Ideas and Dreams

Someone once asked Duke Ellington, the great jazz pianist, composer, and musician, where he got his ideas. I wouldn’t add the qualifiers, but I wanted you to know I meant THE Duke Ellington, not just some guy named Duke Ellington.

Every artist, whether dancer, poet, musician, writer, painter, etc. at one point in his or her life, gets asked where the ideas for their art come from. Ellington said, words to the effect, “No, those aren’t ideas. Those are dreams.” Where those come from, no one knows. Mozart didn’t know either.

Jack Nicklaus, the accomplished golfer, is an artist, too. His art is his game. When he hit an amazing fairway shot around a tree and up on the green just inches from the hole, he' is creating art.

Lots of people other than those we think of as artists, are artists, and their performances are art. And their performances are the realization of dreams. Nicklaus said he tries out things in his sleep and they often work the next day on the course the next day.