Boredom, the real secret behind innovation | Mark Applebaum | TEDxStanford

Mark Applebaum writes music that breaks the rules in fantastic ways, composing a concerto for a florist and crafting a musical instrument from junk and found objects. This quirky talk might just inspire you to shake up the “rules” of your own creative work.

I thought if I skipped
it might help my nerves,

but I'm actually having
a paradoxical reaction to that,

so that was a bad idea. (Laughter)

Thank you for that introduction,

I was really delighted
to receive the invitation

to present to you some of my music
and some of my work

as a composer, presumably
because it appeals

to my well-known and abundant narcissism.

(Laughter)

And I'm not kidding,
I just think we should just say that

and move forward. (Laughter)

So, but the thing is,
a dilemma quickly arose,

and that is that I'm really bored
with music,

and I'm really bored
with the role of the composer,

and so I decided to put
that idea, boredom,

as the focus of my presentation
to you today.

And I'm going to share
my music with you, but I hope

that I'm going to do so
in a way that tells a story,

tells a story about how I used boredom
as a catalyst

for creativity and invention,
and how boredom

actually forced me to change
the fundamental question

that I was asking in my discipline,

and how boredom also, in a sense,

pushed me towards taking
on roles beyond the sort of

most traditional, narrow definition
of a composer.

What I'd like to do today
is to start with an excerpt

of a piece of music at the piano.

(Music)

Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter)

No, it's not - (Applause)
Oh, why thank you.

No, no, I didn't write that.

In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven,

and so I was not functioning
as a composer.

Just now I was functioning
in the role of the interpreter,

and there I am, interpreter.

So, an interpreter of what?
Of a piece of music, right?

But we can ask the question,
"But is it music?"

And I say this rhetorically,
because of course

by just about any standard
we would have to concede

that this is, of course, a piece of music,

but I put this here now because,

just to set it in your brains
for the moment,

because we're going to return
to this question.

It's going to be a kind of a refrain

as we go through the presentation.

So here we have this piece
of music by Beethoven,

and my problem with it is, it's boring.

I mean - I'm just like, a hush,
huh - It's like - (Laughter)

It's Beethoven, how can you say that?

No, well, I don't know,
it's very familiar to me.

I had to practice it as a kid,
and I'm really sick of it. (Laughter)

So what I might like to try to do
is to change it,

to transform it in some ways,
to personalize it,

so I might take the opening,
like this idea -

(Music)

and then I might substitute - (Music)

and then I might improvise on that melody

that goes forward from there - (Music)

(Music)

So that might be the kind of thing -
Why thank you.

(Applause)

That would be the kind
of thing that I would do,

and it's not necessarily
better than the Beethoven.

In fact, I think it's not better than it.
The thing is - (Laughter) -

it's more interesting to me,
it's less boring for me.

I'm really leaning into me, because I,
because I have to think

about what decisions
I'm going to make on the fly

as that Beethoven text is running
in time through my head

and I'm trying to figure out
what kinds of transformations

I'm going to make to it.

So this is an engaging enterprise for me,

and I've really leaned into
that first person pronoun thing there,

and now my face appears twice,
so I think we can agree

that this is a fundamentally
solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter)

But it's an engaging one,
and it's interesting to me for a while,

but then I get bored with it, and by it,

I actually mean, the piano,
because it becomes,

it's this familiar instrument,
it's timbral range is actually

pretty compressed, at least
when you play on the keyboard,

and if you're not doing things
like listening to it

after you've lit it on fire
or something like that, you know.

It gets a little bit boring,
and so pretty soon

I go through other instruments,
they become familiar,

and eventually I find myself
designing and constructing

my own instrument,
and I brought one with me today,

and I thought I would play
a little bit on it for you

so you can hear what it sounds like.

(Music)

You've got to have doorstops,
that's important. (Laughter)

I've got combs.
They're the only combs that I own. (Music)

They're all mounted on my instruments.
(Laughter)

(Music)

I can actually do all sorts of things.

I can play with a violin bow.

I don't have to use the chopsticks.

So we have this sound. (Music)

And with a bank of live electronics,

I can change the sounds radically. (Music)

(Music)

Like that, and like this. (Music)

And so forth.

