It's the Cake
The title above comes from a comment made by author Jerry Hirschberg. "Creative activity [isn't] the icing on the cake. Human creativity is the cake." Getting a bite of this cake is what proves to be frustrating for some people. Simply put, there isn't one sure-fire method to achieve creative success. However, there are certainly underlying attitudes and patterns that one can perceive in creative people, (and in this most humble of papers), I will attempt to show to you through texts such as Hirschberg's The Creative Priority and my own forays with Madame Creatividad that experiencing creativity is simply a matter of opening yourself up to the world around you.
It always seems to me that any measure of creativity starts through something that I have opted to call creative flux, both because I am nerdy and that it happens to fit the concept extremely well. In a nutshell, all creative flux means is that you has to be willing to be open to the surrounding environment, allowing ideas from all possible angles and points to flow into you.
Hirschberg illustrates this rather well. A car designer by trade, he started his career at GM, "the supreme icon of power and success for America." He tells us that GM eventually reached a point of stagnation, from lack of competition and from shutting the doors tight on ideas coming from the outside world. GM car design reached a monotone complacency, and it is at this point, Hirschberg says, he began feeling a little bit useless, as his work environment had turned into, "a blinding illusion of security and imperviousness to failure." Hirschberg then makes a transition: he switches jobs to a place of unregulated creative flux. He attributes his later success t...
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...hberg calls this process `stepping back from the canvas.' And a gloriously effective technique it turns out to be, "...ideas again started flowing, knotty problem areas unraveled, and the design began to lead the designers, a sure sign that a strong concept was emerging." Something similar to this happened to me in the process of writing this essay, as I acquired a major case of writer's block. Thankfully, I took Hirschberg's advice to heart: I `stood back from the canvas' and succeeded in opening the floodgates of creative flux anew.
So is creative flux the path to taking a bite out of the all elusive cake of creativity? Although it is not the only way to approach creative problems, it is the phenomenal openness that creative flux provides that makes for such an exciting tool in one's quest for achieving creative goals. So go ahead, open up and take a bite.
Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. “An Historical Allusion In Cheever's 'The Swimmer'.” Studies In Short
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Big Two Hearted River.” In Our Time. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970.
Of course, the term "creativity" is almost inherently ambiguous. What do I hope to achieve, or more specifically, what do I feel that I lack because of this supposed lack of personal creativity? When I think of creative minds, I imagine Pablo Picasso or Thomas Edison and the contributions they have made to society or the impact on our emotions. But fame or critical acclaim a...
Gardner describes the creative individual as follows: “The creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting” (Gardner, 1993, p. 35). As I understand this, a creative individual is one who seeks out problems and states or solves them in a way that no one else has previously. Such inno...
Oedipus is a tragic hero being that he was a king who had a high position in his community to a person who wished to be released from the city forever. Oedipus says " Cast me out as quickly as you can, away from Thebes, to a place where no one, no living human being, will cross my path" (Sophocles ll. 1697-1699). Oedipus was once a person who citizens looked to for answers to problems, and a person who had control over a whole city. To a person who wished to be banished from a new king of Thebes. The use of tragic hero in the story shows a slow slope of not only his position as king, but a man who loses his family and gains information about his real identity. Sending him to his
...nced, the information our subconscious soaks up. Creativity is what combines our consciousness with our subconscious, which helps us with things such as problem solving, strategizing, and art.
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Northon Anthology American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
In the short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, one of the dominant themes is the passage of time. In this short story time seems to pass as reality does with us unaware of its passing. The main character is the protagonist hero, Neddy Merrill who embarks on a traditional theme of a homeward journey. The scene opens on a warm mid-summer day at an ongoing pool party with Neddy and his wife Lucinda. The pool is “fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green.
...his story the main message that life is short and he succeeded by using point of view, setting and symbolism. “The Swimmer” can teach many readers not to waste valuable time like Neddy did when drinking, caring about insincere relationships among social status, and taking his family for granted. Cheever’s usage of literary elements not only displays the theme of “The Swimmer”, but also organizes passages of events for the reader to experience throughout the story. John Cheever once said, “The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness” (Good Reads). He perfectly illustrates this objective in “The Swimmer.”
John Cheever uniquely crafted the story “The Swimmer” by using a mix of surrealism and realism throughout the story. Most people when they read “The Swimmer” they have to reevaluate it to comprehend what is happening. The reason for that is because Cheever shifts between surrealism and realism so much that the reader does not even notice. The story starts out with Neddy being so strong and youthful, but as the story goes on he weakens and ages. When he was youthful Neddy decided to swim every pool in his neighborhood. As he ages and weakens, the pools get harder to swim and the seasons pass without him even noticing.
Cheever, John, ”The Swimmer”, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. San Francisco: Longman, 2013.250-257
What exactly is creativity? To be creative is to understand and connect the small details of our experiences, both good and bad (creative something). Creativity involves a person using his or her original ideas to create something. Artists such as poets, writers, painters, designers, and more use creativity on a regular basis. They use creativity to come up with new ideas and create original works of art. A poet would use his or her creative abilities to write and produce a poem just like a painter would use creativity to paint a painting.
Since we are born we have imagination and as we grow up this imagination may increase or decrease. Creativity strongly relies in our imagination. Depending on different circumstances people learn to express their creativity openly while other people close themselves and believe they do not have creativity. Creativity is a natural talent that every single human has. Creativity can be used to solve a complex problem in a different manner or just to find innovative ways to have fun. Creativity is thinking out of the box. Even though creativity cannot be taught from scratch there should be a class that is specific for creativity.
Creativity can be caused by certain states of mind or situations. One state of mind that can promote creativity is happiness or a positive mood. As said by PBS, “Creativity is less likely to be present with negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and anxiety; it is positively associated with positive emotions such as joy, love, and curiosity” (Creativity). This shows that with a positive attitude you can promote creativity. Along with promoting creativity, this link can also make us interested in the world around us and create even more happiness. To create happiness, you must pursue what you 're interested in and have a passion in that subject. This is agreed-upon in a TED talk where the speaker said, “So I always say to people, forget it. Like, if you don 't have an obvious passion, forget about it. Follow your curiosity because passion is sort of a tower of flame that is not always accessible” (Where Does Creativity Come From?). So in summary if you pursue your passion you can create happiness which in turn can create