A friend recently turned me on to Radiolab. And yes, that means that I've been living under a rock for a while....specifically a rock in Hawaii and then France. Nonetheless, I have now rejoined the ranks of the hip adult world and am sufficiently impressed with the stimulating sonic bath that is their weekly podcast. Just yesterday I listened to an episode called Help! which talks about the battles and negotiations that we have with ourselves. Very interesting.
Most interesting to me was a discussion that they had with Elizabeth Gilbert about a conversation that she had with Tom Waites; subject: inspiration. Liz and Tom both seem to think that creativity is something outside yourself...a force of nature that can be caught, lost, negotiated with, threatened, sweet-talked....depending of course of on your methods and personality...basically that creativity is a relationship not a characteristic. Which would mean that creative people aren't gifted, they are just devoted lovers of the Muses.
Obviously this struck a chord, thus the post. This theory seems particularly true of writing. I myself am a writer by trade, though not the creative kind. I churn out grants, proposals, fund development plans, newsletters. Nothing that will ever earn me a Pulitzer or even an invitation to a cool dinner party for "literary" folks. But even this mundane type of writing either flows or it doesn't. The first draft either comes out in one crystaline stream of narrative or I sit there staring at the screen and checking at my cell phone every five minutes. So I can relate to the idea that inspiration is something outside of yourself....otherwise writing would be a piece of cake all the time. And for other projects...the more I spend time creating, the more inspiration I find for new things, the more new ideas I get for things to make. Like any relationship, the more I put into it, the more I get out of it. So I can relate there too.
What do you think? Is creativity something we are, something we borrow or something else altogether?
Most interesting to me was a discussion that they had with Elizabeth Gilbert about a conversation that she had with Tom Waites; subject: inspiration. Liz and Tom both seem to think that creativity is something outside yourself...a force of nature that can be caught, lost, negotiated with, threatened, sweet-talked....depending of course of on your methods and personality...basically that creativity is a relationship not a characteristic. Which would mean that creative people aren't gifted, they are just devoted lovers of the Muses.
Obviously this struck a chord, thus the post. This theory seems particularly true of writing. I myself am a writer by trade, though not the creative kind. I churn out grants, proposals, fund development plans, newsletters. Nothing that will ever earn me a Pulitzer or even an invitation to a cool dinner party for "literary" folks. But even this mundane type of writing either flows or it doesn't. The first draft either comes out in one crystaline stream of narrative or I sit there staring at the screen and checking at my cell phone every five minutes. So I can relate to the idea that inspiration is something outside of yourself....otherwise writing would be a piece of cake all the time. And for other projects...the more I spend time creating, the more inspiration I find for new things, the more new ideas I get for things to make. Like any relationship, the more I put into it, the more I get out of it. So I can relate there too.
What do you think? Is creativity something we are, something we borrow or something else altogether?
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