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12/5/2014 What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works | Brain Pickings
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/06/what-is-creativity/ 1/13
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What Is Creativity? Cultural Iconson What Ideation Is and How ItWorksby Maria Popova
Bradbury, Eames, Angelou, Gladwell, Einstein, Byrne,
Duchamp, Close, Sendak, and more.
Creativity is one of those grab-bag terms, like happiness
and love, that can mean so many things it runs the risk of
meaning nothing at all. And yet some of historys greatest
minds have attempted to capture, explain, describe, itemize,
and dissect the nature of creativity. After similar omnibi of
cultural icons most beautiful and articulate definitions of art,
of science, and of love, here comes one of creativity.
For Ray Bradbury, creativity was the art of muting the rational mind:
The intellect is a great danger to creativity because you
begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead
of staying with your own basic truth who you are, what
you are, what you want to be. Ive had a sign over my
typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads Dont think!
You must never think at the typewriter you must feel.
Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. The
worst thing you do when you think is lie you can make
up reasons that are not true for the things that you did, and
what youre trying to do as a creative person is surprise
yourself find out who you really are, and try not to lie, try
to tell the truth all the time. And the only way to do this is by
being very active and very emotional, and get it out of
yourself making things that you hate and things that you
love, you write about these then, intensely.
Long before he became the artist we know and love, a young Maurice Sendak
full of self-doubt wrote in a letter to his editor, the remarkable Ursula
Nordstrom:
Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to
work.
In writing back, Nordstrom responded with her signature blend of wisdom and
assurance:
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http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/06/what-is-creativity/ 2/13
labors of love
That is the creative artist a penalty of the creative artist
wanting to make order out of chaos.
Portrait by Lisa Congdon for our Reconstructionists project. Click image fordetails.
Bill Moyers is credited with having offered a sort of mirror-image definition
that does away with order and seeks, instead, magical chaos:
Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
For Albert Einstein, its defining characteristic was what he called
combinatory play. In a letter to a French mathematician, included in Einsteins
,GHDVDQG2SLQLRQV (public library), he writes:
The words or the language, as they are written or spoken,
do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.
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The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in
thought are certain signs and more or less clear images
which can be voluntarily reproduced and combined.
There is, of course, a certain connection between those
elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that
the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is
the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-
mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological
viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential
feature in productive thought before there is any
connection with logical construction in words or other kinds
of signs which can be communicated to others.
Portrait by Lisa Congdon for our Reconstructionists project. Click image fordetails.
For Maya Angelou, a modern-day sage of the finest kind, the mystery and
miracle of creativity is in its self-regenerating nature. In the excellent collection
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must-reads
&RQYHUVDWLRQVZLWK0 D\D$QJHORX (public library), which also gave us her
poignant exchange with Bill Moyers, Angelou says:
Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I dont
understand but something Im able to harness and use.
While electricity remains a mystery, I know I can plug into it
and light up a cathedral or a synagogue or an operating
room and use it to help save a life. Or I can use it to
electrocute someone. Like electricity, creativity makes no
judgment. I can use it productively or destructively. The
important thing is to use it. You cant use up creativity. The
more you use it, the more you have.
Tom Bissell, writing in 0 DJLF+RXUV(VVD\VRQ&UHDWRUVDQG&UHDWLRQ, also
celebrates this magical quality of creativity:
To create anything is to believe, if only momentarily, you
are capable of magic. That magic is sometimes
perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes
failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and
sometimes tragic.
But there might be something more precise and less mystical about the creative
process. In 8QFRPPRQ* HQLXV+RZ* UHDW,GHDV$UH%RUQ (public library), the
fantastic collection of interviews with MacArthur genius grantees by Denise
Shekerjian, she recapitulates her findings:
The trick to creativity, if there is a single useful thing to say
about it, is to identify your own peculiar talent and then to
settle down to work with it for a good long time.
