The Keys to Creativity

Today I was blessed to get some peace and quiet. It was surprising to me what a difference having some quiet time - actual quiet time- made in creativity. It inspired me, frankly, to was polemic on the subject.

I haven't posted anything substantial in a while, and my environment is why. Creativity needs several things to grow. Luckily these things can be cultivated and fostered. The most creative have adroitly done so. Creativity is a skill, then, and not a talent. Everybody is a "Creative", some people have simply spent longer learning the skill

So here's the 3 things necessary for a creative mind. 

1) Environment
This may seem obvious, but it's easy to forget. Creatives need a place to work without distraction.

 My friend DuWayne hasn't updated his blog in quite a while. "I have no topics" he confesses. He ios trying to write a song and record it, but the song was slow in coming. He has plenty of topics, and he found a solution to the puzzle of his song.  That solution came when he was able to remove distractions. Likewise, he has topics buried inside, but anytime he has a moment to think, he's being tasked with some duty from the outside world.

I found similarly. Whenever I am trying to work, I find my environment not conducive to it at all. Beggars can't be choosers, my friends, but I have to admit that my housemates cannot do anything at a low volume. Between the low frequency mumbling, rattling, and stomping of one, and the loud helter-skelter of the television watched by the other,  it's difficult. 
I imagine every Creative needs a place free of the chaos of the world.  A study or studio that they can work in.

Perhaps I am just projecting.
The environment need not be empty. My thought room would be very sparse - chair and desk and perhaps a picture. However,  a professor of mine has books stacked upon books, and a my dad's study is a maze of shelves, desks, and tight spaces.  The idea here is the environment must not distract the Creative.


2) Peace
This sort of dovetails nicely with the first. A creative environment starts with peace - but it is different. Peace is basically a private space without distraction plus time.

About 6 years (almost exactly - January 2008), I worked at The Franz Group and had nothing to do for a week. We had no sales calls to make (and I was not a hustler). So I listened to self help tapes and read.
One of the Gurus - I can't remember which one, mentioned that in order to work properly he needed to rest for 30 minutes. He would mediate - he called it sitting in a chair, but it was meditation.  He would sit in his chair and let his mind wander.

Many Creatives take walks with alarming regularity. Kant walked with so regularity that they named his path "The Philosophers Walk".  Kyoto also has a Philosopher Walk. Many artists walked.

Just as you have your best ideas in the shower, flow comes when you are able to relax. Ideas will flow easily when your mind is at peace.

Peace is Environment + Time. And Solitude is Peace + Environment.

3) Play

This one is often forgotten by most Adults.  Kids seem to get this. It's the only thing that I will give kids. Otherwise they need to get off my lawn.

Creatives need to understand affordance. Creativity is blessing. We see a book, or we see an artist, or we see a dancer and we say they are creative. The truth is, the written page is a technique. The brush stroke is a technique. the step a technique. A skill. Most people may grudging accept this while saying "I can't do it." What they think they can't do is be creative. To compose.

Creativity is a skill, however.

A writer revises to practice writing. An artist will sketch to practice shape and proportion. A dancer  or an actor will rehearse to practice the technique.

With me so far? Awesome.

Play is the skill of composition and creativity.  It's about putting things together than don't normally do so.

A colander becomes a hat. A splash of water on paper becomes the image of a dragon or a beast. A pile of leaves becomes a crown. 

Affordance is defined as a quality of an object or an environment. A chair's most obvious use is to be sat on.  When children in church (as I was, occasionally) they are told to sit silently. If they tried to stand, they might  be told "We sit in chairs."

Church is serious business folks. It is not play.

But do we sit in chairs? A chair to a child can be a table, a step. It can be a cliff from which toy soldiers leap. To a teen it can be an statement, turned around and leaned on in casual rebellion.

When we play we create affordance and break away from what we see. We deny the obvious and ordinary in trade for the subtle, the lateral, the vertical, the possible, impossible. We turn trees into Treants and we re-card the discarded.

Play allows us to take things that don't belong together and make them fit. It is the practice of creativity. When we play - or dream, or let your mind wander - a form of mental play,  we discover connections that we may never have thought to use.

Long post, I am afraid. But there you have it. You want to be a Creative (ha, silly, you already are!), then the answer is simple. Find a place to be alone, take some time to relax, and maybe make a few "vroom vroom" noises.

Cheers, my kittens.  Stay dreamy. :D

How to be happy: Get off the computer!

