FORMER EDITORIAL
27th September 2005
Desperately Seeking Creativity
Have you ever wondered what makes YOU "creative"? Or, Whether you are more or less creative than others?
Have you ever wished that you could capture creativity and bottle it, so that you could use it like cologne and be inspired to create as much as you’d like?
Can you grow your own creativity if you cultivate, nurture and expose it to sunlight? Like the nature versus nurture debate, are creative people born and not made?
What started me thinking about creativity was a recent series on BBC Radio 4 called "Creative Genius", which plots a fascinating journey to seek out and find the source of creativity.
In search of creative genius, for instance, it theorizes with a neuroscientist about the creative gene, explores attempts to create a thinking cap, and discusses the nature of creativity with a man who has become obsessed (following a stroke); talking in rhyming couplets, sculpting and painting from dusk til dawn as if life depended upon it.
The programme got me thinking!
Fed up with looking elsewhere, I turned towards myself and introspected upon my own source of creativity. I describe myself as an averagely creative individual. With a willing spirit and weak flesh, my creative intentions are far greater than my creative outpourings. If the truth be known, if there was a pill or potion that I can take to make myself a little more productive, prolific or multi-talented, I’d be the first to try it out! Yet again the scientists are failing Joe Public- I’m sure there are many more people out there who would be stocking their cabinets with the stuff- anything to get out of working for a living!
Still creativity kept me wondering - How does it start? What inspires it? How does it develop?
William Wordsworth described it as "emotions recollected in tranquillity".
Langston Hughes in his book ‘I Wonder as I Wander’, described his creativity as a remedy to feeling melancholy, "when I felt bad, writing kept me from feeling worse; it put my inner emotions into exterior form and gave me an outlet for words that never came in conversation".
I am about to wander off on another issue related to creativity - I’ll get back to that in a minute - When I reflect upon what my source of creativity is, the results are a little inconclusive. What I can say is that there's often a disconnection between the source of inspiration and the creative act. In fact, some time could go by before the original thoughts, feelings, event are converted into the "masterpiece". The subconscious is a wonderful thing but it never does as it is told.
It could be a feeling of love, sadness, loneliness, anger. It is there and then it’s gone and yet an essence of that emotion, that experience lingers and ferments, takes shape. Creativity sometimes creeps up on one and pounces when one least expects it. When I was little, it would take hold of me at night, coming from nowhere invading my dreams forcing me to wake up in the cold and dark to find pen and paper to write down words of such lyrical majesty less they be lost forever. I can’t tell you how many countless verses and potential masterpieces have been lost to obscurity just because I couldn’t get out of bed due to it being too cold or too dark at the time.
My unscientific research has concluded that cause and effect have much to do with creativity. In saying that the "cause" can be anything and the "effect" can be anything, with the output being very much dependent upon the creative abilities the particular individual has at their disposal.
And, Oh Yeah! The point that I was going to make earlier had something to do with working for a living. I have always admired those with the ability to earn a living from their art. To spend all their waking hours being creative and not only being admired for their creativity but being paid to be creative. Ok I have to admit that this is the real reason for my wondering how I could become more creative. If I could find the source, kick-start the process and deliver the goods- I need never work in the conventional sense ever again! Until then, I continue desperately seeking creativity.
© KrPoet (guest editorial), 2005 (all rights reserved)
KrPoet is featured in a new anthology of poetry and essays called 'Brown Eyes' edited by Nicole Moore, also see her poem Dedication.
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