Creativity, How To

[Xisca]

Juxtaposition can be what I feel about it.... it is not a comparison, and it does not seem to go out of my mind but "soul" or heart. it comes to me, and I do not go to it. It just hits me.
"distant and true" rings a bell as well in what you say...
I have not read that much, so what I usually says is from myself, from personal experience. That's fun if Breton talked about something similar!

One example can be when I read about something scientific, and it juxtapose with traditional technique or believe, plus what I know about animal behavior. When 3 sources says the same, I just see it.

Sometimes I stay months and years with a surprise about soemthing I have learned, and one day I learn something that makes a flash, and the old question shows and it all fits!

 

[Xisca]

Let's see…. Experience is about what you, and may be others, have done, it is about doing, it is about repeating (pun now seen but not intended!), it can also be about some skill, practise and knowledge.

I cross a lot of things through somatic experiencing, and spirituality subjects, and science that is for me hard to read.... I feel secure about what I say just because several sources cross, juxtapose!

What is imagination? I modify the question at once, what is it for? When I practise somatic experiencing, imagination is a major tool when the person has been blocked, could not do anything during let's say an accident. The question could sound like "If you could have done something, what would you have done?" Even though it was physically impossible, the person wanted to do something, and you can imagine whatever you want, imagination can. The body has been frozen in a "too-much" situation, the cold is still there as helplessness, but imagination can do something, and it unblocks. The accident is over for long, it can be done only in imagination, or else it will show up as a pattern in life or health.

Now what Ray says in the same text about Blake?

"Whenever rigidity is a problem, looking for ways to create new patterns that by-pass the petrified pattern can lead to a solution." You do this with imagination. When you create, you might be trying to unfreeze some old wound? You want to create, you do not know what because you look for what you want to melt?

 

[bodacious]

You seem to be over-thinking this. Which could be a sign of low brain energy, or low dopamine. It causes the analytical state. Caffeine immediately helps creativity and brain energy.

Can you reference this point? I'm very interested in this.

 

[conhnore]

Wittgenstein (a philosopher) built a house when he was in his 30s. I think this quote brings out something about Wittgenstein's own creativity (and what a case study in creativity, in case you're familiar with him! What a mind!):

"Within all great art there is a WILD animal: tamed...All great art has man's primitive drives as its groundbase...

In this sense: the house I built...is the product of a decidedly sensitive ear and good manners, an expression of great understanding (of a culture, etc.). But primordial life, wild life striving to erupt into the open-- that is lacking. And so you could say it isn't healthy..."

In connection with this quote, and speaking from personal experience: I'm a halfway talented saxophonist (I could go pro)-- but I find that my musical creativity in, say, daily practice, does not flow freely; instead, I can only try to play with understanding and discipline. Indeed, I can't improvise freely or with the intensity of a Coltrane or a Parker. I instead transcribe their solos and do my best to play with "a decidedly sensitive ear".

(Miles Davis once asked Coltrane, who often solo'd overlong, to just stop; Coltrane replied that he simply couldn't stop.)

Don't expect yourself to possess genius, and don't expect a free flow, no matter your talent in a creative discipline. It will come or it will not. In Wittgenstein's case, it came with philosophizing. Whether you need to work slow is another story. (It is my story.)

 

[Xisca]

Thanks @bodacious for noting this!

You seem to be over-thinking this. Which could be a sign of low brain energy, or low dopamine. It causes the analytical state. Caffeine immediately helps creativity and brain energy.

Overthinking can be a way to escape what the body feels. It is safer to stay in the brain sometimes! I do not know if this is low dopamine, and I would love to know more about the role of dopamine....

Caffeine stimulates and make us come back to the body, which is the best route to creativity.
No way to be creative by staying only in the brain....

 

[Xisca]

@conhnore ...I am also the architect of my place, and the job is very difficult and challenging, and the workers can be bad and abusing, but in the end, appart from all the stress that ruins me a lot, I have to find ideas to overcome all their repeated mistakes, and the difficulty invites my creativity…. I have been overwhelmed several times, and of course it stopped the creativity! But what is done is there. I have heard too many times that "Oh, how nice it will be when it will be finished"!

I had almost forgotten how what was already done was great!