Shekerjian interviews the late Stephen Jay Gould, arguably the best science
writer of all time, who describes his own approach to creativity as the art of
making connections, which Shekerjian synthesizes:
Goulds special talent, that rare gift for seeing the
connections between seemingly unrelated things, zinged to
the heart of the matter. Without meaning to, he had zeroed
in on the most popular of the manifold definitions of
creativity: the idea of connecting two unrelated things in an
efficient way. The surprise we experience at such a linkage
brings us up short and causes us to think, Now thats
creative.
This notion, of course, is not new. In his timelessly insightful 1939 treatise $
7HFKQLTXHIRU3URGXFLQJ,GHDV (public library), outlining the five stages of
ideation, James Webb Young asserts:
An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of
old elements [and] the capacity to bring old elements into
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new combinations depends largely on the ability to see
relationships. The habit of mind which leads to a search for
relationships between facts becomes of the highest
importance in the production of ideas.
Three years later, in 1942, Rosamund Harding added another dimension of
stressing the importance of cross-disciplinary combinations in wonderful out-
of-print tome $Q$QDWRP\RI,QVSLUDWLRQ:
Originality depends on new and striking combinations of
ideas. It is obvious therefore that the more a man knows the
greater scope he has for arriving at striking combinations.
And not only the more he knows about his own subject but
the more he knows beyond it of other subjects. It is a fact
that has not yet been sufficiently stressed that those persons
who have risen to eminence in arts, letters or sciences have
frequently possessed considerable knowledge of subjects
outside their own sphere of activity.
Seven decades later, Phil Beadle echoes this concept in his wonderful blueprint
field guide to creativity, DQFLQJ$ERXW$UFKLWHFWXUH$/ LWWOH%RRNRI&UHDWLYLW\
(public library):
It is the ability to spot the potential in the product of
connecting things that dont ordinarily go together that
marks out the person who is truly creative.
Steve Jobs famously articulated this notion and took it a step further,
emphasizing the importance of building a rich personal library of experiences
and ideas to connect:
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative
people how they did something, they feel a little guilty
because they didnt really do it, they just saw something. It
seemed obvious to them after a while. Thats because they
were able to connect experiences theyve had and synthesize
new things. And the reason they were able to do that was
that theyve had more experiences or they have thought
more about their experiences than other people.
Unfortunately, thats too rare a commodity. A lot of people in
our industry havent had very diverse experiences. So they
dont have enough dots to connect, and they end up with
very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the
problem. The broader ones understanding of the human
experience, the better design we will have.
Musician Amanda Palmer puts this even more poetically in her meditation on
dot-connecting and creativity:
We can only connect the dots that we collect, which makes
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everything you write about you. Your connections are
the thread that you weave into the cloth that becomes the
story that only you can tell.
Beloved graphic designer Paula Scher has a different metaphor for the same
concept. In Debbie Millmans +RZWR7KLQN/ LNHD* UHDW* UDSKLF HVLJQHU (UK;
public library), Scher likens creativity to a slot machine:
Theres a certain amount of intuitive thinking that goes into
everything. Its so hard to describe how things happen
intuitively. I can describe it as a computer and a slot
machine. I have a pile of stuff in my brain, a pile of stuff from
all the books Ive read and all the movies Ive seen. Every
piece of artwork Ive ever looked at. Every conversation
thats inspired me, every piece of street art Ive seen along the
way. Anything Ive purchased, rejected, loved, hated. Its all in
there. Its all on one side of the brain.
And on the other side of the brain is a specific brief that
comes from my understanding of the project and says, okay,
this solution is made up of A, B, C, and D. And if you pull the
handle on the slot machine, they sort of run around in a
circle, and what you hope is that those three cherries line up,
and the cash comes out.
But Arthur Koestler, in his seminal 1964 anatomy of creativity, 7KH$FW2I
&UHDWLRQ (public library), argues that besides connection, the creative act
necessitates contrast, or what he termed bisociation:
The pattern underlying [the creative act] is the perceiving of a
situation or idea in two self-consistent but habitually
incompatible frames of references. The event, in which the
two intersect, is made to vibrate simultaneously on two
different wavelengths, as it were. While this unusual situation
lasts, [the event] is not merely linked to one associative
context, but bisociated with two.
