On creativity

 The following excerpt, focus on "coculus" thoughts on creativity.

This post is a comment from a Norwegian man, who has suffered from severe depressions through life. He is also intellectually gifted, but describes it in no such terms himself. For him, depression has been the flip coin of his gift, and I think is important to realize that no matter what abilities or resources we have, mental illness can still have a devastating effect on us all.

cuculus canorus Creative people are like me.. This is not said lightly; it is an insight that hurts a great deal. In a way, I see the world not as it is, but as it can or should be. And I have for 30 years thought that everybody did this. Discovering that this is not so; have left me floating on a thin ice-sheet far out in an exsistential, deeply depressed sea with no land in sight. Anyway. There are massive problems with the words used to describe creative people, and creativity: the connotations, the percieved social and cultural acceptability for “being a little off”. “Creative” in the worst sense of the word conjures up images of slightly loopy ladies with flowing, purple togas and buckets of paint in primary colours. Or worse still: the image of my primary school “drawing teachers”. I shudder to think: how my creativity survived the lashings of those ignorant dimwits. It boggles the mind. It was a brutal fight, I can tell you that much. To splash a little colour around is not not creative in itself. The way I see it, and much research agrees, is that creativity is essentialy to take two seemingly unconnected things and combine it in new ways. Very very often nothing happens. But sometimes there is a little magic insight … An article in the Time magazine called The hidden secrets of the creative mind points out that creativity is a numbers game. Creative people fail more. Because they try more (Therefore, creative people can easily feel like failures. Massive egos are not the norm). I wish to stress that creativity is something equally needed in art, litterature and – and this is extremely important: science. This seems to be left out quite often, unfortunately. In science and arts you will find many of the same abilities. Or, if you like, similar eccentrics. I think Einstein said something like “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”. At the risk of overstepping my role as commentator, I will here bring a buch of quotes by various artists, architects, scientists and other nosey, curious creators. creativity: 1+1=3 Creativity is: Any mental occurence simultaneously associated with two habitually incompatible contexts. Arthur Koestler That moment of insight becomes the creative act as a joining of two previously incompatible ideas. Lyall Watson The association of two, or more, apparently alien elements on a plane alien to both is the most potent ignition of poetry. Comte de Lautrémont Perceiving analogies and other relations between aparently incongruous ideas or forming unexpected, striking or ludicrous combinations of them. Rem Koolhaas Invention or discovery takes place by combining ideas. Jacques Hadamard The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony. Heraclitus   The how of creativity is in most respects a complete mystery, but someone worded it thus: how such connections spring to mind are guesswork but they seem to favour those who have a promiscuous curiosity and chronic attraction to problems. Yeah. Promiscuous curiosity and chronic attraction to problems. That is me.