{CHAPTER 6}
AQUA, SUMMER
BALLET, AND THE
GREAT DOUBT
Søren Rasted invites us home one summer evening in June 2011, and we spend the next few hours discussing the importance of creativity for Søren’s own career. As a result, this chapter concerning Søren also concerns identifying how someone can successfully produce hit after hit. Yet it also considers the accompanying doubt and uncertainty as well as the feeling of not being the best. This is why we have allowed Søren’s story to stand alongside that of Alexander Kølpin, which is characterized by the same tone.
The feeling of not having mastered one’s craft arises again and again in Søren’s and Alexander’s narratives. Alexander does not feel he ever became a very good dancer, despite the fact that he chose to attend ballet school and later sought to make a living from dancing. Søren is of the opinion that he is far from the best songwriter around. Neither, however, is shy to admit that he is skilled at combining artistic and commercial interests – buying cheap and selling dear, as Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart describe the core of creativity.
A SUCCESS STORY
Søren Rasted – with the help of his wife Lene Nystrøm and colleagues Claus Norreen and René Dif – has been frontman of the pop band Aqua for many years. As a pop band, Aqua is one of the great indicators of the creative sector’s importance for the Danish economy. Aqua has sold 33 million albums, making it the most successful Danish music group ever in terms of sales. Barbie Girl remains the best-selling single ever in Scandinavia, beating out such groups as ABBA and A-ha.
The group was founded in 1989 and received its international breakthrough with the 1997 album Aquarium. Aqua broke up in 2001 but re-formed in 2007, and in autumn 2011, the group released a new CD. In the interim, Søren has had great success with the duo Hej Matematik alongside his nephew Nicolaj Rasted.
The house is busy this summer evening. Lene Nystrøm rushes in from the gym, eats with us, and then withdraws quickly thereafter to the house’s second floor to discuss the details of a new music video with an advertising agency.
BOREDOM AS A RESOURCE
Søren explains that he has always regarded boredom as the best route to creativity. “I spent a spectacular amount of my childhood being bored. The worst thing you can do is place your children in front of the TV, computer, electronic entertainment.” This might not be the kind of statement you would expect from one of the uncrowned kings of Danish pop, yet it is boredom that prompts the urge to break out and think of something new, Søren says. He is also entirely in agreement with what we have heard regarding the necessity of hard work in creative processes:
“I just spoke with someone today, a young guy who’s starting out on the same path as me. He’s 26, 27. I think he does way too little. I told him that. The quantitative is crucial. When we’re holding a finished CD with 12 songs, well, we probably began with 120 songs and scaled back from there to find the best ones. So, I said that to help him even though he probably felt a bit guilty. Unless you get a lot of things started, nothing’s going to happen.”
Coming up with huge numbers of drafts is regarded as being the basis for reaching the final form, yet Søren says later that it is impossible to work in a universe of endless possibilities. Creativity requires “artificial obstacles” and limitations. This is a theme to which we will return again and again throughout the book because we feel it is fundamental to how creativity works. Furthermore, says Søren, to be creative, it is vital to have a sense of safety and self-confidence.
“If you have low self-confidence, as I’ve had during some periods, it won’t be particularly good either. In contrast, a certain degree of devil-may-care attitude, where I strike while the iron’s hot, means that it takes five days to make something that’s world class. Other times, it takes four or five weeks, and then the result’s just middling. But I can sense that a starting point that works on both piano and guitar will always work. You can’t polish something that’s not there from the start.”
For Søren, music is about how you sell your idea, which is why he regards self-confidence as a significant ingredient. With self-confidence, he can convince his band members, yet he also says that it’s not a case of him always being able to “drive on the iceberg”, of being able to accomplish everything. Nor is he afraid to admit that he occasionally smokes a joint to advance his writing process because this can open things up and expand the possibilities.
Nevertheless, Søren insists that music production and drugs definitely do not go together. He needs to be in full form while at the studio. As a songwriter, it is 100% about creativity, but the job of producer requires a kind of extreme rationality. He also explains that collaboration with Claus from Aqua, which has been on hold for a while now, is deeply satisfying. It is more fun to celebrate success with someone else.
“I feel a bit bad for solo artists. Everything I’ve made, I’ve done with other people because it enriches the creative process. One plus one equals four. Claus is hard, and in the end, I figure out he’s right, and at the same time, I’ve moved into a position where he’s actually correct. Music is an organism that’s constantly changing form. Like fashion. It takes place so fast, and trends are breaking more than they ever did before. Quick shifts – it’s technique.”
When we ask Søren how he gets his ideas, he responds that, at the moment, he’s working on an idea concerning “pluses and minuses”. If the joy in a piece of music is to shine through, it has to be done in a minor key whereas deep emotions must be expressed in a major key. What is important is knowing something about the subject on which one is writing and being consistent about it. “It’s a limit I’ve set for myself,” he says. For Hej Matematik, the music is consonant-oriented and the approach is narrow whereas Aqua works with much wider approaches and represents more of a sort of action comedy.