And this week I got a reward that is helping me to rebuild my creativity… Some one told me that she could feel the love when she first entered. I was not yet there and she was waiting me to arrive, and I told her by phone that she could profit that it was not closed and step in. She stayed there feeling it… How could she feel love in this? I really asked myself! Love has many synonyms at the energetical level, past the emotion that we usually attach to this word, it is also stength, force, peace, and mainly it is JOY, it is life chiming in, it is the creativity to adapt and stay straight and alive through the difficulty.

Any natural feature or twisted tree will show you all what it went through to be there…they are pieces of art, each of them! All is beautiful in nature because of the life in its permanent creation to exist. Somehow my home is like this, it really has a design that took me ages of observation and adaptation… One day it was a cat crossing a path that was a path only to a cat's foot that showed me the line I could follow. I was just at the right place at the right moment… My place is art, it comes from the obligation to face challenges and find solutions. If some people can see it, then they can see what is art about, life showing like a thigh through rags.

 

[Parsifal]

Is someone familiar with the psychological state of flow? It was theorized by a russian guy by the way. I think that everytime I was satisfied about my creativity, I was in this state of mind. Flow (psychology) - Wikipedia

 

[GAF]

Add something silly or ridiculous to everything you do or say all day long. for example add a hop to your walk. add an off the wall comment to every convesation. sing and shake your booty at random. flail your arms and make faces for no reason. swear off seriousness...

 

[pimpnamedraypeat]

more dopamine less cortisol. I take L tyrosine the dopamine precursor and it helps a lot with artwork.

 

[Fractality]

This is a topic I have a personal interest in. About 4 years ago, I had a spontaneous creative artistic outburst. I thought I had stumbled upon a hidden talent. Unfortunately, it didn't last. This experience has left me with questions like "where did this creativity come from?" and "why did it disappear?" It seemed to be precipitated by using cannabis while home alone. However, I did not have to use cannabis for the art to come forth.

I doubt my metabolism was as optimal back then as it is now. However, I did have more time/less stress to contend with back then compared to now. I think what people wrote above is true; sustained creativity requires discipline, focus and commitment. The environment has to be optimum as well in order to sustain creativity. This is why I have a lot of respect and envy for those who can sustain creativity and even make a living out of it.

 

[barefooter]

I think you’re looking at things in the wrong direction, and trying to be creative is not going to work well, but trying to plant the seeds of creativity will be very fruitful. That is to say the instance of creative insight is extremely hard or impossible to understand, but we know a lot about how to set the stage for it to happen. I would say don’t focus on creativity, focus on mastery. For example, if you want to be creative in the kitchen again, master the techniques, recipes, ingredients, etc. of cooking. Push yourself to follow new recipes that force you to learn new skills and use new ingredients. The skill should lead to increased passion and playfulness in the kitchen, and the result will likely be that you begin coming up with your own recipe ideas over time naturally. So yes, in a way creativity is kind of a natural process, but you still have to put in tons of hard work.

Above was kinda the TLDR of what follows, and below I’ll try to outline in more general terms the way I see creativity.

Find some inspiration
I would say all creative acts are derivative, and I believe this is a very important thing to keep in mind first because it gives many clues into how the creative process works. There is no such thing as an original idea or original creation, even the first cave painting was inspired by nature, and all art/creation since then has been a derivative synthesis of what came before. A solid grasp of what’s come before in a domain you are trying to create in (i.e.: derive from) gives you part of the fuel needed to get your creative process going. You really need to expose yourself to lots of new ideas as to not get stuck in mental ruts, and especially across domains can be useful. We see some of the most brilliant creative thinkers are very cross disciplinary in their studies (i.e.: Ray Peat), which allows them to have insights others are blind to.

It’s good to surround yourself with things that inspire you, so you can see them on a daily basis. As an example, I have a cork board I keep in my bedroom that I pin things up on for daily inspiration. This isn’t some hokey vision board, but simply a practical way to keep my mind routinely focused on things that interest me. So to the extent that you can do so in a style that pleases you, I’d say try to fill your house with various things that inspire you and keep you focused on areas you’re trying to be creative in.

