KENT STATE UNIVERSITY EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

"Do you ever get tired of making love?"

When I heard him say this I wondered how could a man who has performed the same song thousands of times, surely on every occassion he's had to do a concert in a very long career, still find it so new , so fresh, so exciting that he could compare it to making love?

It's because he has found the magic in our 'Creative Pop'--- each time he goes on stage he's looking for ALL the ways this song can be expressed. And after these many years, the countless perfomances of this, his biggest hit, he's still searching for the next best answer.

It's amazing when you think about it---he hasn't exhausted the possibilities---after some fifty years.

The lyrics never changed, "the city by the bay" never went anywhere new, the "cable cars still flew half-way to the stars" each time. The basic melody never changed. But this mastersinger could vary the nuance, the phrasing, the tempo, or the scale each time into a myriad of exciting new combinations.

• It's true Tony Bennet never sings the same song---once!
• Did TV producer Lorne Michaels stay with the same cast of Saturday Night Live? No, he constantly looked for new talent, skits, and ways to present humor. He too, always on the quest for the next answer.
• Did writer/producer Norman Lear stop creating TV sitcoms when All In The Family was a blow out success? No, he went 'Uptown' and everywhere else in his creative search because he kept generating the next idea.

Did Bill Gates stop growing his tiny company in 1975 or stop with his first successful idea, a prototype software package, and halt with the name Microsoft? No.

• Mr. Gates went on to the next ideas, and still hasn't finished finding all of them. He eventually became the richest man in the world.

One way of looking at a problem just doens't cut it and certainly doesn't generate genius.