Creativity: Fountain of Ideas…Temple of Awe
Left-brain exercises, with vise-like squeezes of words and ideas, struggle to cage a crafty an elusive creativity.
But the tools designed to capture creativity; i.e., words and language, prove to be elastic bars of putty and smoke. Creativity remains aloof and a large, dancing inside, dancing outside, dancing around and through the nets that language sets to trap and capture it.
But why constrain and constrict and mold what's fresh and free? Compartmentalizing creativity, dissecting its processes…as though it was an object, turns its active and dynamic energy into stagnant short circuits, converts exciting into boring, transforms alive and growing into frozen and dried out.
An animal, alive and pacing is creative…a taxidermy (mummy of its former self) is the equivalent of creativity defined and analyzed.
Creativity is like a barnstorming--bi-wing airplane…shuddering, dangling, spinning and thrilling. Definitions of creativity are like commercial airlines with flight paths, schedules, control towers and taxi lanes.
Of course, no one wants the jumbo jet's landing gears to be tickling trees on the airport approach. Sparking run-ins with fighter-interceptor Top-Guns over military air space is equally to be avoided. So, avoid danger. But, freezing and capturing creativity by taking the over-safe route, by avoiding heart-pounding, white-knuckle, out-of-breath exhilaration is the boring path.
On the other hand, simile and metaphor fail to save lives when simple commands such as, "Stop! Turn Right, Duck!" are called for. Times of real danger call for stock phrases, drilled routines and canned responses.
Real Experience
Creativity bubbles up from a primal, intuitive, organic spring within our conscious (and unconscious) experiences.
Creativity is like a well. You can tap into it, prime a pump (incubate ideas and solutions) and dip out refreshment. You can also stop it up, poison it, pressurize it, and let it go to waste after you have drained it.
And just as a spring or underground river forms from a myriad of cracks, fissures, pools and reservoirs, sinkholes and cisterns; creativity wells up from myriad constellations of impulses, images, memories and intuitions within human consciousness.
And just as different methods find water…dowsers, test wells, study of hydrology land forms, blind luck…so too many methods turn the creativity spigot to the flow-position.
How each teacher stakes claim to the wellspring of creativity that lies within; how creativity surges with a desire to spout fountains, geysers or hydrants of creative expression; this is our unique stamp…our creative expression.
How each person stakes claim to the wellspring of creativity that is within represents access, but not source.
The articles in subsequent issues of the Classroom Toolkit Newsletter will examine these creative abilities…from many angles, from views with multiple perspectives…discoveries sounded as shouts, echoes, whispers, or thunder crashes.
Prepare for stories, sagas odysseys, explorations and sojourns into the unlimited abilities of psychic and creative consciousness.
Your journey to creative expression begins within. So, let's begin, now.
