Thinking Outside The Box

Thinking outside the box ... how many times people have heard that old bromide ... that banal call to be uncommonly creative.
For a practitioner of the creative arts who hopes their work might have a life beyond its original premiere, thinking far outside the box (in this case a symbol for "common practice manner"-- the collection of habits distilled from the practices of many famous Western composers of former ages) will have them sitting in the wrong pew.
Far outside the box there's nothing but a vacuum; there's no rules there to bend or break like an artist; there's no reality there, nothing to interact with, nothing to work against, no battle-tested patterns within which new and bold moves can be integrated, no means of production in the ordinary sense.
If we set out to do something creative far outside the box we sooner or later realize that we'll never be able to produce a lasting work of art from there, and we can't "ship" it from there.
To ship our work means to develop the discipline to get our work before the public regardless of what we or anyone else may think of it, so that it impacts upon the ears of others to touch their aesthetic sense, hopefully for the better.
One of the main purposes, if not THE main purpose, of starting a work of art should be to finish it and ship it to it can have that all-important collision with the public that defines it as art [See blog, When We Have Art].
Any innovative practitioner of the creative arts interested in trying to keep their new and bold work from falling into oblivion and staying there will think more along the edges of the box because that's where the means of production are available, where the audience is, and is the place from which their work can make an impact [See blog, Linchpin, When We Have Art].
It's the place where lasting things get done.