Work towards mastery
You need to really sink yourself into learning about things in a very deep way if you want to have very strong creative insights. This is the part that is going to take tremendous amounts of discipline and hard work. And if you don’t have a strong goal/vision of where you’re trying to go it’s highly unlikely you’re going to stick with things long enough. So write down your goals and vision of what you want to do, and hold yourself accountable to making progress towards that. If your vision is of being creative in the kitchen, you can have concrete goals of using one new ingredient a week and following one new recipe a week, for example. By the end of the year you would have learned about 52 new ingredients that you’ve never cooked with before and 52 new recipes, which is going to give you tremendous fuel for creative work. People could go 10 years without adding that much to their cooking repertoire, so you can now begin to see how a little vision and smart planning and a bit of extra hard work can give you heaps of creative potential that you and others are missing out on.

As you become more and more skilled at something, you build up a much larger and more detailed mental map of the domain. Now this is very important to downstream creative thoughts, because (and I’m kinda speculating), well it seems basically essential for them to happen. To make something new you need to manipulate some existing materials into a new configuration. So to make a new creative insight in your head, you need to do a similar process, but it’s just all in your head. You need to manipulate that mental map of the domain (the existing materials) to create something new. So the stronger and more detailed the mental map, the more ability you have to visualize and manipulate it in your mind and this is the origin or creative insights.

Let passion follow
It seems in this day and age with increased freedom to choose careers, everyone is always trying to “find their passions”. The problem is, their passion was never lost in the first place, so there is simply nothing to find. I read an article a while back that gave me an alternative view point that really stuck with me and I think is very accurate. That is that passion tends to follow skill and mastery, rather than the other way around. As you get better at something, you often (of course not always) naturally develop a passion for it. And I think things that we are immediately passionate about are things that we pick up very quickly. Why is this? I think because being skilled at something makes you feel awesome, confident, and happy, and we obviously strongly desire feeling this, so passion brings us back to performing a skill that we are good at to get these feel good vibes. This all makes the idea of finding a passion kinda silly, as you really need to develop a passion.

Let loose the Creativity
So lets call what we’ve discussed up to this point increasing creative potential. It’s like the potential energy from the water stored behind a dam. If the water just stays there, no energy is produced, but if it’s allowed to flow free the energy can be harvested with turbines. Your brain if full of ideas, just like the water behind a dam, and you need to let them flow free, mix and jumble together, and then harvest the bountiful creative energy that flows out. The steps to create this creative potential are actually pretty logical, but in trying to let it free I think things get a lot more fuzzy and it gets more wrapped up with emotions, stress, and what not. Firstly, stress is probably going to be one of the biggest things damming things up. If you’re stressed you’ll tend towards more rigid thinking, it’s a survival mechanism to keep you safe, and not a good place to be creative. I’m drinking a beer while I write this, and the words are flowing much more easily. I’m not saying alcohol is the answer, just illustrating a point that you really need to work on reducing stress during times you want to be creative.

Being playful was discussed earlier, and I think that is also really an important aspect to letting the creative potential free. Definitely not being stressed helps here, but also just cultivating a playful attitude about life and exploring things in general can help. Maybe music helps put you in a more playful mood, or spending time in nature, watching silly cat videos, etc. you’ll just have to try and figure out what works best for you.

So then the question is, what separate someone who can simply replicate impressive works of the past from someone who creates new works. You could argue that the former is merely a technician, while the later is using true creative force to make new things. I think this part is a bit magical, and kinda unknowable with our current level of scientific knowledge, and who knows maybe it’s just not something we can ever know. But, once you’ve set the stage as described before, I think you just become so consumed with what you’re thinking about (be it music, painting, cooking, whatever), your brain just starts mixing various things together that you already know, and then bam you have a unique idea, a creative thought. But, as said before it’s not truly unique as in being created in a vacuum, it’s derivative. You took in lessons from the past, honed the techniques, replicated others, mixed it all up with your emotions, life experience, knowledge and skill in other domains, and what pops out the other side is something new, fresh, and so exciting to the mind that the entire process could be potentially addictive.

