A while ago, I rented Ratatouille and watched some videos from the bonus features section. (Here you thought I was going to post about some complicated cooking or decadent dining experience. *smile*) They interviewed the animation director and a chef for the movie.

Guess what both of them talked about?

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Chef Thomas Keller said:

“One of the exciting things about doing something spontaneous is the risk.”

and asks himself

“How can you make each dish feel spontaneous over and over and over again without it becoming somewhat old in your feeling”

and reasons

“[I]t’s about … making sure that each dish that we do is something that is as fresh and as dynamic as it was the first time that we did it.”

(Who knew cooking was so much like spontaneous singing?)

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The director of animation (Brad Bird) said …

“Animation … is not a spontaneous act, but if you do it artfully, you get the feeling of spontaneous thought.”

I relate this to performing and recording improvised music (particularly after being in the studio last week. More on that later.). A tension exists between creating something that’s never before existed and doing so within a set of structures.

In a performance or studio situation, there is less spontaneity. For example, you’ll likely stand facing an audience or a microphone (and if you don’t, adjustments — planned in advance or improvised in the moment — will need to be made). Still when done well, you get keep the “feeling of spontaneous thought.”

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Bird and Keller had more thoughts on creating, including some good advice:

Bird: “You got to try get people excited about what you’re excited about.”

Keller: “It’s not about perfection, it’s about the quest for perfection.”

Bird: “If you try to over-control the process, you limit the process.”

And to think, all this insight from a movie about a cooking rat a rat who cooks. (Some thought a cooking rat was a little too … er … unappetizing.)

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Remember – Songtaneous is THIS Saturday from 2 to 4pm. Hope to sing with you soon. ~sg