EUREKA!

This week, we read about a bunch of different definitions of creativity and creative types. I have decided, totally on my own, without any outside influence whatsoever, to write about each of these definitions and give examples of each. My labor...it has fruits.

Otto Rank, in 1945, wrote about his creative type. He wrote that the creative type of person was self-actualized, worked for the sheer joy of working and is the kind of guy who has things all together. This at a time when important people believed that all creative people were jabbering, disheveled messes like your middle school art teacher. Rank's definition immediately brought to mind Howard Roark, the architect from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Roark designs ingenious buildings because he loves to and he does not compromises for anybody. He's well-dressed and seems to smell nice. This book was made into a cheesetastic film. Here is a clip of Roark's trial, during which he explains his life philosophy.

Next was Carl Jung. He defined two creative types, the psychological and the visionary types. The psychological creative type is a person who is inspired by the human experience and human consciousness. Check out this Nick Cave video. This seems to be the work of a psychologically creative type of guy.

Jung's visionary type is one who draws inspiration from the Transcendentalist's concept of the "divine oversoul." (Jung didn't actually mention the Transcendentalists or their philosophy...I'm just being a snobby English teacher) The author of our textbook called this the "collective unconscious," but I like divine oversoul better. Primordial images from the darkest recess of the brain inspire these folks. Check out Salvador Dali's art. It's disturbing and familiar, dreamlike and grotesque.

Torrance described a process rather than a person. I don't appreciate his thoroughly unromantic description of the creative process...Torrance believes it is rather like the scientific process in that one recognizes a problem or deficiency, comes up with theories, tests them and reports on the results. This is far too specific and simplistic a definition of the seemingly undefinable. I've decided to include the numa numa guy here. Everybody loves him, and he clearly went through Torrance's process in creating this video. He saw a lack of videos featuring chunky white boys dancing euphorically to bad europop, he guessed that people would like to see said video, he created it and put it into the world for all to enjoy. Enjoy we did.

The creative press, again, is not a person. It's an environment. More specifically, it's an environment that invites and inspires creativity. Davis writes a lot about society here...that society creates needs and creative people recognize and provide for them. I'm not a huge fan of society, so I'm sharing a clip of nature. Nature is the most creative environment, the one that has inspired people since people first showed up. Here's a video featuring nature and pan flute music. Sweet dreams.

Finally, Davis reports on mysterious mental happenings. This section is, in essence, a series of quotes from various creative people on what happens inside of them that makes creative things happen outside of them. They all agree that music, art, literature and science just sort of pop into their heads through no thought effort of their own.

My example for art is an interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat. He claims that the inspiration for his art is "frustration." However, art doesn't spring forth from a well of frustration or we would all be artists. He is unable to explain this. Oh, and...yes...he was on heroin. I'm not sure if he was on it in this video or if he was like this at all times.

For music, I've decided to use this video of a jam session with Wynton Marsalis as an example of spontaneous creativity. I remember watching an interview with Marsalis once in which he said that jazz just happens. He does not know how or from where, but he knows that the best jazz is something that cannot and should not be written down. It just is. I'm paraphrasing, of course.

Ah, science. I wondered what inspired or "clicked" in Bell's mind that caused the creation of the telephone. Here, Mr. Watson explains. Inspiration "struck," mysteriously I might add, when Bell was working on the telegraph.

Finally, literature. I always love an excuse to share a great poem, and ee cummings is always a treat. Here is his thought on his own consciousness and how his senses affect and alter his mind. Enjoy!

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings

~ ee cummings