The Honors Creative Process Class did a listening activity for their last meeting of the semester. The goal was to reflect on grief and loss, and how it feels to support others when they are going through a difficult time. We have all experienced grief in some way. That may be from losing a loved one, not making the cut for a tryout, losing a job… There are many things in life that we grieve and they aren’t always life changing events. No matter how big the loss, other people play a part in comforting people in grief. 

Don Ellis was a trumpet player in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. In his album, Tears of Joy is a song titled, “Loss.” This song was composed to show how loss feels. Easy, right? The goal may have been simple, but how it is portrayed in the song and in real life, is not so simple. In fact, it is very complex. After the class was finished listening to the eight-minute piece, there was silence. One that you could tell was from the thoughts and processing of the song. It was deep and relatable. No one knew where to start.

Before we explain what the song was like, here is the link if you want to take a listen for yourself.  

Grief is unpredictable. It doesn’t follow a pattern or a template; everyone is different in the way they experience and deal with grief. Some days are high highs where you feel amazing, and some days are low lows where you can’t help but cry out trying to take hold of something. The same was shown with this jazz piece. It didn’t follow a typical song format with verses and choruses. It didn’t even follow typical jazz standards. There were many things about the piece that added to its unpredictability. There were random percussion instruments that didn’t seem to follow any time, there would be random bursts from the trumpet and other instruments, and very high notes and very low notes that sounded almost hard to play. There were also times when the trumpet wouldn’t even be playing at all. The song has a very discombobulated feeling that closely relates to how someone experiences loss. Not only did it show someone experiencing loss through the trumpet, but it also featured others who were there to support them through the loss with the orchestra. There were many times throughout the song where the trumpet was “at a loss for words” and the orchestra was there to pick up where it had left off and gave the trumpet a much-needed break. This acceptance of silence shows how everyone needs some support through our stages of loss and it is alright to have the feelings of high highs and low lows. 

Listening to this piece showed us that it is okay to grieve and take your time, but it also gave us a great example of how to hold space for others that are grieving. It won’t ever be the same person to person, so it is easier to mirror the individual in what they need during the specific time—just like the orchestra did to the trumpet.

This activity was a great way to wrap up our seminar with Dr. Bolinger. It showed us how the creative process is important in all aspects of life. We specifically looked into how it affected the film industry by reading Ed Catmull’s book “Creativity, Inc.” It had many amazing examples of how creativity is stifled and how it can be supported. There were a lot of good examples that relate to the business world, but also many examples that relate to art and keeping a creative mindset in everything you do. Overall, we are proud to say it was an amazing class. Thank you for letting us take over the blog. We hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as we loved the class.