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Saturday, 1 January 2005
On Creativity ::
I started reading David Bohm’s On Creativity yesterday. I really liked this bit from the Foreward (by Lee Nichol):
[Bohm] suggests that, were it not for culturally sustained “blocks,” the latent creativity in each person could be expressed to a degree well beyond that generally considered possible.
One of the primary blocks to such latent creativity is what Bohm refers to as “self-sustaining” confusion in the mind, in contrast to “simple” confusion. Simple confusion is that which we experience when, for instance, we don’t understand directions we are given, or when we can’t find the solution to a puzzle. Self-sustaining confusion, on the other hand, occurs “when the mind is trying to escape the awareness of conflict ... in which one’s deep intention is really to avoid perceiving the fact, rather than to ‘sort it out’ and make it clear.” Bohm points out that this process creates an order all its own: a reflexive state of dullness in which the natural agility of the mind is replaced with torpor on the one hand, mechanical and meaningless fantasies on the other. Unfortunately, says Bohm, this has come to be considered a normal state of mind, and is therefore endemic in our culture.
Consequently, we need to give patient, sustained attention to the activity of confusion, rather than attempting to promote creativity directly. For Bohm, giving simple attention—a “finer, faster process” than confusion—is itself the primary creative act. From such attention “Originality and creativity begin to emerge, not as something that is the result of an effort to achieve a planned and formulated goal, but rather, as the by-product of a mind that is coming to a more nearly normal order of operation.”
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3 comments
This is something to which I’ve given a lot of thought, so my opinion is well-honed enough that it probably comes off as glib:
If it’s not confusing, you’re not making anything new.
– Keith, Wednesday, 5 January 2005, 17:43 PST
Keith,
If it’s not confusing, you’re not making anything new.
Confusing to whom? The creator or the audience? :-)
I think I’d agree that if creating something didn’t involve a journey through some form of confusing state, it was probably too easy and the art will be missing something vital.
But the way in which the quoted paragraphs really resonated with me was about the state of “self-sustaining confusion,” “trying to escape the awareness of conflict.” That seems to describe those silly phases of angst about whether I’m capable of creating anything good, or whether I’m choosing to make the “right kind of music.” Those thought pits tend to discourage me from even putting my hands on the keyboard to start playing. Or being happy with the first old rut I happen to find myself in when I finally do put hands to keys.
If I look at the piece that gave me the most fits last year (2 months from conception to first draft, another 10 days of intense surgery to clean up and focus it), it seems I went through a lot of the more “simple puzzle” kind of confusion: I liked the original idea, but it needed a lot of elaboration and refinement. It involved puzzles about how to superimpose quarter-note pulses on top of constant-16th note phrases of irregular lengths, how to fit melodic themes and harmonies on top of some often-ambiguous modes (e.g. sometimes D is flat, sometimes natural). I hit any number of roadblocks where I succumbed to the deeper confusion and would just give up for a time.
But It all came together in the end, rather well if I do say so myself.
I don’t know if I’m agreeing, disagreeing, or just seeing things a little differently; it’s hard to argue with a statement as concise as yours :-)
Doug
– Doug, Wednesday, 5 January 2005, 21:05 PST
Well, I meant confusing to the creator, but that was an interesting question. Give me another 38 years and I’ll come up with something glib about audience confusion.
I just figure if there’s no sense of disorientation, then you know where you are. If you know where you are, you’ve been here before.
– Keith, Wednesday, 12 January 2005, 10:20 PST
This discussion has been closed. Thanks to those who participated.