“Everything is practice.” — Pelé, Soccer Player.
In our heavily cerebral and achievement-oriented culture we often confuse what we mean by practice. In the modern sense, to practice typically means to carry out or perform a task regularly or repeatedly for the purpose of skill acquisition or improvement. A practice on the other hand, is more a way of doing things, an application of an ideology that applies to how we approach the work and why.
To put it more simply, many of us, when we think of practice, believe it to be a chore — an exercise required to be done in order to have notable success. It’s a goal-oriented approach. The student fighter, artist or musician “knows” he needs to improve his skills and thus sets up a routine of repeated tasks to accomplish his goals. Unfortunately, and often without awareness of the fact, his mind is not focused on the task itself but on a desired outcome. Going thru the motions of the exercise — whether it be punching the bag or drawing from a model — he is obsessed with learning/achieving, rather than doing and in so doing, he loses the value of the practice itself. The quality of the practice is always what yields quality results. Hence his desire to be faster, stronger, or better fails to transpire. Why can’t he see it at the time of practice? Because, all the way, he doesn’t take that leap of faith; the acceptance of the fact that it is the undivided attention of doing that brings value to the practice.
One the biggest challenges I have as a teacher/coach to young artists both students and professionals alike is to get them to adapt a mindset that is not so achievement oriented. They need to be periodically reminded that being a creative person is a way of life, a way of seeing and doing that is beyond mere reward and punishment. Having a practice equates to having a passion for something we love so much we devote additional time to understand it better. When we truly understand that, we realize that the act of seeing/doing is both rewarding and joyful in itself. To take part in a practice means to participate in a unique experience rather than a mere act of repetition. At the end of the day, how we practice is how we perform. Every devoted professional singer, stage actor and athlete knows this. So should the visual artist.
“Separate thinking from doing. Man is a thinking reed but his greatest works are done when he is not calculating and thinking.” — Suzuki Daisetsu, Zen Teacher
Goals, after all, are just targets to aim at, nothing else and nothing more. We mustn’t confuse having a vision for our art with having a vision of success. One is real and the other (the latter) is abstract. Once the mind is clouded with desires/fears our energies and focus become diluted and weak. Our minds, by default, tend to be excessively analytical, judgemental and paralyzing, and hence have difficulty with accurate perceptions of reality. Unfortunately that’s what brains like to do, always wanting to critique while constantly seeking control. But a mind needs to be still and quiet to operate optimally. It needs to be free of prejudice, void of any ideology or system of formulas. Without such clarity and freedom from desire, all practice loses its potency. Then disappointment reigns; any and all the research or thumbnail sketches that were done, all those drawing or animation classes taken, become wasted efforts. A mind needs to be loose and free, almost playfully attentive to work well. When there’s no true attentiveness, which is genuine listening and doing, practice doesn’t bring skill but instead frustration and dulling of the mind. What else could we expect? Half-assed efforts bring half-assed results. And of course, the experience also sucks. When we repeat things like a machine, we become machine-like; monotonously bored, mechanically disconnected and spiritually empty.
But, when we approach our exercises freely, without attachment to results or expectations, then the activities become something entirely different. Each new drawing we make, every study of a masterwork, every test of a crazy idea brings with it a new experience and discovery. We begin to learn more about the craft and more about ourselves. Such activity harkens back to our daily living as children, when each moment, each day was new and exciting. Fear of the unknown was accepted — something adults fail more and more drastically at as they age and occupy their minds with tradition and security. When we approach our practices as a practice, we live young. The mind must work very hard to stay young, but the craftsman, being devoted to his passion, has been given a distinct gift in this manner; his art demands that he remain humble and open-minded. He must embrace the wisdom of insecurity.
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” — Erich Fromm, Psychologist
So, in summary, when we go about our exercises today know what’s important. Know that practice, like virtue, is its own reward. Sometimes we might even be surprised by how much our skills and understanding can improve abiding by such manner of conduct. More importantly though, is that this kind of “connected-to-doing” trains us to separate the act of listening-doing from thinking, thus saving our analytical minds for when it’s most useful and effective. All great artists practice; they incorporate a ritual into their lives that bring action and passion together and the most fruitful outcome seems inevitable — the arrival of meaningfulness. And that makes having a practice completely worth it.