Does it matter what you're creating?
As we discussed earlier society has perpetuated many myths of creativity. One of the most common myths is the myth that creativity only exists in the studio art, writing, acting, directing, dancing, and other related endeavors. This completely leaves out anyone involved in any of the maths, sciences, business, craftsmanship, cooking, labor, or liberal arts. However, people who pursue these lines of work employ creativity on a regular basis.
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Below you will find the accounts of five different creators from different backgrounds and times considered great in their fields. There are also two accounts in the form of interviews detailing the experiences of two creators in two more fields. Each of these accounts is unique in that no two experience the exact same thing, however, they use similar language to attempt to describe the phenomenon they have encountered. Through this is becomes clear that each of them has touched part of the same thing making it possible to relate these very different people and experiences through a common thread. Creativity takes different shaped, but it is molded from the same clay. Thus, learning more about any one type of creativity can teach us about all types of creativity on some level.
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You may notice there is one creative genius noticably missing from the list below. While Wolfgang Mozart was a man of undoubtable genius, it has been found that Mozart's famous journals detailing his creative experiences were works of fiction written by someone else, and for that reason you will not find them below.
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Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Anglicized as Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky is renowned as the most famous Russian composer of all time. Some of his most famous compositions include the 1812 Overture, Swan Lake, and Christmas favorite The Nutcracker.
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Excerpts from R. Newmarch, Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, John Lane, 1906, pp 274-5, 280-81, 311-12
Ghiselin, Brewster. The Creative Process: A Symposium. University of California Press, 1997.
“Generally speaking, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly. If the soil is ready - that is to say, if the disposition for work is there - it takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches, leaves, and finally blossoms. I cannot define the creative process in any other way than by this simile. The great difficulty is that the germ must appear at a favorable moment, the rest goes of itself.” (pg 57)
“Sometimes [interruptions] break the thread of inspiration for a considerable time, so that I have to seek it again - often in vain. In such cases cool headwork and technical knowledge have come to my aid. Even in the works of the greatest master we find such moments, when the organic sequence fails and a skillful join has to be made, so that the parts appear as a completely welded whole.” (pg 58)
“If that condition of mind and soul, which we call inspiration, lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments. It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration.” (pg 58)
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For more information on Tchaikovsky visit https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pyotr-Ilyich-Tchaikovsky
To hear his music visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ILDGl4a9w
Herni Poincare
Henri Poincare is regarded as one of the greatest math minds. His innovations include work in geometry, theory of differential equations, electromagnetism, topology, and philosophy of mathematics.
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Excerpt from H. Poincare, The Foundations of Science (trans. G. B. Halstead), Science Press, 1924, pp. 383-94. First published in Science et Methode, Flammarion, Paris, 1908.
Ghiselin, Brewster. The Creative Process: A Symposium. University of California Press, 1997.
“We know that this feeling, this intuition of mathematical order, that makes us divine hidden harmonies and relations, can not be possessed by everyone” (pg 79)
“Then I turned my attention to the study of some arithmetical questions apparently without much success and without a suspicion of any connection with my preceding researches. Disgusted with my failure, I went to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of something else. One morning, walking on the bluff, the idea came to me, with just the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness and immediate certainty, that the arithmetic transformations of indeterminate ternary quadratic forms were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry.” (pg 82)
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For more information on Henri Poincare visit https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Poincare
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Spender was a well known English poet and critic in the 1930s. His poetry expressed political consciousness typical of that time.
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Stephen Spender, “The Making of a Poem”, reprinted in B. Ghiselin (ed.), The Creative Process: A Symposium, University of California Press, 1952, pp. 112-25. First published 1946.
Ghiselin, Brewster. The Creative Process: A Symposium. University of California Press, 1997.
“The hard work evinced in these examples, which are only a fraction of the work put into the whole poem, may cause the reader to wonder if there is no such thing as inspiration… the answer is that is that everything in poetry is work except inspiration” (pg 68)
“Inspiration is the beginning of a poem and it is also its final goal. It is the first idea which drops into the poet’s mind and it is the final idea which he at last achieves in words. In between this start and this winning post there is the hard race, the sweat and toil.” (pg 68)
“My own experience of inspiration is certainly that of a line or phrase or a word or sometimes something still vague, a dim cloud of an idea which I feel must be condensed into a shower of words.” (pg 68)
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For more information on Sir Stephen Spender and to read some of his poetry visit https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephen-spender
Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick is an American reporter and memoir writer. Her works focus on outsiders discussing both sexism and anti semitism.