For those tuning in, I want to advise something. If you want to be happy, get off the computer.

Remember when the computer first appeared? It was going to revolutionize our lives. We were going to share information and research. We would link the wolrd and share culture.

Now all we do is look at cat pictures.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter have replaced conversations. I have to hold back on what I say on Facebook, lest I have this conversation.

Me: "Did I tell you I saw Iron Man 3 finally?"
FB Friend: "Yeah, saw it on Facebook."
Me: "I rather liked the part where <spoilers>."
FB Friend: "Yeah, I saw your tweet"
Me: "Oh."

That's it. It's worse in person. What do we talk about?
Well, I used Facebook for good, and not evil. I crowdsourced a list of books I am to read, both Classic Fiction and Non-Fiction.  The Art of Nonconformity suggests at least 30 of each. Well, I have nothing but time and a Library Card, so let's do this:

First 15 of each:

Non Fiction:
1. Conflicted leader
2. Defending the Crown
3. The Selfish Gene
4. The God Delusion
5. Guns Germs and Steel
6. "Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
7. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
8.  The People Who Eat Darkness
9. Hired Swords, the Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan
10. Samurai, Warrior, and The State in Early Medieval Japan
11. The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha
12: The Vikings
13: The Vinland Sagas
14. The Signal and the Noise
15. Freakonomics

Fiction:
1. The Prose and Poetic Eddas
2. Egil's Saga
3. Dispair by  Nabokov
4. White Guard by Bulgakov
5. The Pigeon by Suskind
6. Fahrenheit 451
7. Count of Monte Cristo
8. Ivanhoe
9. The Brothers Karamazov
10.Watership Down
11. Anna Karenina
12. Voyage of the Beagle
13. Hojuki
14. The Tale of Heike
15. Dream of the Red Chamber

Thanks to Lorrie, Mike, Chris, Joe-Bear, Lynn, and the restof my literate friends. If a book you recommended isn't listed, then it is in the second part of the series, I have read it, or it's a Bronte sisters' book.
Now I shall take my own advice and get the hell off the computer!


EDIT:  I found a list of books I wanted to read. So I have added:

Fiction:
16. A Sport and Pastime
17. The Postman Always Rings twice
18. Tropic of Cancer
19. Revolutionary Road
20. As I Lay Dying
21. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
22-25. Factotem, Post Office, Ham on Rye and Women by C. Bukowski
26. Midnight's Children
27. Lolita
28. Underworld by DeLillo
30. CivalWarLand in Bad Decline

Non-Fiction
16. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
17. Artful Sentences
18. Super Freakonomics.

The First Day, Or, "Boy, I am glad nobody's reading!""

This is the first blog entry, and I will start with a confession. I am a terrible typist.

My rough drafts of anything are miserable. and, despite feeling like a unique and beautiful snowflake melting in the oppressive Florida sun, I am not all one.

If I write ten words, expect 5 errors, at least.

This does not behoove well for this project. After all, a Grad student should be able to type, yes?

The expectation I have is that as I type more, I shall shake this monkey off my back.

So, the first day of a new project. No one is watching me yet, so I can't be shamed into success. But the premises of this blog is simple:

Can one get the equivalent of a college masters education without spending a dime? Can one also, by spending very little money lose 50 lbs?

Too complicated, you ask? Why not have a blog dedicated to just one thing?

That's why it's called What's He Building In There? The "In There" implies inside me, what changes are going on to build a strong mind and a stronger body?

I guess some basic premises are in order:

I can spend any amount of time working on projects related to this, but I must post what I have done that day on this website.

I am not allowed to spend more than 100 dollars a week with a coffee budget of about 20 dollars, and a food budget somewhere around 50 dollars. Less is preferable. Any money donated to this cause can also be spent. All money must be accounted for.

I think that's it for today. We will be taking baseline measurements, but some won't be very accurate because of the expense of the tests. We will also be outline what a Graduate degree means in the next day.

So as today is not merely an announcement of intention, here is today's schedule:

6:30 pm until 7:33pm: Set up this blog. (Free)

7:33 to 6:30 pm: Download Russian Podcasts and a the Book: Apologies of Socrates (Free)

now I am off to Starbucks to organize my thoughts. I tend to use notebooks to do this.

OK, so I didn't quite get to Starbucks. I got to Walmart for some supplies

I organized some of my metrics.