The "Creative Zone" is the dimension where creation and creativity flows. We all move in and out of the creative zone many times a day, and depending on our state of mind and intent, effects how closely we connect to, and what we get out of our creativity. Great works of art touch our spirits in special ways that connect each of us both to ourselves and the whole of Oneness Creativity and creation is at the essence and foundation of life. Creative artists tap into the creative zone to bring out something transcending time and space. Not just learning a craft well, but using these tools to create a work that touches the universality of the human spirit.

Meredith Brooks' first album Blurring the Edges, featuring the popular song "Bitch," is gaining attention, both for its bold statements and emotional freedom. In the following conversation, Meredith talks about some of her ideas on creativity, including staying in the moment, noticing the synchronicity, and reaching into a parallel universe known as the creative zone.

 What is your concept behind Blurring the Edges, the title of your new album?

 Meredith Brooks: What Blurring The Edges means is stretching and expanding past the boundaries. I even take it a little further because I am a believer in parallel universes. I don't think there's such a thing as linear time. When we allow the rigidity to come off of whatever it is we're doing, then I believe the creativity or energy can flow. That's how I came to name the record because this not only reflects how the record was written, but it's also how the producer was found and the record was made.

 So what happens when we let the energy flow? Are we tapping into something?

 Meredith Brooks: As much as we can remember our past, we can remember our future. There's all sorts of choices we can make as we're remembering. In sports they talk about the zone, but it isn't talked about much in creativity. When we're in our creative flow--you as a writer, me as a writer in the studio- -we go to this place that is timeless and seamless. Yet, if you think about it, we probably go there 2,500 times a day, not just when we go into our creativity. We just don't notice it, and aren't aware of it. One of those days where everything seems flow, in a way we can't explain. These things all part of the zone.

 This would be a creative zone.

 Meredith Brooks: Yes, and more, it's a zone we can be in whether we think we're being creative or not. It's natural, and when we stay in that flow, we blur the edges. This is where we can access every piece of information. When everything's accelerated at such a rate because of computers, and the way we travel, things become stressful, and we move out of the natural flow. I did a show for Capitol yesterday, and they had me on the TV Cam to New York, so I was playing in New York and L.A. at the same time. That's a pretty exciting pace to be living at. We as humans can keep up with this fast rate, but it's stressful. What I've discovered is to go the other way, which is go inward, and start accessing on a higher level.

 How do you know you're tapping into the zone?

 Meredith Brooks: I do it by noticing--I notice energy and I notice people. We can access a higher level of information about people, ourselves, the future and the world, but we usually aren't aware of this information. The main thing is noticing and being aware of what's around you. Notice every time a coincidence happens, or what you think is a coincidence. Pretty soon you'll notice it happening all the time.

 Would you talk a little about your creative process when you're tapped into the zone?

Meredith Brooks: I don't have a strict formula for writing. One of my favorite ways to write is work with a girl friend of mine, Shelley. We'll be having coffee, start talking about an idea, and then we'll be laughing about something, and writing the song. I have a lot of fun writing with other people. I also write alone, such as the song "What Would Happen." The depth of it was so personal that it was one of those songs I wrote in about five minutes while driving in a car. I write in the car a lot, especially lyrics. I take a little tape recorder with me, and when I get ideas for lyrics and melody, I record them. I find it great because you're active so you're keeping your left lobe busy with driving, and therefore you can't think so much, so that what comes out is more apt to be right brain and creative. I often write phonetically. In other words, when I'm writing and I sing melodies, it's what feels right in my mouth phonetically. Then I'll go back and put lyrics to the phonetics.

Meredith Brooks: I don't like to go back and rewrite songs because it takes something away from the moment for me because there was obviously something I was feeling in that moment. I would prefer to write a new song. There's a sense of when a song's done. I try to stay in the moment as far as my creativity which means usually new and fresh ideas come out, but can also mean recording a song in a different way. Most of the songs on the album are ones that have been with me for a while. When I wrote "Bitch," something opened for me, and I felt like I was saying something I had wanted say for a long time. There was another level that happened to me as far as expressing my songwriting.

