creativity
You are viewing stuff tagged with creativity.
You are viewing stuff tagged with creativity.
There was no miraculous breakthrough that afternoon, unless it was the ordinary miracle that comes with any attempt to create something.
It is humbling to read such good, clear writing. It is so, so hard to string together sentences that steer around cliché, avoid stock phrases, and communicate some coherent single thought. But then to manage to produce a narrative, along with some humor, along with some really profound insights… and to do it without abstruse language (see the irony there?), well… that’s something I have much to learn about.
Our little family took a trip last weekend. Essie’s longest road trip thus far, to Wisconsin Dells, to the Kalahari Resort. Mykala had dance competition obligations, but since the hotel was connected to the convention center where the competition was held, we got to see her on each one of her breaks, and got to see Ess go to a waterpark for the first time. We expected a reaction from our nearly-two-year-old when she got in a giant kiddie pool full of swings, a miniature lazy river, giraffe sculptures, baby elephants squirting water out of their trunks, and colorful slides with water running down them. Ok, we thought, this could go one of two ways: she’s going to let loose and splash everywhere, analogous to her at home when she goes “run run run!” and then just runs around. Or, in contrast, she’d get really chatty, like she does when she’s sitting on the front of Mykala’s bike and watching the world go by. Hidden option C: Ess did neither of the things we guessed, instead going into some kind of Zen state of total focus and relaxation. Just staring out, happy but not gleeful, calm but not sad. We were taken aback. Then, Mykala took her down a slide. Did she like it? “MOE MOE” she said, and when I picked her up “NO-MAMA”, her favorite way to specify whom she would rather do the thing at hand with her. I think Ess had fun.
Mick Without Moss - The New York Times:
“You can delegate things to other people,” Jagger observes, “and you have to, to a certain extent, but if you’re not behind it and getting your knowledge and input into it, it’s not going to turn out as interestingly and probably it won’t be what you would like. It’ll be disappointing.”
The spark of creativity is one of the most singularly electrifying experiences of the human condition. To bring something, no matter how small, out of nothing — a clever turn of phrase, a pleasant melody, an arrangement of paints on a canvas — is a powerful experience. In dental school, I miss the creative spark intensely. The longing for time to write a melody on the piano or a poem in a notebook makes me wonder: would I feel the opposite way were I in music school? That is to say: after countless assignments to “compose a melody in this time and this key signature,” would I crave a list of facts to memorize, a test in which the subjective was eliminated and I could objectively, predictably achieve success?
Messes can be a good thing - Spawns creativity/productivity, etc.—an idea advanced by Lewis Kornhauser, an NYU School of Law professor.
After weeks of physical chemistry, biochemistry, and cell biology, I finally took Friday off to play some piano; it was physically cathartic to produce some creative work. In addition to the usual stress of trying to cram so much information into my head, I find the lack of creative outlets in my classes stifling. Spontaneously, unexpectedly, I find my hand drawing things, as if the urge to create inside of me refuses to be held back any longer. I end up sketching crappy trees.