I have coined the term bisociation in order to make a
distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single
plane, as it were, and the creative act, which always
operates on more than one plane. The former can be called
single-minded, the latter double-minded, transitory state of
unstable equilibrium where the balance of both emotion and
thought is disturbed.
He differentiated between cognitive habit, or merely associative thought, and
originality, or bisociative ideation, thusly:
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Twenty years later, creative icon and original Mad Man George Lois echoed
Koestler in his influential tome 7KH$UWRI$GYHUWLVLQJ* HRUJH/ RLVRQ0 DVV
&RPPXQLFDWLRQ (public library):
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act,
the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
For Gretchen Rubin, however, habit isnt the enemy of creativity but its engine.
In 0 DQDJH
12/5/2014 What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works | Brain Pickings
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the British postal system, observed, A small daily task, if it
be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency
fosters both productivity and creativity.
[]
Youre much more likely to spot surprising relationships and
to see fresh connections among ideas, if your mind is
constantly humming with issues related to your work. By
contrast, working sporadically makes it hard to keep your
focus. Its easy to become blocked, confused, or distracted,
or to forget what you were aiming to accomplish.
[]
Creativity arises from a constant churn of ideas, and one of
the easiest ways to encourage that fertile froth is to keep
your mind engaged with your project. When you work
regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.
In 1926, English social psychologist and London School of Economics co-
founder Graham Wallas penned The Art of Thought, laying out his theory for
how creativity works. Its gist, preserved in the altogether indispensable 7KH
&UHDWLYLW\4XHVWLRQ (public library), identifies the four stages of the creative
process preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification and their
essential interplay:
In the daily stream of thought these four different stages
constantly overlap each other as we explore different
problems. An economist reading a Blue Book, a physiologist
watching an experiment, or a business man going through
his mornings letters, may at the same time be incubating
on a problem which he proposed to himself a few days ago,
be accumulating knowledge in preparation for a second
problem, and be verifying his conclusions on a third
problem. Even in exploring the same problem, the mind may
be unconsciously incubating on one aspect of it, while it is
consciously employed in preparing for or verifying another
aspect. And it must always be remembered that much very
important thinking, done for instance by a poet exploring his
own memories, or by a man trying to see clearly his
emotional relation to his country or his party, resembles
musical composition in that the stages leading to success
are not very easily fitted into a problem and solution
scheme. Yet, even when success in thought means the
creation of something felt to be beautiful and true rather than
the solution of a prescribed problem, the four stages of
Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and the Verification of
the final result can generally be distinguished from each
other.
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But Malcolm Gladwell, in reflecting on the legacy of legendary economist
Albert O. Hirscham in his review of Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O.
Hirschman, doesnt think the creative process is so deliberate:
Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we
can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has
happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage
upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be
forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our
creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature
of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine,
simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn
out to be.
But David Byrne is skeptical of this romantic notion that creativity is a purely
subconscious muse that dances to its own mystical drum. In +RZ0 XVLF: RUNV
(public library), one of the best music books of 2012, he writes:
I had an extremely slow-dawning insight about creation. That
insight is that context largely determines what is written,
painted, sculpted, sung, or performed. That doesnt sound
like much of an insight, but its actually the opposite of
conventional wisdom, which maintains that creation emerges
out of some interior emotion, from an upwelling of passion
or feeling, and that the creative urge will brook no
accommodation, that it simply must find an outlet to be
heard, read, or seen. The accepted narrative suggests that a
classical composer gets a strange look in his or her eye and
begins furiously scribbling a fully realized composition that
couldnt exist in any other form. Or that the rock-and-roll
singer is driven by desires and demons, and out bursts this
amazing, perfectly shaped song that had to be three minutes
and twelve seconds nothing more, nothing less. This is
the romantic notion of how creative work comes to be, but I
think the path of creation is almost 180 from this model. I
believe that we unconsciously and instinctively make work to
fit preexisting formats.
