What is Creativity?
Once again, I have a case of writer’s block. Last year when I decided to give up my songwriting and drawing goals after a couple months, it was because I wasn’t good at making myself create on cue. Clearly it’s no different for writing, though perhaps a bit easier for me to fake.
So there’s the question of the day: is it okay to fake art? To force it just to keep the creative momentum flowing? I don’t know the answer to that.
Seth Godin said this just today:
You could watch the most non-creative, linear-thinking, do-it-by-the-book cop work to solve a crime and you’d be amazed at how creative her solutions seem to be. Creative for you, because you’ve never been in that territory before, it’s all new, it’s all at the edges. Boring for her, because it’s the same thing she does every time. It’s not creative at all.
This makes me wonder if, in some sense, creativity is simply knowing your environment so well that you can flex and move within your personal limitations and that, for you, it doesn’t seem like creativity. It just looks like it to everyone else because you know your space better than they do.
So is creativity relative? Does it even exist? It seems like more of a product of practice than anything. Someone should write a book about that. Oh wait.
Hmmmm…good questions.
Is it OK to fake art?
Well, I’m not even sure how you would go about doing that? Seems to me that art is original and creative. The rest that get’s made out there are just media. Artists have dry periods and probably create media sometimes to pay the bills. But an artist might have a period of years in-between true art projects.
So is creativity relative? Does it even exist?
Perfecting an art takes practice, but there’s a big difference between me and Eric Clapton on the guitar. I could probably practice all day every day and not reach the same level of art he creates. It’s a bit like a well. Eric Clapton has a deeper well than me to draw from and his water is much more pure. Mine doesn’t make people sick, but it isn’t Clapton water.
Here’s my take. 500 years ago, creativity was less relative. Without the ability to be global or even national with art – the community you were in dictated how good you were. You could be the best artist in a community of 1000 people – but compared to DaVinci, well…they didn’t know of DaVinci. We’ve lost the wealth of local artists/musicians/poets/etc. that we had centuries ago because of the globalization and commercialization of art in any genre. And because of technology, anyone can throw up art or music on YouTube or a blog and be compared to the world. Some is crap and some is art based on global relativity.
So my friend, are you not creating because you’re comparing yourself to the global community and don’t feel you measure up or is it because you have nothing in the creative well to draw from?
My suggestion if your well is empty is to pray for rain. Once the well has some water, draw from it and don’t waste your time doing taste tests from the global wells.
If your well isn’t empty then create and share it with your community. We think you’re great!
simply,
Comment by Tim — January 28, 2009 @ 10:57 amTim