So this gives you a little bit
of an idea of the sound world

of this instrument, which I think
is quite interesting

and it puts me in the role
of the inventor,

and the nice thing about -

This instrument is called
the Mouseketeer... (Laughter)

and the cool thing about it is

I'm the world's greatest
Mouseketeer player. (Laughter)

Okay? (Applause)

So in that regard,
this is one of the things,

this is one of the privileges of being,

and here's another role,
the inventor, and by the way,

when I told you
that I'm the world's greatest,

if you're keeping score,
we've had narcissism and solipsism

and now a healthy dose of egocentricism.

I know some of you are just, you know -
bingo! (Laughter)

Anyway, so this is also
a really enjoyable role.

I should concede also that I'm
the world's worst Mouseketeer player,

and it was this distinction
that I was most worried about

when I was on that prior side
of the tenure divide.

I'm glad I'm past that.
We're not going to go into that.

I'm crying on the inside.
There are still scars.

Anyway, but I guess my point
is that all of these enterprises

are engaging to me in their multiplicity,
but as I've presented them

to you today, they're actually
solitary enterprises,

and so pretty soon I want to commune
with other people,

and so I'm delighted that in fact
I get to compose works for them.

I get to write, sometimes for soloists
and I get to work with one person,

sometimes full orchestras,
and I work with a lot of people,

and this is probably the capacity,
the role creatively

for which I'm probably
best known professionally.

Now, some of my scores
as a composer look like this,

and others look like this,

and some look like this,

and I make all of these by hand,
and it's really tedious.

It takes a long, long time
to make these scores,

and right now I'm working on a piece

that's 180 pages in length,

and it's just a big chunk of my life,
and I'm just pulling out hair.

I have a lot of it, and that's
a good thing I suppose. (Laughter)

So this gets really boring
and really tiresome for me,

so after a while the process
of notating is not only boring,

but I actually want the notation
to be more interesting,

and so that's pushed me to do
other projects like this one.

This is an excerpt from a score called

"The Metaphysics of Notation."

The full score is 72 feet wide.

It's a bunch of crazy
pictographic notation.

Let's zoom in on one section
of it right here.

You can see it's rather detailed.

I do all of this with drafting templates,

with straight edges,
with French curves, and by freehand,

and the 72 feet was actually split

into 12 six-foot-wide panels
that were installed

around the Cantor Arts Center Museum
lobby balcony,

and it appeared
for one year in the museum,

and during that year,
it was experienced as visual art

most of the week, except,
as you can see in these pictures,

on Fridays, from noon til one,
and only during that time,

various performers came
and interpreted these strange

and undefined pictographic glyphs.
(Laughter)

Now this was a really
exciting experience for me.

It was gratifying musically,
but I think the more important thing

is it was exciting because
I got to take on another role,

especially given that it appeared
in a museum,

and that is as visual artist. (Laughter)

We're going to fill up the whole thing,
don't worry. (Laughter)

I am multitudes. (Laughter)

So one of the things is that,
I mean, some people would say,

like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante,"
and maybe that's true.

I can understand how, I mean,

because I don't have a pedigree
in visual art

and I don't have any training,
but it's just something

that I wanted to do as an extension
of my composition,

as an extension
of a kind of creative impulse.

I can understand the question, though.
"But is it music?"

I mean, there's not
any traditional notation.

I can also understand
that sort of implicit criticism

in this piece, "S-tog," which I made
when I was living in Copenhagen.

I took the Copenhagen subway map

and I renamed all the stations
to abstract musical provocations,

and the players, who are synchronized
with stopwatches,

follow the timetables, which are listed
in minutes past the hour.

So this is a case of actually
adapting something,

or maybe stealing something,

and then turning it
into a musical notation.

You folks have been neglected,
I'll stand here for a couple of minutes.

(Applause)

Another adaptation would be this piece.

The wristwatch, I should say.

I took the idea of the wristwatch,
and I turned it into a musical score.

I made my own faces, and had
a company fabricate them,

and the players follow these scores.

They follow the second hands,

and as they pass over the various symbols,
the players respond musically.