Søren also feels that he acquired his sense for producing hits from his upbringing by a mother and father who valued the lullaby tradition. The sense for rhyme and rhythm is something he received as a child. “My mother has always been dogmatic. ‘Never write a song in C, never in C.’ She has no idea about pop music whatsoever, but I’ve always listened to her.”
“Claus and I are now working on chords in a different way than we usually do, and with fifths and fourths. We’ve analyzed what it is that makes other things sound new, and it involves a special way of tuning. And we asked ourselves, ‘Why don’t we write like that?’ I’m not a particularly skilled musician even though I’ve played for years. I’m notably poor at my craft – I don’t like going too deep.”
Søren operates in a state of tension between knowing something about how music works – which he regards as highly important – and nevertheless not being a true master of the musicianship. Or is he just being modest? Søren assures me, at any rate, that everything he makes has been thought through down to the smallest detail, everything from the lyrics to the headlines to individual words.
Just like Andreas Golder, Søren gives short shrift to the idea that one can create something new. Everything has already been invented, and the art instead lies in sampling or recombining that which already exists:
“Those people who’ve made something entirely new – they don’t exist. You can’t make something totally new. Language has been invented. Inspiration is about what you see in nature and influences from newspapers, magazines, and TV. What my mother tells me, ‘It creates you and what you do,’ but it doesn’t come from any one place. I accumulate a lot in my daily life and don’t believe in spiritual inspiration, but I love lifting something up together with others. If you’re around people who are successful and who are passionate about what they do, it’s very inspiring. But of course, it’s possible for them to be down in the dumps sometimes too.”
Søren does not put his inspiration into play in the system, nor does he feel he has been good at positioning himself for success. He explains that he previously regarded himself as something approaching “God’s gift to music” but now understands that other songwriters may be better than he is. This is why he is now working to surround himself with good songwriters and spending more time in the role of producer. Søren also argues that, for him, creativity is many things, but he works best in a bubble, free from constant interruption, and his habits of going running and doing outdoor swimming during the winter often provide him with the space in which to speculate upon the next step in a song or a process.
Even the work involved in writing and producing goes slowly and requires numerous drafts before the product is complete. Søren explains that the first hits with Aqua were written with him imagining he was at a particular club, namely Savanna in Boltens Gård, Copenhagen: “I close my eyes and imagine how people will react to the music. First and foremost, it’s the feeling: ‘Yes, that’s it.’ Then you can refine it afterward. Claus tends to be good at that, stopping me and saying, ‘Hey, you can’t finish that sentence on that word.’”
Discovering the formula for a day-to-day work practice has been an art for Søren and Claus, especially now that they both have children. Søren says that, although they sometimes have weeks of regular 9-to-7 workdays, calmness and loneliness are necessary conditions for periods of writing. Then they will meet up and work the whole night through to find a different kind of magic. The driving force behind this is that Søren feels they have not yet written their best song together: they have much more left to give.
Søren is also deeply convinced of the necessity of routine within the production process and the value of collaboration. He tells us about the people who work behind the scenes. Niklas Anker, for example, is the fifth member of Aqua: “He’s always there, and his energy has had a big effect on me. I also follow the work of the other producers: Trevor Horn, Dr. Luke, Flood, Max Martin, Rick Rubin, Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, and so on.”
Søren does not feel that anyone is born more creative than anyone else, although some perhaps have more flair for creative processes. And then, of course, there is the key aspect of boredom and the dream that “this can be good”. It is all about finding out what makes one happy. On his parents’ advice, Søren took a business school education and was an instructor at the Norwegian oil company Statoil’s main office in Copenhagen – in the sales department. Maybe that is where he acquired his commercial skills. Indeed, Søren says he misses his colleagues but that, in the end, his path lay in music.
Though Søren’s story does not precisely mirror that of Alexander Kølpin, the two are related. Both describe uncertainty and doubt, being driven by low self-confidence, and being skilled at surrounding themselves with people and at making their art accessible to as many people as possible. We meet Alexander at Fremtiden, a little restaurant close to Amalienborg Castle in Copenhagen.
CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR
Alexander Kølpin has transitioned from being a practising ballet dancer to being a producer, director, and stage manager. He is responsible for an annual summer ballet and has just become a hotel owner. Of the new activities, he says, “I want to go out and make things happen in the creative process, which I’ve missed, at the same time as I’d like to be an entrepreneur.”
Alexander was accepted into the Royal Danish Ballet School in Copenhagen in 1978 and acted as a solo dancer from 1987. He founded the Summer Ballet in 1991, was a dancer with the Swiss ballet troupe Maurice Béjart in 1995–96, and has also appeared in the USA, Canada, Hong Kong, and Japan.
The driving force for Alexander is the question of what he personally wishes to experience:
“I don’t think much at all about what will sell tickets but more about what I want to do. But with such a narrow project as ballet, I also need to make it accessible and sexy, and the level of quality, obviously, shouldn’t decline as a result. I need to sell tickets. I need to run a business. I’m not supported by the state. I need to have a high level of professionalism and something that’s also out of the ordinary. You can ponder over how far the public is from the art. The product is located in between the two. It’s in this dialogue and in the meeting that you find the experience. Then you’ve invited someone in. I need to think about how the artist can meet the customer. I mean, I’m in the entertainment industry.”