And I won’t speculate much on this, but I think this resulting obsession, passion, and maybe even addiction are probably key in people who are super creative or even genius level thinkers. Also, keep in mind that life is creative, always. This year you’ve probably solved many problems in a creative manner on the fly. So naturally that you barely even thought about it. It’s not something you can hang on the wall, but living in itself can be seen as a work of art, and solving little daily problems is still a first class creative act.

 

[Xisca]

And I won’t speculate much on this, but I think this resulting obsession, passion, and maybe even addiction are probably key in people who are super creative or even genius level thinkers.

Yes!
When I read about flow, thanks Parsifal by the way....
what came to my mind even before Reading all the text was "But this stuff is going to be addictive"!
And this russian with an unreadable name said it himself....
Addiction is NOT a problem, what you are addicted to might be....

Addiction is the way nature has provided us with a want to repeat what is good!
This is called also positive reinforcement, but positive means + that is to say an addition, nothing to do with "good"... a pity that this mistake is done.

What does not need addiction is negative reinforcement, which means to reinforce by SOUSTRACTION , the sign - and it does not ean "bad"!
You are reinforced by the result you gain, which is to REMOVE something that is not pleasant.

If you put your jacket because you are cold, this is negative reinforcement already!
So, it is very easy to react when you want to avoid something unpleasant.

I did experience flow while doing drawing.... and I could not stop even for eating!
It was just rewarding to see colours come out, and the form take place. I just had to go on and finish. With no reward, without positive reinforcement, you cannot go on.

But you can always go on managing your life, because negative reinforcement stays there to save you from sinking or having more problems.

 

[barefooter]

Yes!
When I read about flow, thanks Parsifal by the way....
what came to my mind even before Reading all the text was "But this stuff is going to be addictive"!
And this russian with an unreadable name said it himself....
Addiction is NOT a problem, what you are addicted to might be....

Addiction is the way nature has provided us with a want to repeat what is good!
This is called also positive reinforcement, but positive means + that is to say an addition, nothing to do with "good"... a pity that this mistake is done.

Are you referring to the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? I think I meant to read that book years ago and forgot about it, and I should probably get around to it because I'm big time into flow. I like this idea that addiction is not the problem, it's what you're addicted to that is, and I agree that addiction is integral in nature. I think balance is still really key, because even things that are good for you can have a negative impact on your life if you become too addicted and neglect other areas of life.

What does not need addiction is negative reinforcement, which means to reinforce by SOUSTRACTION , the sign - and it does not ean "bad"!
You are reinforced by the result you gain, which is to REMOVE something that is not pleasant.

If you put your jacket because you are cold, this is negative reinforcement already!
So, it is very easy to react when you want to avoid something unpleasant.

What do you mean by SOUSTRACTION, I'm not familiar with it?

I did experience flow while doing drawing.... and I could not stop even for eating!
It was just rewarding to see colours come out, and the form take place. I just had to go on and finish. With no reward, without positive reinforcement, you cannot go on.

But you can always go on managing your life, because negative reinforcement stays there to save you from sinking or having more problems.

I know what you're talking about not wanting to stop even for eating. This gets back to the balance I was talking about before, and when I start getting really obsessed with something I have to be mindful to take breaks to take care of my basic needs.

 

[Integra]

While creativity is conceived as boundless and endless, I reckon sometimes we all need a little push. I've been around writers and other creatives for quite some time and I picked up some tricks they use when they need to prompt themselves to write, but I think these can also be used for any kind of activity you want to make more creative. These are actually things kids like to do spontaneously, when they tell themselves they can't step on a line on the pavement, or count off numbers as cues, and so on...

Impose a limit - Sometimes the best answer to how to begin is to give yourself one rule that you need to work with. This can be a word limit (writing), only one color (painting), pronouncing words backwards (singing), beginning each sentence with a wh- word (who, what, who...) when talking to people (interpersonal games), etc. Setting a limit like this can cause some people stress, but if a limit is self-imposed I think it can really gamify whatever you're doing, be it creative or not. Here's such an example from writing:

Introduce yourself with only monosyllabic words.
I am a fan of Ray Peat who likes to think of new age things and eat sweets.

Would you look at that, not only does it rhyme but it's a bit funny. Yay! Can you make some things more fun for you this way?

Play pretend - This is a bit difficult to apply, and it may not suit all people, but sometimes starting an activity imagining you were someone else can color what you're doing much differently than your usual mode of being.

