And sometimes we have to step outside of ourselves to remember what in life is really beautiful. What is worth creating for? You see every one that's gold within them. You just have to learn to mine for it. I am so on a price, I'm a performance artist maker from Chicago, Illinois. I run a performance art collective here in the city. And we create works of art scratch, otherwise known as devised theater. Today, I'm going to show you a very basic method for coming up with prompts for works of art. We will do this by finding what is the news you might be asking. I'm uses a person or it personified force that is used as creative inspiration for the artist. Anyone can be here mus, and I will show you where to begin. We will do this by interviewing and actively listening to ieee, your muse recording the interview. And then we will cut it down to get to the juicy spits by using a free program called Audacity. This class is for all skill levels, specifically for people who would like to broaden their arsenal. When it comes to creating stimulating prompts for artwork, all you need is a subject, a recording device, and audacity, which is a free program. I will show you the most basic ins and outs of these skills are helpful for cultivating a renewed sense of creativity and, and you know what? It will also help you get out of creative routes. Are you ready? Let's get started. 2. Project Recap and Prep: So to recap, the project is going to be an interview. What you're gonna wanna do is get a recording device and you can use your phone, your laptop, or even an archaic tape recorder. That's what they're calling. Find somebody who is willing to let you interview them. You will, of course, need their permission to record. In our COVID, the world. This may need to take place over speaker phone or on Zoom. We'll touch more on this later, but it is imperative to make sure that you are news. Your subject is comfortable or as comfortable as they can. I think there is generally some degree of discomfort when you're being interviewed. But something that I will always do is make sure to let them know that there are no stupid answers. There are no stupid answers. And also, it's really great to reassure them that if they happen to say anything that they don't want published, you can always cut it out. Post and I'll show you how to do that. Protein number one, when you are recording whether you're using Audacity on your laptop, I'll show you how to do that or voice memos on your iPhone or Android. You will just want to make sure that you did indeed press record. Because I've had many situations where I was sure it was recording and I lost just gold content because of my own. Can you stupid? I just mean, make sure that you're recording. It's an easy mistake. I like to clap to see the audio waves fluctuate. Another pro tip is that this exercise does require a certain degree of flexibility from you and of course from your news because there are no fixed variables. And what I mean by that is, you don't know what their goodness. You have the outline that I'm going to give you for the interview. But their answers are just going to be their answers. So the best thing you can do is just be willing and open or whatever happens. It is about them, about their comfort and about their story. So it's really important to keep that in mind. I chose this project because I use it constantly in my work as a performance artist and filmmaker. And the reason for that is it allows me to, well, it really requires me to have a certain degree of fluidity with the exercise because as I said before, there are no fixed variables really. So here is a quick, quick recap for what you're going to do for this portion of the lesson. One recording device to find somebody who's willing to let you in your view them find a muse. And now are you ready? The interview outline. This interview and implements what I like to call word association. Perhaps you've heard of it before and other creative endeavors or suits our exercise requires you to just choose a very basic, broad topic. For the purposes of my project, I used the word love. I gave up my muse, a piece of paper and a pencil. And when I said the word love, I told him to write one word association. So for me, for example, it would be love, childhood, outdoors running, bare feet, you know, it's just a stream of consciousness. We want to keep it succinct and short as possible. This is David's list. When telling him the word, love, giving you 30 seconds to write, and telling them to never stop writing. B's are the words that came out of his head. Another crucial part of this exercise is that there is a time limit. Why is there a time limit? I'll tell you. The time limit is an order to stop the brain of your muse from trying to interject and be clever and really, really think about what they're going to write down. A time limit really ups the authenticity of the answers that you're musical write down. I put 30 seconds on the clock for the time limit. And it's quite a bit frantic because it's such a short period of time. But this is the beginning of the interview and it will branch off from this dissociation part of the interview. But I told my muse, once you start writing, don't stop. And it doesn't matter if the words that come out don't make any sense. The goal is to not stop writing until the timer goes off. And in the next lesson, I will go more in depth as far as what we will do with our muses word association lists. See you there. 