Here's another example from another piece,

and then its realization.

So in these two capacities,
I've been scavenger,

in the sense of taking, like,
the subway map, right,

or thief maybe,
and I've also been designer,

in the case of making the wristwatches.

And once again, this is,
for me, interesting.

Another role that I like to take on
is that of the performance artist.

Some of my pieces have these
kind of weird theatric elements,

and I often perform them.

I want to show you a clip
from a piece called "Echolalia."

This is actually being performed
by Brian McWhorter,

who is an extraordinary performer.

Let's watch a little bit of this,
and please notice the instrumentation.

(Music)

Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously

because you too could hear that the drill
was a little bit sharp,

the intonation was a little questionable.
(Laughter)

Let's watch just another clip.

(Music)

Okay, that's enough.

You can see the mayhem continues,
and there's, you know,

there were no clarinets and trumpets
and flutes and violins.

Here's a piece that has
an even more unusual,

more peculiar instrumentation.

This is "Tlön," for three conductors
and no players. (Laughter)

This was based on the experience
of actually watching

two people having a virulent
argument in sign language,

which produced no decibels to speak of,

but affectively, psychologically,
was a very loud experience.

So, yeah, I get it, with,
like, the weird appliances

and then the total absence
of conventional instruments

and this glut of conductors,
people might, you know,

wonder, yeah, "Is this music?"

But let's move on to a piece where
clearly I'm behaving myself,

and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra."

You're going to notice a lot
of conventional instruments in this clip.

(Music)

Are you bored? I'm a little bored.

This, in fact, is not
the title of this piece.

I was a bit mischievous.
In fact, to make it more interesting,

I put a space right in here,
and this is the actual title of the piece.

Let's continue with that same excerpt.

(Music)

It's better with a florist, right?
(Laughter) (Music)

Or at least it's less boring.
Let's watch a couple more clips.

(Music)

So with all these theatric elements,
this pushes me in another role,

and that would be,
possibly, the dramaturge.

I was playing nice. I had to write
the orchestra bits, right?

Okay? But then there was
this other stuff, right?

There was the florist,
and I can understand that,

once again, we're putting
pressure on the ontology of music

as we know it conventionally,

but let's look at one last piece
today I'm going to share with you.

This is going to be
a piece called "Aphasia,"

and it's for hand gestures
synchronized to sound,

and this invites yet another role,
and final one I'll share with you,

which is that of the choreographer.

And the score for the piece
looks like this,

and it instructs me,
the performer, to make

various hand gestures
at very specific times

synchronized with an audio tape,

and that audio tape
is made up exclusively of vocal samples.

I recorded an awesome singer,

and I took the sound
of his voice in my computer,

and I warped it in countless ways

to come up with the soundtrack
that you're about to hear.

And I'll perform just an excerpt
of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay?

(Music)

So that gives you a little taste
of that piece. (Applause)

Thank you. When this ovation dies down,
I shall continue.

Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff.

Is it music?
Here's how I want to conclude.

I've decided, ultimately,
that this is the wrong question,

that this is not the important question.

The important question
is, "Is it interesting?"

And I follow this question,
not worrying about "Is it music?" -

not worrying about the definition
of the thing that I'm making.

I allow my creativity to push me

in directions that are simply
interesting to me,

and I don't worry
about the likeness of the result

to some notion, some paradigm,

of what music composition
is supposed to be,

and that has actually
urged me, in a sense,

to take on a whole bunch
of different roles,

and so what I want you to think about is,

to what extent might you change
the fundamental question

in your discipline, and, okay,

I'm going to put one extra
little footnote in here,

because, like, I realized I mentioned

some psychological defects
earlier, and we also,

along the way, had a fair amount
of obsessive behavior,

and there was some delusional
behavior and things like that,

and here I think we could say
that this is an argument

for self-loathing
and a kind of schizophrenia,

at least in the popular use of the term,

and I really mean dissociative
identity disorder, okay. (Laughter)

Anyway, despite those perils,
I would urge you

to think about the possibility
that you might take on roles

in your own work,
whether they are neighboring

or far-flung
from your professional definition.

And with that, I thank you very much.
(Applause)