 Meredith Brooks: "Bitch" is about honoring our moods. In this society we place importance on quickly getting out of our moods because they're negative or too silly for the moment. What we're doing is creating the possibility of losing the pearl, the creativity because it's in the moon of that moment. I've actually found when I'm angry, there is something very deep. When I access what's going on with me at that moment, I find I'm, projecting something onto someone else, my past. Okay, let's access and look at that. What I found is, it's always clear in terms of the energy when I notice what I'm really about at that moment. When I stay in present time, and make this transition, I start noticing. The only way I can do that is to find out where it's coming from. People just get rid of their moods like dumping out the garbage. It's like, I don't want to be in this mood, time to switch channels.

 Much of the "New Age" and Eastern philosophy, seems to try to nullify these moods?

Meredith Brooks: Exactly, I used to be the affirmation queen, and "New Age" was my middle name, and what I found was nothing was changing in my life; from that aspect of always trying to get out of the place I was at instead of honoring the place I was at. Once I moved beyond that, it gave me a lot more depth and information. We come from a society where we're not encouraged to honor our places. When you honor your moods, it is at that point you're ready to move onto the next place and move forward, and that's a natural flow. Present time means we're not caught in the past or the future. We're just doing it now. We can't be in moment if we don't honor what comes up for us. It didn't work to say, Okay I'm in a bad mood today, therefore I'm going to affirm to be in a good mood. What I wasn't allowed to show was my tremendous sadness and grief over certain things in my life. Can you image a world where everyone was honored for their feelings as in certain Native American cultures. If you don't move through these emotions on a deeper level, they get caught in the body. This is the reason for diseases like cancer. People trapping their emotions and creativity inside and not expressing them.  

Eric Johnson, who was featured along with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai on the 1996's G3 concert tour, is a premier guitarist, whose latest release Venus Isle, draws upon creative influences as diverse as Stevie Ray Vaughn and Wes Montgomery. In the following conversation, Eric talks about his creativity, and how he came to write the beautiful and musically exquisite song, "Manhattan."

 Eric Johnson: I'm interested in the concept of angels. There's a field of positive energy that's available to any and all of us twenty-four hours a day, it's whether we're available to receive the transmissions.  

 Eric Johnson: I meditate for the beneficial aspects of it, and indirectly aspire to try to sit with myself and relax. I think it helps in creativity, and can help in life. If anything we try to focus ourselves, whether it's meditation or discipline, it can also help us in anything we do in life.

 Isn't that kind of what music is a little bit about, too?

 Eric Johnson: Yeah, I think the more sublime music and the deeper creative things that happen musically are when people attune to a place of discipline and intense concentration. For me, when I first wake up in the morning is sometimes my most creative time because my sense of self hasn't become so focused, and doesn't have a chance to get in the way of whatever creative field might naturally happen. It's like being besides ourselves. There's these little sparks that are more creative in the morning because we haven't become so much intact.

 On a song like "Manhattan," did you sit down with the idea in your head, or is it something that came when you were working out other ideas on the guitar?

 Eric Johnson: It came when I was working out other ideas on the guitar. The motif for it came from a Wes Montgomery-type vibe. He actually played a lick that was almost exactly the same as "Manhattan," and I just kind of worked it into a song. I used the octaves to play the melody which is associated with Wes Montgomery's style of guitar playing.

 People have labeled you as being exacting your recording process. Do you see yourself this way?

 Eric Johnson: I'm probably overly exacting and picky. If you look at an overview of this, a lot of times it encompasses trying to learn different things. You might get off on what may at face-value be a detriment or hang-up, but in the overview you're actually learning things that will ultimately expand you and help add to the pool of creativity. I think this was much of the case on Venus Isle. I got waylaid here and there, but I learned a lot, and have a better concept about where I'd like to go.

 Don't you think there's kind of an universality in music that transcends time and space,like the music of Mozart still being enjoyed today?