3. What is Word Association?: This interview implements what I like to call word association. Perhaps you've heard of it before and other creative endeavors wore suits. Our exercise requires you to just choose a very basic, broad topic. For the purposes of my project, I used the word love. I gave my muse a piece of paper and a pencil. And when I said the word love, I told him to write one word association. So for me, for example, it would be love, childhood, outdoors running, bare feet, you know, it's just a stream of consciousness. We want to keep it succinct and short as possible. This is David's lists. When telling him the word love, give me 30 seconds to write and telling them to never stop writing. B's are the words that came out of his head. Another crucial part of this exercise is that there is a time limit. Why is there a time limit? I'll tell you. The time limit is an order to stop the brain of your muse from trying to interject and be clever and really, really think about what they're going to write down. A time limit really ups the authenticity of the answers that you're musical write down. I put 30 seconds on the clock for the time limit. And it's quite a bit frantic because it's such a short period of time. But this is the beginning of the interview and it will really branch off from this word association part of the interview. But I told my muse, once you start writing, don't stop. And it doesn't matter if the words that don't make any sense. The goal is to not stop writing until the timer goes off. And in the next lesson, I will go more in depth as far as what we will do with our music word association lists. See you there. 4. Active Listening: Active listening. So this is a huge topic and I'm not going to be able to get into the entirety of what active listening is in this short period of time. But I will give you a few pointers that I've learned, which helped me to better understand the news. What is active listening? Active listening and short is a technique of careful listening and observation of nonverbal cues. If you're speaking to somebody over the phone, you won't be able to pick up on those things. But it can also include feedback in the form of accurate paraphrasing. So what I mean when I say accurate paraphrasing is to restate what your muse has said to you to ensure that you're understanding where they're coming from, what they're feeling. Just to make sure that you get the story that they're telling. Sometimes I'll say something like I intuit that you meant X when you said why. Is that correct? So it's an, it's an easy way to clarify the meaning of things that your muse might say during the interview. Three other key points with active listening. Number 1 would be to limit distractions as much as you can. I would put away any electronic devices that do not need to be used. I always ask my muse if they're okay with putting their phone on silent or turning it off for the duration of our little experiment 2, I would say that silence is totally okay. I can pretty much guarantee there will be moments of silence. After the word association is done, we dive into the interview. You being uncomfortable silence, of course, will help your muse be comfortable with silence and there's nothing wrong with it at all. And it can always be cut out and post. And if you feel that it's necessary to be fine to tell that to you to reuse as well because I've had some people get a little anxious about the periods of silence in the interview and there's nothing wrong with it. And then lastly, I would say it's you pay attention to what is being said. Instead of planning on what questions are going to ask next. 5. The Interview: The interview here is where we are getting into the meat of it all. Yeah. What we'll want to do is look at the word association lists that your muse has written. I generally like to choose the word that is most intriguing to me and somewhat out of the box. For example, in David's interview, after I gave them the prompt of love, he wrote the word probation. Supervision is not a word that I would normally associate with love. So I would ask my subject, can you tell me a story about x? Can you tell me a story about probation? Or more directly? Why did you write X in relation to love? Why did you write probation? Is u? So I will ask you one more thing and we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to because I am still recording. But why did you write a probation? And he thought of love. Scott University are always felt protected. And I know I have people who love in life afraid and to see from me every single day. Just taught for years while just didn't know every single day. Those can happen to me tomorrow from like here's a very light yellow. You are about to the end because to me this is like the universe. All right, bang life. So things that after I got the license and like to just receive it that feels too is the same fill in the good. Old antiquity is not the same. So I came along around my family. I haven't seen a full out as that. I heard that already felt the same way. He says After pull this really, really quite simple. You'll just ask them to expand on some portion of what they've written in their lists. So their word association lists are directly or indirectly associated to the umbrella term, in my case, Love that you've written, that you've given to them. And this is where the real meat of the interview will commence. So it's just as simple for me as asking, why did you write that? Can you tell me a story about that? And as they expand upon their story, the most basic thing you can do if you are uncomfortable asking questions is to have them expand upon their senses. I mean, that's the easiest thing. What did you see? What did you hear, what you feel in relation to the stories that they relay based on the word that you choose