Cowbells and the essence of creativity
What makes something a powerful act of creativity?
When I first realised that the sound of multiple giant cowbells clanging was not part of my dream but coming from outside my window I was not too pleased. It was five in the morning on New Year’s Eve.
Twenty men in costume with giant cowbells hanging from thick leather straps positioned over their shoulders. Marching up the middle of our street intent on warding off the bad spirits in order to leave the way clear for the new year.
Welcome to Switzerland, a land infused with an intriguing blend of ritual, custom, history, and superstition.
And noise.
Is it really music?
In summer, I can walk for less than ten minutes from my house in a small village near Zurich and hear the sound of cowbells around the necks of very happy-looking cows. But this is something so different, something so ‘other’, and not just because it’s the early hours of the morning in the middle of winter on the last day of the year.
It’s a music that is both compelling and scary, and I use the word music deliberately.
There might be no melody and no familiar rhythms to follow, but there is a kind of harmony, a very rich and resonant texture, consisting of different pitches (high and low) depending on the size of the bell. Some of them weight up to twenty-five kilograms, and the bigger the bell, the deeper and more resonant the tone.
The magic of creativity
I live and breathe creativity with my students, in my writing, and in my own composing and performing.
I tell my students that creativity is coming up with novel ideas, whether that means creating something new or transforming something that already exists and making it your own.
It can be big and grand, and it can be one single step or one tiny change. And we’re already doing it so much more than we think, believe me.
I also tell them that while it can feel like magic when you’re in the thick of it or when you hear or see or experience something someone else has created, the actual doing of it really comes down to taking one step at a time, and then working out the next step, in whatever direction that might be.
But magic is definitely what I feel, standing at my window in the very early hours of New Year’s Eve. I’m witness to a tradition the origins of which date back to Celtic times. Yet no matter how many times I am woken up by those cowbells it will never be the same experience for me or for the men hoisting those bells on to their shoulders.
There are so many variables, from the number and combination of bells and their size, the number of men, how fast they walk, and the weather, to what else is going on in the world and, therefore, how much work those bells have to do to ward off all the bad spirits, and so on.
Every year I am taken by surprise, not just at being woken up, but at how it makes me feel. And at how it makes me think about what the essence of creativity is, and what it takes for something to fit the bill.
Ringing silence
There is always a ringing silence once they finally move away.
It’s a silence heavy with the memory of what just happened, the strangeness of it, and the realisation that this is a tradition that’s going to keep happening whether or not I am here to witness it.
How’s that for a powerful and ongoing act of creativity?
To read more, go to: https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/winter-festivals-and-customs