Type “creativity” into your Google search engine and see what turns up. My search turned up 68,800,000 results. Seriously. Knowing very well the danger of getting lost incyberspace, I decided it might be worth a little jaunt into the unknown… and I learned some interesting things!
According to Wikipedia, conversational definitions of creativity are “typically descriptive of activity that results in…
~producing or bringing about something partly or wholly new
~investing an existing object with new properties or characteristics
~imagining new possibilities that were not conceived of before
~seeing or performing something in a manner different from what was thought possible or normal previously.”
There is also a distinction made between creativity and innovation. Creativity is “the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions.” Innovation is “the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context.”
If this is true, then perhaps the artist’s tempation is to seek creativity as a “nirvana” of sorts – some state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world. I once heard an artist say that he wasn’t able to produce anything truly creative because he was far too distracted by the busyness of work and family. Could it be that the expressive creativity (innovation) we seek is only found in the middle of everyday life with all its joy and delights as well as its pains and worries? In my Google search, there was a site full of “creative quotes.” Upon entering said web site, I found this quote from Buckminster Fuller:
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
So there is beauty in ordinary things. It’s just that sometimes, like the caterpillar, we have to spend some time in the cocoon. It’s dark. It’s cramped. But it’s worth it!
Link to this page
I love it!!!