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Gornick, Vivian. Fierce Attachments: A Memoir. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987.
"I sat at the desk and I concentrated. I didn’t glaze over looking at the words, or stumble about in my chair reeling with fog and fatigue. Rather, I sat down each morning with a clear mind and hour after hour I worked. The rectangle had opened wide and remained open: in the middle stood an idea. A great excitement formed itself around this idea, and took hold of me. I began fantasizing over the idea, rushing ahead of it, envisioning its full and particular strength and power long before it had clarified. Out of this fantasizing came images, and out of the images a wholeness of thought and language that amazed me each time it repeated itself. At the end of the week I had a large amount of manuscript on my desk. On Friday afternoon I put away the work. On Monday morning I looked at it, and I saw that the pages contained merit but the idea was ill-conceived. It didn’t work at all. I’d have to abandon all that I had done. I felt deflated. The period of inspired labor was at an end. The murk and the vapor closed in on me again, the rectangle shriveled and I was back to eking out painfully small moments of clarity, as usual and as always. Still, it was absorbing to remember the hours I had put in while under the spell of my vision. I felt strengthened by the sustained effort of work the fantasizing had led to."
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For more information on Vivian Gornick visit
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gornick-vivian
and for more of her thoughts on creativity visit
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/18/vivian-gornick-fierce-attachments/
Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield has translated many works of early poetry by women and is a celebrated poet in her own right.
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Hirshfield, Jane. Nine gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry: Essays. HarperCollinsPublishers, 1998.
"Every good poem begins in language awake to its own connections — language that hears itself and what is around it, sees itself and what is around it, looks back at those who look into its gaze and knows more perhaps even than we do about who are, what we are. It begins, that is, in the mind and body of concentration.
By concentration, I mean a particular state of awareness: penetrating, unified, and focused, yet also permeable and open. This quality of consciousness, though not easily put into words, is instantly recognizable. Aldous Huxley described it as the moment the doors of perception open; James Joyce called it epiphany. The experience of concentration may be quietly physical — a simple, unexpected sense of deep accord between yourself and everything. It may come as the harvest of long looking and leave us, as it did Wordsworth, a mind thought “too deep for tears.” Within action, it is felt as a grace state: time slows and extends, and a person’s every movement and decision seem to partake of perfection. Concentration can also be placed into things — it radiates undimmed from Vermeer’s paintings, from the small marble figure of a lyre-player from ancient Greece, from a Chinese three-footed bowl — and into musical notes, words, ideas. In the wholeheartedness of concentration, world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done."
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For more information on Jane Hirshfield and her thoughts on creativity visit
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/21/jane-hirshfield-concentration/
to read her works visit
Talking with Creative People
Although we will focus on dancers in the later interviews it is important to understand that all types of creativity stem from the same place. This is evident in the way each person experiences creative moments.
I spoke with two professors, Dr. Kenneth Brown the chemistry department and Perry Landes from the theatre department. Each of them gave me valuable insight into how they view the creative process.
Dr. Kenneth Brown has been at Hope since 1999. He completed is B.S. in chemistry at Oral Roberts University and his Ph.D. in chemistry at Oklahoma State University. While at Hope he has held the various positions of an assistant professor of chemistry (term), assistant professor of chemistry and associate professor of chemistry. His interests include electrochemical preparation and characterization of chemically modified electrodes and chemical aspects of ethnobotany and plant physiology. Dr. Brown has received numerous grants, honors, and awards and is the author of many publications.
​For more information on Dr. Brown or his current research go to https://hope.edu/directory/people/brown-kenneth/
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*The quote Perry was referring to is from Sir Joshua Reynolds and reads, "The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced."
Perry Landes recieved his B.A. in music, composition and performance from Whitworth College and his MFA in design technical theater from University of Montana​. He came to Hope in 1987 on a one-year contract and started a tenure track position in 1988. He is also the facilities manager for the theatre department.
He has taught Lighting Design, Theatre Crafts II (lighting and sound), Stage Management, Computers in Music, Encounter With the Arts, Introduction to Theatre Practice and Introduction to Theatre.
In addition to his design work at Hope College, Perry has designed lighting and/or sound for places such as: Actors’ Theatre in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Montana Repertory Theatre in Missoula, Montana, Hope Summer Repertory Theatre Company​, and Grosso Modo Dance Company in Queretaro, Mexico. He is also a composer for theatre, with a preference for scoring Shakespeare’s plays.​
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For more information on Perry Landes go to
https://hope.edu/directory/people/landes-perry/
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