For example, sometimes I spontaneously assume a character from a show or a video game I just watched or played and really liked, (e.g. Lara Croft, the Witcher, the Joker, Aragorn from LOTR, you name it--I probably played it around the house!) If you're also a member of this club, you can utilize this quirk for a particular purpose and pretend to be some character that has certain qualities you need to be able to do something. Lara's good for exercise, the Witcher when I wanna get into this kind of smug relaxation about what's going on in the world, Aragorn when I wanna feel good about myself for performing some duty (usually boring things like chores, etc.), and the Joker when I want more spontaneity and assertiveness. But be warned: if there's people around you and you don't give them a heads up, things can get awkward.

Imitate - I use this one when I'm really stuck and I can't get anything creative going. What I do then is I simply take a piece of art or any example of something I admire and mercilessly and mechanically copy it. Sometimes I can copy it perfectly, sometimes what I do is a sad, sloppy version of the original, but it doesn't matter. If you get into it, you sort of 'merge' with the first author and sometimes their creativity, or the atmosphere/feeling they create, comes much more easily to you. Plus, this way you don't have to worry about being creative--start by imitating before you paint that chapel!

(If I think of something else, I might add to this post later.)

 

[barefooter]

The problem ofcourse is that play isnt that obvious in art, simply because discipline and skill are needed. This question burdened me writing my dissertation and I did found a somewhat reasonable explanation. I would say that, yes, you do need to learn skills and be disciplined to be more "creative".

I agree with you, but I'd add a bit more nuance and say that creativity and skill/mastery are separate yet intertwined concepts. Take a child for example, they are overflowing with creativity, yet they lack skills to turn that creativity into something useful or beautiful. However, their creativity comes naturally without discipline since they are unburdened by stress (hopefully anyway), healthy, and have little responsibility, allowing their minds and bodies to play and experiment. As we age we accumulate stress and responsibility, our health declines, we become less playful, and as a result most of us become less creative even though we are now more skilled and doing things of value to society. So the real trick, which is where discipline and planning come in, is how to learn skills and master things while still retaining that child like playfulness that allows our creativity to be unrestrained.

As a bit of a side note, while experimenting with drugs I've returned briefly during trips to this child like creative state and it's an interesting thing to observe. The first time I tried LSD I remember sitting around and drawing with colored pencils for quite a while. It felt like there was absolutely nothing restraining my creativity, and art was just pouring out of me. At the time it all felt amazing, which made my body assume I was creating something of value. I woke up the next day to find pages of child like drawings, of course my creativity had been unleashed to a child like state, but my skills were also still that as a child as I never practiced drawing after grade school! .

And this week I got a reward that is helping me to rebuild my creativity… Some one told me that she could feel the love when she first entered. I was not yet there and she was waiting me to arrive, and I told her by phone that she could profit that it was not closed and step in. She stayed there feeling it… How could she feel love in this?

I'm really glad to hear this, and I completely know what you are talking about someone feeling the love in your attentively designed living space. My ex-girlfriend, while a bit coo coo, was insanely talented at organizing and designing her home. I think I actually fell in love with her the first time I stepped foot in her house, because it was just overflowing with all the years of love and attention she had put into it, and it was a direct reflection of who she was.

 

[Integra]

I don't know where to start. And if I get an idea then I often don't feel motivated enough to follow through. It just seems so much easier to consume. Does it mean I didn't find something I'm really passionate about yet? Or does it simply mean that creativity requires effort? What is your experience? Do you need to make an effort to be creative?

This makes me want to share a story: once, motivated by the exact sentiment you describe, I took an improv class. (For me, that was miles beyond my comfort zone, ok?) So in this improv class, there were so many people that were really good. Some were so funny I laughed myself to tears. I was in awe, but that made me compare myself to them. So then I choked and asked to step out of the group into the audience, so that I could observe (and after the class, I rented out a book about how to do improv--the irony doesn't escape me). But the teacher said no--he said that the point of improv was to flow with the situation. I think, looking back now, my problem was that:

1. I worried about how to do something right
2. I worried about what others would think
(3. I worried I would hurt or offend someone if I just allowed myself to let it all out)
(4. I worried that I would snap and break down if I became spontaneous)

