We tend to think a lot about what we do, but we rarely think about the order in which we do it. Juxtapositions from a sequence of experiences are overlooked as a source of creativity. I suspect Questlove would have much to say about this.) He thinks about his soundtracks like building a 10-course meal: putting a taste in one course that begs for another in the next. Holkenborg also talks about how much his hobby, cooking, influences his work. This seems to me a valuable tip for art and life. And then the new track comes in and it’s back at the level where the original one started, and then everything feels so loud. On the problem of how to “continuously build on that anticipation of what comes next,” Holkenborg brings up a lesson he learned from being an electronic musician doing live shows:Įvery time the DJ drops a new track, it feels louder than anything else that you’ve heard before, which is actually not the case! What happens is you drop a new track, and then over the course of three to five minutes, you make it ever so slightly quieter.

One way to deal with this is to just jump off the treadmill and be grateful for what you have.Īnother solution might be found in this wisdom from composer Tom Holkenborg I found in Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, the book about making Mad Max: Fury Road.

To simplify: We chase after the things that we think will make us happy, and once we get those things, we realize we’re not that much happier than we were before, but we see other things that we think will make us happy this time, so we chase after them, etc., etc. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the “ hedonic treadmill,” the idea that being the resilient and adaptable creatures that we are, we can get used to almost anything.

Hedonic treadmil