Creativity vs. Productivity(ii)

Freshman year, the only reason for me to declare my major to physics was that my mom majored in it, and I didn't want to feel lesser than her, since she always used it against me. I was bad at all these things that she was good at, math, sciences, physics. I was good at all these things she was bad at, literature, art, politics, history, except they are all "useless", so that doesn't count, according to her. Funny enough, before I was born, she had to quit her job as a physicist at a lab to work as an digital art professor at an art school because of a miscarriage likely caused by chemicals she was exposed to while working in the lab. She knew nothing about art, she still doesn't. But because of all the connections my dad had, he could simply just "put" her in the school as an art teacher with no experience or educational background, just because that was the "safer" occupation for her to have to give birth to me. She despised art, while I loved art.

I was winning writing awards but it couldn't stop her from belittling me. I had no confidence, but it didn't stop me from liking what I liked. The debate of whether we love something because we are good at them, or because we are good at them, we love them, couldn't be more irrelevant to me, i just know I loved what I loved, and I was good at what I loved. Years later, when the subject of art shifts from the button of the priority list, to the top, with all sorts of galleries, exhibitions opening up all over the country, China still finds a hard time having their own artists, which is not that surprising. How could you starve the soil of nutrition then plants a flower and expect it to bloom? My curiosity and creativity were nearly killed, except they weren't, because I protected them.

Forgot who said, every child is a genius, and the job of education is not to ruin them. One of best TED talk ever given, imo, is Sir Ken Robinson's "Do schools kill creativity?", where Mr. Robinson shared a similar opinion. However, as an artist / creative person, the question of how to preserve and develop our creativity is a whole other question.

The central argument is this: everyone is creative. I stand firmly by this view. The book I'm reading, Creativity: A Very Short Introduction by Vlad Glaveanu, starts the book by giving three examples of creativity. First, is when Prometheus creates a man out of clay and stole fire from gods and gave it to humans. For this transgression, he was punished by Zeus, chained to a rock while a vulture eats his liver everyday. Glaveanu sees the fire as a metaphorical creative spark, and the punishment as a price to pay for challenging the natural order. Both are points I agree with. Then, he gives the example of Leonardo da Vinci. As a polymath with expansive knowledge across disciplines of painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, engineering, music, da Vinci was embraced and worshipped due to the emergence of the Renaissance. It's hard to imagine our world producing / harboring another polymath as such in today's landscape which prizes specialization. Lastly, Glaveanu argues that protests such as the #Rezist movement in Romania are considered a demonstration of creativity as well, in the way that they utilized social media and cultural references to have real-world impact. The first two propositions are easier to understand than the last, however it's not hard to see that they all have something in common. Being able to create, that is to make up something out of nothing, which once considered a privilege of the gods, is the most fundamental human trait. I would argue that since the very beginning of human history, being able to use tools, write, draw, already demonstrated our inherent ability and desire to create, and express.

Everyone is creative, it's in our brain, in our body, in our blood, in our most intuitive thoughts and urges and desires. To having something you want to do, to have something you want to express, to have something you want to experiment, to have something you want to mix and match and merge and combine, to decide your day-to-day activities, we are creating life, writing our own stories every instant, every second of our lives. To say, I'm not creative, is to say that I do not know how to breath. It is the most natural, intuitive, instinctive thing to do, even if you haven't put a name to it. We dance, we sing, we cook, we draw, we write, we problem solve, even the most mundane, ordinary things are decisions made by you, thoughts came up in your head, executed by your body, and turned into reality. That's creativity. It doesn't take a book to explain it, and we don't need Oxford Press to tell us. We all know it, by heart.

To me, creativity works in a magical way. I give myself a task, and something starts to form in the back of my head. The process of writing, the actions of executing is the final step of it, the whole creative process starts without me knowing. It could be any external stimulus, a book, a leaf, a smile, my mind and body start to work in its own way. Ideas come up, I jot them down. I revisit what I write, and I have a fresh take, or a further / deeper understanding of the same topic without further research. It's like a train track in the back of my head, it runs on its own. I don't need to manage it, I don't even need to start it, it gets triggered and start working on its own.

Creating is a lot like delivering a baby, I guess that's why the word "conceiving" could mean both things. In David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg compares the two. In the story, an artist naturally grows deformed organs in his body, and every time they are fully formed, his assistant host a party, and performs a surgery in front of their guests to cut out that deformed piece, which is his "art". It is a lot like how real art is created, or at least how I create. Without knowing, ideas / thoughts / plans form inside of me, and when time is right, I take it out. I can't rush it, neither can I "put in the work" to make it mature faster. However, just like conceiving a baby, conceiving art also requires proper nutrients and resting. You gotta read, learn, experiment, engage. You gotta sleep, take naps, take solo walks. You gotta talk to people, ask questions, and let them ask you too. You can't rush it, but you also can't let it overgrow. You need to care for your creative wants and needs, and when time is right, just like a baby, pop it out.

I'm a firm believer of the motto "first idea, best idea". You simply have to follow your intuition. Same as "first idea, best idea", there's also "first urge, best urge" in creating. The most important idea, the one that's the most worth exploring, is the one that you keep going back to, the topic that keeps coming up to your mind, the one you are most curious about, most difficult to give up and let go, that's the idea that's worth creating, and made concrete.

You can start small, and build up on it, the process of which follows the above principal as well. Whatever decisions you want to make, creative decisions should always follow your intuition, not your rational half. It's a process of exploring inner self, your understanding and projections, not through your brain, through your heart. Your heart always knows the answer, execute what your heart tells you, tweak it to approximate it to your imagination.

Having ideas are hard, executions are even harder. I don't believe a person can truly steal another person's idea, since a finished work is not made of one decision, but thousands and hundreds of decisions. You work is the sum of all the decisions. The art is you, you are your art. Just like you can't have two people to be exactly the same, even if they are identical twins, there will always be differences, imperfections, and those little details, personalities, are what makes you you.