on their list of word association, there's no limit to how many words you can choose to ask them to expand upon. It's just completely up to you and the questions you would like to ask about the word they have written word and or words they've written on their word association lists is completely up to you. It's just a way to get a conversation started around a topic of your choosing through the lens of your muse. New supplies. Tell me a story about new supplies. Yeah, no worries. It doesn't even have to be. What is new supplies sneak you think of? I will say anytime on your navel to get to supplies financially object, place of comfortability that matches cache is using unexpectedly me anytime and a handful of money. I mean, go back to this, how will it be? So like, I will say like, are they expected purchases people, people that hangs on it expect to see so for so for awhile and just last year because 600 hours, we take 200 and possibly six. And I'll just make that move. 6. How to Use Audacity: Hello friends, welcome to Udacity. So there's going to be a link in the description for where you can download it for free. I'm just going to show you some of the ins and outs of the program. So first I'll show you how to record. If you choose to use this for. As you're recording, you're going to want to make sure that you have the correct microphone selected. And then you just hit the red record button, symbol of that. And now I'll show you how to import an MP3 file, import audio. So this is like if you recorded on a different device and you were just using audacity to chop it up essentially. And then I'm just gonna show you a couple of simple things here. Obviously we're going to play. It's a little low for me. I want to increase the gain so that it's a bit louder every single day. So this is a portion of my interview with my muse. Let's just say that I didn't want this part. I'd click, hold and drag until the point that I no longer wanted this piece of audio. I can either come over here and click Cut. Or if I click back, backspace, it does the same thing. So those are pretty much, those are the only things that I really use it for my interview with my muse. I cut after I import the audio. And then you will, once you're done, Export, Export As MP3 file, Export, Export As MP3. And then you can name it whatever you'd like. Choose the file MP3, and then Save. And then you'll have your audio from your the interview. I also wanted to say that there is no right or wrong way to do this, to cut up your audio, I just showed you the way that that I do it. Mostly it's just cutting out the silence, cutting out my own voice. And going from there, just figuring out what in the interview speaks to me. And I'll see you guys in the next one. 7. Using Your Interview to Suit Your Medium: Using your interview to suit your medium. This is the part of the lesson where you get to decide what you'd like to do with the interview you have of your muse, you now have your prompt. The recording prompt can be the work of art itself or it can be the inspiration for piece of our work that you are going to make. As a filmmaker, I use these outlines as prompts and scripts really for my animated films. And so I'll show you one of the short snippet of one of the animated films that I made. This MUS technique to generate an outline. I won't be showing you how to animate in this lesson, but I will link below bunch of my favorite animations Skillshare classes. So this is a project that I created it with the previous news. And then I'm going to be doing the exact same sort of format with my interview with David, what I did was compiled keywords from the interview and I use that to dictate what I was going to animate. And here is a little preview of what my interview with my muse prompted. Did a dream. I never remember my dreams. But it's a fine trade-off I have with my family. I'm the only one in my family. You can't remember their dreams. And then everyone else in my family can't remember their dreams with they all have terrible allergies. So and then I have these dreams are like, I don't know, I have them as a kid. And I remember certain symbols of certain things when I'm in there, I'm like, Oh my Gosh. And so like I know as a little kid and there's usually this girl that I met my dreams and she's a Come with me. And then we ran and we ran. And then we're running through this, that my house turn into a forest. But then we can still hear the voices and they're getting closer and closer and closer and then. 8. Final Thoughts: Final thoughts. I hope this class has given you a new way to think about things. A way to generate prompts for artwork and how to find them use. For the projects that will be posted down below, you can either include an MP4 of a portion of your interview if you did accord it that way, or just transcribe your favorite part of the interview or show the RP set the interview inspired. Thanks for spending time with me today. And now I'm going to show you a little portion of my favorite part of my interview with sending out as always felt protected and are always felt like people in my blue line, middle the gap me every day and protect me and look after me and light and answer the prayers of the people who get on a misa him a seed and pray for me. So it's got the universe fan. I've always felt protected. And I know people who love me or who are prayer in the sea for me every single day. And just ponder, and at the four-year as well, just didn't know every single day what was going to have to meet tomorrow. Bye. Very act of like DIE. You are about to be incarcerated. To me less is like university dive into some of the array back.