Questions on Creativity : Apostle I

My experiments with how far we can stretch creativity and still keep it CREATIVE

Creativity is a pretty darn loose word. We associate it with writing, painting, singing, playing, making movies and so on...One key ingredient to be creative is inherent from the very word itself. C R E A T E. If we are creating does it necessarily mean it has to be original? It is kind of intuitive that creation and originality are brothers and sisters or a couple in love, one is inherent in the other or maybe one cannot survive without the other. But is it really true?

Let us explore a bit further. When we sit down in front of a empty canvas and then pick up a brush and dip it in color and spray it over the canvas , do we start creating? Yes. Is it original? Has to be. When we write a novel? We create. Sure. Is it original? Necessarily because we are writing and those words and those lines pair up for the first time since they existed in that exact same permutation and combination. So it’s original. Right? Wrong I would say. Let’s see why. Because what we write comes from thoughts or rather our flow of thoughts inside our brains. So where does these thoughts originate. Essentially they are a complex manifestation of knowledge, experience, ideas, theories, realities that we have imbibed at some point of time in our life. Although apparently unique, the images we create or the dialogues our characters use are a manifested reality and not a completely out of the world one.

Am I messing with your brains? Hell No. Let’s make it simple. Say Miss X has written had a great novel. And I the foolish, hapless devourer of whatever food (Read novels/ poems etc) I get to see, jump on to it, grab it, bite it and enjoy. So basically I start reading Miss X's saga. And inevitably I connect. Yes C O N E C T. And also I create an imagery of the novel in my mind. Now this image which I create is not totally unfamiliar. It is not like seeing Spielberg’s " Jurassic Park " for the first time and knowing that these tall dudosaurs ( Read dinosaurs) were actually there 65 million years ago on the very spot where I take my sweet girlfriend for a quick evening coffee ( plus discourse of course). So it’s not Jurassic Park but its "Reality Bites" aka Winona Ryder for us most of the time. That is to say. We are familiar with what we see. And we identify. Although we don't know what happens next.

As per senso-stricto definition, this ain't creativity because this ain't strictly original. But we all know this logic which I used is Bull s**t and Miss X's work is definitely creative and original. I have tweaked the definition a little bit and made it more liberal. I am sure you guys bought my idea.

Now comes the point for which so much of tomfoolery with words.If we translate a work from a different language, it should also be a creative work.If I look at Dali's (Dali ~ Salvador Dali) “The Persistence of Memory"- a painting and write a blog on it or even if I write a poem, it is still my creation without the old Dali looming over my head and abusing. Although it is a different thing that if one sits to play around with Dali's painting and create something out of it, he has to be daring and a tad mad.

At the end of all this , I convince myself that there is just a vast pool of creativity and its source can be anything- your own jumbled up head, a mushy painting by Dali or a classic Hitchcock film. It is what you create out of it that is yours. And we care :-)

 

© Nothing Personal, Nov 06, 2010.

Reviews

[Angelalala]

in reality, i think anything we think, say, or do is nothing that has never been thought, said, or done before. man has been around for a long time. it's how you choose to express it now. thus lies creativity. very interesting piece, & thought-provoking.

[Ice QueenJen]

There has never been anything down that hasn't existed before,but when we write, paint, or etc. it is original from our minds perspective or thoughts!

[YouoweYoupay]

Now that is an original point of view concerning originality. Great job! I enjoyed reading your piece of mind. (piece of mind...get it? *laffs*...okay nevermind. lol)
Keep it up!

-Wella.

[Arsenic Nemesis]

Wow... that was very interesting. I often find myself trying to think of "what is creativity" and I find myself agreeing with quite a lot of this, especailly the whole idea about "originality" and the like. Good work, mortal~

[Calypso]

I enjoyed reading this and i learned a lot from it.

[Jooolie]

This was interesting. I've never read something like it.

But I caught a few errors throughout the piece, and they were a bit distracting and made it difficult to fully focus on the writing.

Maybe go through the story again and do a grammar check. There were some sentences missing punctuation, and whenever you used "I" in the story, it was never capitalized.

You use the word "so" a lot in here. On occasion, it works and makes the writing seem really laid-back and casual, which is a good thing. But using it practically every other sentence gets to be a bit much.

Overall, I really liked the concept you have here :) It's really cool!

[Dark Empress]

I like this alot. Great work.

[Lindsay]

What about Jung's concept of shared consciousness? Are our thoughts and perceptions derived from others' experiences, meaning that even seemingly original works are in fact plagiarism by default? Thinking deeply about this topic could easily blow your mind. Well done. I enjoy a good essay. Some grammatical errors, but otherwise ready to send out.

[Goodbye]

Yes, although themes and thoughts have prior expression, it is always uniques coming out of each person's internal milieu...

[Hollow Man]

aye, this is a great write on a difficult subject. you have creatively created an essay on creativity, how creative. i thoroughly enjoyed this