Ways to Create Your Own Art
Friday, 28 August 2009 13:07 | 
Written by Al Case |
Art is the fact and process of creating something. A simple statement with profound and far reaching effects. Art is the break down and synthesis of the old patterns into new and varied possibilities.
Art is the fact and process of creating something. A simple statement with profound and far reaching effects. Art is the break down and synthesis of the old patterns into new and varied possibilities.
The funny thing is that most instructors frown on the act of creating anything new. The most popular method of teaching is to have the student copycat, exactly and without deviation, what the teacher says and does. But a fight is always new and original, and requires creativity to win.
Thus, if you are going to win a fight, it behooves you to learn how to be creative. Interestingly, nobody has ever written a course or book on how to be creative. Isn't that interesting, a whole art that has no creativity in it?
To be creative one has to break down the current patterns of martial arts training one is engaged in. Thus, one method for being creative would be to simply take the specific segments of the forms and interchange them to make new forms. Take a pattern from classical karate, say the fourth set of specific movements in heian five, and then do the first specific set of movements from pinan three, then the fourth set of specific movements from pinan four...and so on.
The first thing you will learn is that these things don't fit together. So, how can you make them fit together? How can you adjust the footwork, and the geometry of the arms, so that the movements fit together and even make sense?
Another thing you are going to learn is that things don't always work. Doing the blocks in this order would never fit a normal attack. So, explore not normal attacks, and, tweak your movements until they do fit a normal attack.
Another thing you will find is the desire to do weird and sometimes exotic things. Simply, you are going to start to realize how the process of creation actually works. Your mind is going to start charging along byways that normally would have been closed to you.
AsI said in the first paragraph, art is the fact of creation. Honestly, people should drill you to death, help you make every movement your own, instill art in you. But, even more honestly, if you don't start taking the movements apart and reconfiguring them, all that drilling is going to be about as good as a death knell.
Art is the fact and process of creating something. A simple statement with profound and far reaching effects. Art is the break down and synthesis of the old patterns into new and varied possibilities.
The funny thing is that most instructors frown on the act of creating anything new. The most popular method of teaching is to have the student copycat, exactly and without deviation, what the teacher says and does. But a fight is always new and original, and requires creativity to win.
Thus, if you are going to win a fight, it behooves you to learn how to be creative. Interestingly, nobody has ever written a course or book on how to be creative. Isn't that interesting, a whole art that has no creativity in it?
To be creative one has to break down the current patterns of martial arts training one is engaged in. Thus, one method for being creative would be to simply take the specific segments of the forms and interchange them to make new forms. Take a pattern from classical karate, say the fourth set of specific movements in heian five, and then do the first specific set of movements from pinan three, then the fourth set of specific movements from pinan four...and so on.
The first thing you will learn is that these things don't fit together. So, how can you make them fit together? How can you adjust the footwork, and the geometry of the arms, so that the movements fit together and even make sense?
Another thing you are going to learn is that things don't always work. Doing the blocks in this order would never fit a normal attack. So, explore not normal attacks, and, tweak your movements until they do fit a normal attack.
Another thing you will find is the desire to do weird and sometimes exotic things. Simply, you are going to start to realize how the process of creation actually works. Your mind is going to start charging along byways that normally would have been closed to you.
AsI said in the first paragraph, art is the fact of creation. Honestly, people should drill you to death, help you make every movement your own, instill art in you. But, even more honestly, if you don't start taking the movements apart and reconfiguring them, all that drilling is going to be about as good as a death knell.
About the Author:
Al Case has studied the martial arts for forty years. You can find out How to Create Your Own Art at Monster Martial Arts.