Alexander explains that he would like to touch and inspire as many people as possible. His point of departure is that if he loves something or feels that a dance is interesting or a designer is exciting, then he needs to convert it into the ballet universe and make it attractive to others.
“I’m responsible for it all at the start, but I also need to let go. It’s important who I choose, so I need to trust other people. I have four, five people at this point with whom I’ve worked for many years, and it’s about me having faith in them. Things don’t always go in the direction I imagine, and things might take a bit of a detour, but I have faith it will all turn out alright.”
Trust and the involvement of others are key ideas that recur again and again throughout the present book. Alexander says he is quite intuitive about some of his choices. “I might fall in love with a piece of music, and then I might create something around that. I have to compose a story from a bunch of elements that I piece together, and then I take some people and bring them together.”
The process often arises from something altogether concrete. It could be a dance or a piece of music. Alexander says that he creates Dadaesque collages, tunes, and experiences that result in a physical installation. There are no turning points or conclusions, nothing particularly analytical; instead, there is a quest to find the experience in the work. When we ask Alexander where his drive comes from, he says:
“It’s purely from a place of low self-esteem. I don’t really know, but it’s because I like entertainment. I do it for myself but also because I love having a positive effect on other people. As a child, I skateboarded, played hockey and everything, and my sister went to ballet school. I was 11 when I started dancing and 13 when I started at ballet school. My parents were against it, so I forced my way through. I’ve always felt like an outcast, and I really wasn’t a particularly good dancer, but my entire force as a dancer is that I – other people say – have a big personality. I loved changing character and being someone else, and I had to do these steps as well, but I was good at telling stories.”
In the same way, Alexander feels that his force as a hotel owner lies in his wanting to provide others with an experience and to tell a story. The running of the hotel’s day-to-day operations has been left to a CEO who is skilled at precisely this task. It is a necessary evil that other issues surrounding the experience must be in order and that Alexander needs to have the right people helping him – just like Søren Rasted and Bjarke Ingels. “In that sense, I’m the circus manager,” Alexander says. “I need to know that everyone’s pulling in the same direction.”
In the last chapter, we cited Professor Kirsten Hastrup for the fundamental point that creativity demands both novelty and familiarity, which causes people to accept the expressions, products, or ideas with which they are presented. Alexander Kølpin emphasizes the necessity of inviting people in. He says, “Modern dance is crazily mysterious and arrogant. And where’s the generosity in it? The ultimate thing for me is to save the painting for last. I love pulling the elements together at the end. But I think that, when I’m all fired up and have a clear idea and am willing to display my insecurities about it, then we can get it to work. The more energized I am, the more I can involve others.”
According to Alexander, you cannot force creativity, sit down at a desk, and wait for the ideas to come. “For me, it’s a maturation process. There are these small impulses that start up. I get a huge amount out of talking with people who inspire me. I sample – the more music clips and photos, the better.”
To summarize: creativity requires the ability to allow yourself to be inspired and then assemble impressions and impulses from the people around you. This is what causes things to happen.
DOUBT AS A DRIVING FORCE
Both Søren Rasted and Alexander Kølpin are driven by doubt and uncertainty. Over time, however, they have learned to be relaxed about this uncertainty regarding their abilities and have started pulling in other people who possess skills that they lack. Now they see themselves as producers and managers of good experiences for as many people as possible.
In her 1996 book Creativity in Context, Teresa Amabile writes that much creativity research has concentrated on identifying the cognitive processes involved in creativity among individuals and that people have neglected to consider the conditions that make creativity possible. How, for example, does one meet the demands to earn money, live up to earlier success, and deal with a critical public? By interesting ourselves in concrete stories of everyday creativity, we are able to pinpoint these conditions, and the more often one of them is repeated, the greater the chance it represents a real phenomenon.
Amabile also reports anxiety among authors that they will not be successful. There can be massive uncertainty and anxiousness about not living up to the expectations occasioned by prior success. A humorous literary illustration of this is provided in the Danish author Lone Aburas’ novel The Difficult Second (Den svære toer) (2011). Søren Rasted and Alexander Kølpin express this well in their reflections on not having mastered their crafts and on others having taken their places, leading them to find new roles. They are their own worst critics, but the art is, of course, to keep a tight rein on this criticism so that it does not ruin one’s chances of actually bringing a work of art into the world. “When you feel that it’s right, you can make world class in five days,” as Søren says.
Both stress that nothing comes from nothing and that creativity consists instead of reinterpreting earlier works. Even though they would like to make things that interest others, their drive comes from their own preferences for good music and dance. This is, in fact, generally the case. Amabile thus refers to the importance of being driven by the case itself and not necessarily by others’ interests. She also discusses researchers who reject prizes and awards because these can themselves represent the death of creativity. Once the goal has been reached, what more is there to aim for? As Søren says, the best songs have not yet been written – and therein lies the driving force. We can always do better.
In the next chapter, we will enter the world of technicians. We are interested in what specifically promotes creativity. Can you live your life in certain ways that encourage or limit creativity? What do creative individuals do to keep the fire going? We focus in particular on the creative breakthrough and on external aids to creativity.