Category Archives: drawing

The importance of creativity

Adaptation of something I wrote two summers ago, all bitter references to unhygenic assholes removed, for marketing purposes:

Think of a world without creativity.   No music, comedy, repartee, great food; no movies, books or even articles, no television worth watching, no mischief, nothing worth laughing at, no cause for that good cry that is sometimes so needed.

Creativity, much spoken about by educators today, has always been at the heart of learning and good teaching.  

All creativity involves a certain amount of spontaneity.  It is play. The great John Cleese describes the essential conditions for creativity in a wonderful clip, unfortunately no longer available on youTube.  The five factors he talks about are:  place, start time, ending time, confidence and humor.   

For young children, who are naturally creative when given the slightest chance to be,  we’ve reduced the formula to this:

Have fun and help each other.

You can’t have fun if people are bothering you.  Don’t bother anyone. If you can’t help, don’t hurt.

When it’s time to be quiet for a minute or two, be quiet.

Cleese locates the creativity, you need a space to do it.  How about a room filled with art materials and a camera stand to shoot frames? With a recorder to make soundtracks and a computer to assemble the animations.

Cleese discusses the importance of a time set aside, a time with a beginning and an end, ideally about two hours.   He points out that it takes up to a half hour to leave the pressures of life outside and begin to play.  With luck you will play for 90 minutes or so.  Then play must end, as play always does, because it doesn’t feel like play forever. 

This is exactly what happens in the animation workshop.  For ninety minutes the kids have all the time in the world.

The other aspect of time is patience, taking your time, having a block of time you can use for play and dreaming up ideas.  You cannot be very creative while watching the clock, just like you can’t productively meditate keeping an eye on time.  You have to let things develop in their time, comfortable with not much happening sometimes.  

Asked what she liked best about the workshop, the Idea Girl said “it gives you plenty of time.”    

Confidence is necessary, because if you think you can’t dance, or sing, or draw, or animate, you probably won’t be able to.   What gives a person confidence?  Another one smiling and giving a thumbs up when the idea is presented.   What takes away confidence?  Critical comments, ridicule, skepticism, indifference to your best efforts.

The last part, humor, happens quite naturally in a room where children are playing, relaxed, involved, having fun, trying out the craziest ideas they can think of, not worried about anyone bothering them.

Interview with an artist

Artist:  I was born with special sensitivities that made me passionate about pursuing my talents.  I was born an artist; special, sensitive, talented and passionate.

Me: Guess what– everyone is special, sensitive, talented and passionate about some things.

Artist:  Yes, but an artist makes it his life’s work to express it in a way that makes people feel– and see and hear– differently.  

Me:  Makes them feel what makes you special, sensitive, talented and passionate?  

Artist:  No, wise-ass.  I speak for the universe, show people its magic. 

Me:  The universe speaks for itself.  

Artist:  Yes, but not in a universally understood language like art  

Me: In a universal language like life, it’s the universe, after all.  

Artist: But life does not take on the aspect of art until an artist filters it through their personality and makes it beautiful

Me: Life doesn’t need art to make it beautiful.  Beauty is taken in all the time by people who never gave a fiddler’s fart about art or artists  

Artist: I disagree, people crave art, vision, creative organization of the noisy chaos to let them step back and contemplate the miraculous  

Me:  Some do, sure.  What people really crave is life, and being heard and appreciated.  Art is something sold to them in place of their own innate creative genius, it’s vicariously gratifying even as it removes people further from their own creative abilities.   Art is for the professionals, you dig, that’s what’s sold to us.

Artist:  so why do you draw?  

Me:  Because I love it, because I can’t go for long without drawing, because I have graphomania

Artist:  Don’t you want appreciation?  

Me: Sure, it’s great to be appreciated.  Everyone wants to be appreciated for what they do.

Artist:  So why are you so down on art?  

Me: Because so much of it is bad and artist/non-artist divides the world along arbitrary and destructive lines as creators and consumers of creativity.  It is, in most cases, a lie, and a lie sold at an expensive and damaging price.   Being a professional artist is largely about packaging and selling your idiosyncratic view as a unique and valuable commodity worthy of a high price.  “Art” is politics and marketing as much as anything else.  

Artist:  but my music is about that vision you were referring to, that everyone is an artist. Some people’s art is appreciation of artists.  

Me:  or we can give the glory to the creator of the universe, whether she actually exists or not

Artist:  I dedicate my art to my own sense of God  

Me: I’m sure your sense of God loves you for it  

Artist:  why must you always be so ironic?  

Me:  I’m not always ironic, irony is but one shade on my many-hued palette    

Artist:  Why do you play music?  

Me:  I love music, I love playing, I love hearing the sounds the instruments make, I love being in the middle of music, splashing in its wonderful possibilities  

Artist: so you are a musician  

Me:  Yes, sure.  But there are many musical people out there who don’t play, believe they don’t have the right to make music because they’re not trained, those who measure themselves against, again, professional recording artists like the brilliant Brittney Spears.  I consider all these non-playing musical types musicians too.  

Artist:  OK, I can see we are going to have to agree to disagree about art  

Me:  No argument here.