Of course, passion can still be present. Just because the
form that ones work will take is predetermined and
opportunistic (meaning one makes something because the
opportunity is there), it doesnt mean that creation must be
cold, mechanical, and heartless. Dark and emotional
materials usually find a way in, and the tailoring process
form being tailored to fit a given context is largely
unconscious, instinctive. We usually dont even notice it.
Opportunity and availability are often the mother of invention.
For John Cleese, creativity is neither a conscious plan of attack nor an
unconscious mystery, but a mode of being. In his superb 1991 talk on the five
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/07/25/childrens-books-by-adult-authors-2/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/07/25/childrens-books-by-adult-authors-2/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/04/18/5-must-read-books-on-love/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/04/18/5-must-read-books-on-love/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/03/21/must-read-books-music-emotion-brain/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/03/21/must-read-books-music-emotion-brain/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/02/a-liberal-decalogue-bertrand-russell/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/02/a-liberal-decalogue-bertrand-russell/http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/06/24/130624crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=allhttp://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosopher-Odyssey-Albert-Hirschman/dp/0691155674/?tag=braipick-20https://www.amazon.com/dp/1936365537/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=braipick-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=1936365537&adid=0KMC0NR3864E85MPN9Z3&http://www.worldcat.org/title/how-music-works/oclc/746834427&referer=brief_resultshttp://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/21/best-music-books-2012/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/12/john-cleese-on-creativity-1991/12/5/2014 What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works | Brain Pickings
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factors of creativity, he asserts in his characteristic manner of laconic wisdom:
Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.
In ,QVLGHWKH3DLQWHUV6WXGLR (public library), celebrated artist Chuck Close is
even more exacting in his take on this way of operating, equating creativity
with work ethic:
Inspiration is for amateurs the rest of us just show up
and get to work.
In his short 1957 paper The Creative Act, French surrealist icon Marcel
Duchamp considers the work of creativity a participatory project involving
both creator and spectator:
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the
spectator brings the work in contact with the external world
by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and
thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes
even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and
sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.
Meanwhile, artist Austin Kleon, author of the wonderful Steal Like an Artist,
celebrates the negative space of the creative act in his 1HZVSDSHU%ODFNRXW
masterpiece:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/18/commencement-speeches-2//http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/18/commencement-speeches-2/http://www.curatorscode.org/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/activism/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/advertising/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/animation/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/art/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/books/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/childrens-books/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/collaboration/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/creativity/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/culture/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/data-visualization/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/design/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/diaries/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/documentary/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/education/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/film/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/food/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/happiness/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/history/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/illustration/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/innovation/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/interview/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/knowledge/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/letters/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/literature/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/love/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/music/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/omnibus/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/out-of-print/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/philosophy/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/photography/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/poetry/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/politics/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/psychology/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/remix/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/science/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/social-web/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/soundcloud/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/sustainability/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/technology/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/ted/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/video/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/vintage/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/vintage-childrens-books/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/world/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/writing/http://twittercounter.com/?username=brainpickerhttp://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/12/john-cleese-on-creativity-1991/http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Painters-Studio-Joe-Fig/dp/1568988524/?tag=braipick-20http://www.worldcat.org/title/inside-the-painters-studio/oclc/281098957&referer=brief_resultshttp://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/27/chuck-close-on-creativity/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/23/the-creative-act-marcel-duchamp-1957/http://austinkleon.com/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/08/steal-like-an-artist-austin-kleon-book/http://www.amazon.com/Newspaper-Blackout-Austin-Kleon/dp/0061732974/?tag=braipick-20http://www.amazon.com/Newspaper-Blackout-Austin-Kleon/dp/0061732974/?tag=braipick-2012/5/2014 What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works | Brain Pickings
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/06/what-is-creativity/ 11/13
But perhaps, after all, we should heed Charles Eamess admonition:
Recent years have shown a growing preoccupation with the
circumstances surrounding the creative act and a search for
the ingredients that promote creativity. This preoccupation in
itself suggests that we are in a special kind of trouble and
indeed we are.
Complement with Kierkegaard on creativity and anxiety and French polymath
Henri Poincar on how creativity works, then revisit these five fantastic reads on
fear and the creative process.
RQDWLQJ / RYLQJ
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