Since then, I dealt with issues 1 and 2 by writing them out and managed to argue myself out of thinking those things. But I discovered points 3 and 4 only later and they are much more difficult to deal with, I think. Going through those took me several attempts at artistic vomiting. What I mean by this is that I focused on something really dark or bad or I disliked and expressedmy your feelings about it in an artistic way--no censorship. The art wasn't always ugly or bad, but it's definitely not something I'd see as my gift to the world. Yet somehow processing these things first allowed me to do more art for art's sake, rather than to 'make a point', or 'show them (who's them?) I got this', or 'be more _______ or ________'.

 

[BigYellowLemon]

Stop forcing yourself, halt the internal angst. Your natural creativity will shine through.

 

[Regina]

I don't agree with this, one can always imagine the misunderstood artist who has spikes of creativity in the middle of the night and ponder the value of life while drinking alcohol during the day, but for the most part it is a discipline kind of thing. Also do you want to be creative to stroke your ego or do you actually enjoy the process of creating as opposed to the results?
"The artist's way" (interesting book to work on your question, more like a course) gives some interesting ideas, like writing down three pages each morning when you wake up, write whatever crosses your mind without judging.

Wagner83,
I agree that discipline is a powerful, form-building device of creativity. It's through the limitations (provisional, even arbitrary, reference points) where our creativity can shine. Bach 2-part inventions or perhaps, Ikebana (japanese flower arranging) or even a bathroom re-design. How do you tell the story with these limited elements and the intervals between them?

 

[barefooter]

But the teacher said no--he said that the point of improv was to flow with the situation. I think, looking back now, my problem was that:

1. I worried about how to do something right
2. I worried about what others would think
(3. I worried I would hurt or offend someone if I just allowed myself to let it all out)
(4. I worried that I would snap and break down if I became spontaneous)

Since then, I dealt with issues 1 and 2 by writing them out and managed to argue myself out of thinking those things. But I discovered points 3 and 4 only later and they are much more difficult to deal with, I think. Going through those took me several attempts at artistic vomiting. What I mean by this is that I focused on something really dark or bad or I disliked and expressedmy your feelings about it in an artistic way--no censorship. The art wasn't always ugly or bad, but it's definitely not something I'd see as my gift to the world. Yet somehow processing these things first allowed me to do more art for art's sake, rather than to 'make a point', or 'show them (who's them?) I got this', or 'be more

Some thoughts on your improv class example. I'm not entirely sure of the details of what your teacher was trying to convey in saying it's about flow, but it reminds me of advice I've been given in similar scenarios, and to me it actually seemed a bit misguided. In my mind, it's advice for people who are already skilled an improv, or whatever, that they just need to get into the flow and not think, and it will come natural. But, if you're just learning improv it would seem that you can't just flow, because what would flow probably would be not very good. It's like my example of drawing while on LSD, I was sure in the flow, but I was making ***t art. I think you have to first learn the skills in a safe and supportive environment where you can experiment a lot, and then "perform" those skills in a flow state.

It's basically the advice everyone ever gave me about dancing, because I absolutely hated/was terrified of dancing until just a couple years ago. People would just say let loose and it will come naturally, but it never worked. There were skills I needed to learn so I could feel comfortable on a dance floor, and others just naturally had these skills, so their only advice was to just flow. I needed a safe environment to practice and learn the most fundamental things, like following a simple beat with simple body movements. I eventually did learn to really LISTEN to music and follow a beat in a safe environment, and now dancing is one of my favorite things to do.

 

[Wagner83]

Wagner83,
I agree that discipline is a powerful, form-building device of creativity. It's through the limitations (provisional, even arbitrary, reference points) where our creativity can shine. Bach 2-part inventions or perhaps, Ikebana (japanese flower arranging) or even a bathroom re-design. How do you tell the story with these limited elements and the intervals between them?

Yes part of the discipline of creativity is to make up your own rule, create your own frame of work because otherwise being a headless chicken overwhelmed with too much freedom means we (at least I) don't do anything. :)
Good job on mentioning Bach, he is one the gods of discipline and creativity, led by example throughout all of his life despite working like a mad man.