As we wander through life we are influenced by many and varied things. As teens we will dress according to the latest fashions and as adults we will often let our peers influence us. I have a feeling that peer pressure is more active in adults than in teens. Teens have their tribes, adults don’t. But that is another post at another blog I think.
Multiple influasms
Depending on what you get up to in your creative life, you’ll have a variety of influences. You may have a painting influence, or you may have a writing influence and so on. I can list a long line of people who have influenced and inspired me on my creative journey; Stephen King, Gary Numan and Mark Rothko to name three. I’ll be creating my own influence board in a few days. You can too by downloading the template from fox-orian.
But is there one specific influence that stands above all the rest?
All time influential moment
I think the most influential moment in my creative life is related to music. What is interesting is that the moment doesn’t belong to one of my all time favourite songs. The moment I am talking about is the opening minute of Dreams Never End by New Order*.
I like the rest of the song but it is the opening that has had the most influence on me. It has influenced the way I both play the guitar and how I have written a great number of songs. I first heard it at the age of fourteen and it was at that exact moment that I was teaching myself how to play the guitar.
If you want to know what I am talking about then listen here.
Influence not interference
But if you let an influence take control you’re on the road to plagiarism, or just plain disappointment. We need to let our influences inspire us and move us on. There is no point in imitating. We need to be influenced and then take that influence to another dimension.
For me those sixty seconds have influenced the way I strum the guitar and the way I break down a chord when I write something new. In the end, that influence isn’t evident but I know that it has been fundamental to any guitar part that I create.
So what are your influences? And more importantly, how do you let them influence your creativity?
*The track is from the album Movement, which also has an amazing cover. I admit I am totally smitten by Peter Saville’s design and the whole attitude of Factory Records. They have all influenced me. But this one minute is still my moment.
I’ve had a ton of them over the years, but the moment that jumped out at me while reading was in 1998, when I was back in my hometown for my father’s funeral, my mom and I went to a local bookstore together. I flipped through a ton of magazines (being, as always, a media junkie), and there was one, Somerset Studios, that just jumped right off the rack.
I fell in crazy love with the artist on the cover. It was *so different* from all the other stuff I was seeing at the time — vintage text, strong focus elements, largely monochromatic…all the stuff that was *totally* my style (but much better than I’d ever done).
Artist was Claudine Hellmuth, who went on to write several books about her process actually, and was among the first subscribers to my artzine about 18 months later. I don’t know if she knows how influential she was on me, but I still see a little of that first article I read about her when I pick up a brush.
Thought-provoking piece, D. Thanks.