 Eric Johnson: It certainly does. Every time I hear a Mozart piece, I just sit and marvel. It's somebody who has really allowed themselves to be in touch with something we all share. Somebody's who is good enough to feel big about being small, if you know what I mean. That allows a very special thing happen. That big-ness is somehow smaller in some ironic way.

Like the master painters of the renaissance, Ottmar Liebert creates sonic masterpieces by layering sound upon sound. Nominated for best New Age Album at this years' Grammies, Ottmar's latest album Opium continues to push the bounds of music and creativity by combining the past with the present and future into One.

 Ottmar Liebert: One was actually independent of the other. When I moved to Santa Fe, I had already decided I wanted to try a completely different approach. I didn't want to caught up in the scene where you have to make another record to feed the industry, get a better manager, get a better lawyer. We had a rock band in Boston, and the music was played on the radio. It was always, "You're one more song away, and this record company's interested. I thought the whole thing was too much of a rat race. So when I came to Santa Fe, it was really with an open mind, and not wondering what I should be doing. What happened was I was visiting a friend here, and planned only to be here for a couple of weeks, and maybe come to the West Coast because there's much bigger music scene than here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But I fell in love with the town. It was sort of one of those reverse things, a lot of people from small towns like to go to the city because they like the anonymity. From the beginning for me it was the opposite. I began to know people and the town, and this was all very appealing to me. In the city, there's something every few yards to look at, here there's a great sense of space. There's more emptiness than in the city because there's not a house every fifty yards.

 So that feeling of space influenced your creative process?

 Ottmar Liebert: Yes, it made me look at what I wanted to do. It certainly influenced me musically in that I picked up the acoustic guitar which I hadn't played in ten years. My creative process was the same, it's just that my medium changed. I'm using many of the same processes I was using with a rock band.

 Would you talk about these processes a little?

 Ottmar Liebert: On the last double album Opium, I went into the studio with only six or seven ideas worked out and written down in the form of songs. Everything else happened in the studio. The studio itself becomes very much like a canvas for a painter, where you start with a white canvas, and you keep working until you think you have a picture. This is much more possible with technology. In other words, painters always had that ability to improvise, whereas music in the classic sense was much more written down, and then repeated by somebody else or performed. Nowadays your tools are different and you can experiment. You put things there and take things away. It's quite exciting to be able to work that way.

 How much of a role does technology play into your creativity?

 Ottmar Liebert: My strongest ability is to image and to blend, putting together and imagining wholeness. In that sense I can look at separate issues and see what connects them. We need to be aware of the past, but those many musicians who don't like to acknowledge the present and new technology and different ways of looking at things, are ignoring reality. Having an open mind and being open to change is essential to being creative and moving forward. In the studio I'm a pacer, and I come up with these things that are rather nebulous. Fortunately I have great musicians I work with, and in time, they help me shape these nebulous things into ideas. I let my head move forward, imagining what something sounds like, then find a way it can fit together. We did that a lot on "Opium." The studio and technology become part of our creative medium. In most songs, I create a landscape first, and then add the melody. Often times I'll go into the studio, and will have created several backdrops, and then one night, maybe one or two in the morning, I'll basically improvise the melodies. To go back to the painting analogy, it's very much like creating a background, first laying down some color wash, creating a little bit of a landscape, and then putting on your foreground. To me, the melody is always the foreground, and makes the song. It's what seduces you into the song.

 Ottmar Liebert: If I could bottle what it was, we could market it and sell by the carafe. I prefer it to be a more or less a mystery. It's not something I question, just something I work with. There are certain things I'm not interested in, like finding out the fact that the electrons in my brain are very unstable, and therefore all kinds visual and aural input, sensory input makes them fire in all different directions. If we looked for scientific explanations, we'd find in the end every artist is a sick person. From my view, artists are usually a little more unstable than other people, and react to any sensory input in a much stronger way. But I prefer to look at it as the beauty of being able to react to things. When I was born, the pediatrician told my mother, he will always be somebody who will be happy to heaven, and sad as can be. It's always been that way with my life. There's certain days that I can move mountains, and the next day I might crawl into a room without a window and sit there all day.

(Portions of this interview were originally published in Magical Blend Magazine.)