Lessons from The Music Room No. 7: A Year– Huge Difference!

Posted on May 13, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we call The Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. My previous post: Two Creative Types.  Today’s post is the last in this series. 

How you live and the things you do make a huge difference in the span of one year.  I realize this isn’t news to most people.  Backpacking across Europe at eighteen, interning at the White House after college or getting pregnant and delivering triplets– these things will definitely change your life forever, in the span of one year. But, when I started this Creating Brains project,  I really was not sure where we’d be in one year.  Setting each of us, my five children and myself, on a Creative path of our own, seemed more than daunting, although not impossible.  Check out what has changed for each of  us in the last twelve months:

Spring 2010

  • Baby:  Living at UCSD Medical Center — the NICU.  Taking caffeine straight and pure through a tube (caffeine: oxygen saturation stabilizer for pre-mature babies, who knew?).  Three pounds.  No eyelashes yet.
  • Two-year old:  Waking every two hours at night because of early (for her) weaning.  Innocent.  Taking two-hour walks outside every morning with our Thai Au pair. Always happy to see me.  Hooked on chocolate soy milk.
  • Five year old:  Quiet around new people.  Sober.  Often sitting in my recliner when I’m not home.  At peace sitting on daddy’s lap with head on his chest, clutching pink Blankie.  Happy to be read to.  Wondering what will happen next.  Always happy to see me.
  • Eight-year old:  Elusive.  Looking for things to do.  Sometimes playing with Legos.  Practicing spinning a basketball.  Explaining everything to his five-year-old sister. Temporarily hard-of-hearing.  Playing a middle school jock in local production of High School Musical.  Attending endless rehearsals sitting through hours of watching others with bigger parts.
  • Ten year old:  Shoulders sagging with responsibility.  Ready to cry.  Looking for things to do.  Telling others (siblings, baby-sitters, family helping out)  what to do.  Getting ahead in Math.  Playing  ”brainiac” in local production of High School Musical.  Attending endless rehearsals. Taking long walks outside with iPod.
  • Me:  Spending every other night in hospital with new baby.  Seeing her every day no matter what.  Singing to new baby.  Holding new baby.  Pumping breast-milk she can drink when I’m not with her. Traveling an hour each way to see baby.  Chatting with my dad about politics, neuroscience and family history as he drove me to the hospital every day.  Hugging every one when I get home.  Sitting with each child.  Listening to their troubles.  Reading them stories.  Drinking good water.  In the moment–  future unsure and far away.  Husband working full-time and helping two-year old go back to sleep (every two hours) at night.

Spring 2011

  • One-year-old:  Opening every cabinet door and drawer.  Crawling and laughing at the same time–  when I try to dress her in the morning. Eating lentils, rice, mission figs, strawberries, baguette butts and broccoli.  Heavier every day– lovely fat legs.  Speaks– Mama, Dada, blah, blah, blah, la, la, la. Yells “ah”!  Nursing every two hours at night. Laughing.  ”Getting” she’s part of a family (I can’t prove this,  but I’m super-sure).
  • Three-year old:  Sleeping without waking at night.  Wanting to live on cake, whip cream, chocolate milk, ice cream and candy. Loving outings of any kind (favorites: library, bookstore) .  Missing our former Thai Au Pair– June (gone back home) and saying “When June gets back…” .  Always happy to see me, except when I ask her to put her cowboy boots next to the front door.  Playing Legos with her brother and playing tiger with daddy.  Saying, “But mama..” a lot.  Playing indoors a lot.  Spending time looking at picture books.  Hoping to be included in everything her siblings do.
  • Seven year old:  Initiating conversations with anyone interesting.  Walking to grandparents’ house to chat and help with household chores. Looking up horse prices and horsemanship summer camps.  Happy, mature and calm, except when goofing off with her brother (often).  Always happy to see me. Grateful when I kiss her good-night or tell her a story
  • Nine-year old:  Waking before 6:00 a.m. Busy with Legos. Being “helpful” (his word) by spending one on one time with three-year old.  Cracking up over his bodily-function themed jokes.  Reading comic books.  Looking forward to the rest of the day, and tomorrow and the far future.  Incredibly positive.  Counts his blessings.  Taking piano lessons.
  • Eleven year old:  Sleeps in a little (compared to all the early birds).  Organized.  Hating tardiness of any kind. Getting ahead in Math and Science. Reading for pleasure.  Hand-making tortillas as a snack.  Loving her long hair.  Laughing often.  Spending quiet time with herself– walks, drawing, reading.
  • Me:  Teaching college History. Writing seven pages of un-edited dribble every day, long hand. Driving a lot– taking kids everywhere. Remembering past adventures.  Chatting with my mom every day– finding joy in her health improving.  Mourning my aunt’s (and her family’s) tragic death (3 weeks ago).  Missing my grandmother who lives so far from me. Needing time alone everyday, getting some some days. Singing to baby.  Laughing with three-year-old.  Adjusting to developmental changes in eleven-year-old.  Reading The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore– brilliant new novel.  Missing husband when he works long. Having so much today, the future gets little of my mental energy.  Questioning.  Deeply happy and tired in turns, or even at the same moment.

So there you have it.  My children are bouncy.  Some of them have passions to strive for.  I’m writing.  The future is shining.

This year has made all the difference in the world.

Yep.  It has!

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Lessons from The Music Room No.6: Two Creative-Types

Posted on May 6, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we callThe Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. My previous post: Creativity Can Be Learned. 

There are two creative-types: Creators and Responders.  Both creative-types produce creative work, but they work very differently.

Creators:

Creators constantly put out new domain-specific stuff and don’t even wonder about messing up.  With proper tools and protected free time they’re off producing. They master their own energy for quiet productivity and work prodigiously with minimal restriction. From my observations, their creative-development sky-rockets between ages eight and ten years old.

My nine-year old son is a Creator-type. He’s busy all the time– not with homework, chores, video games or sports. Instead he’s mastering a domain– Lego design.  He takes breaks to play with his sisters, help tidy up the house or sleep. But the quotidian in general (mealtimes, showers) are superfluous unless combined with Lego-time.  Check out some of his daily domain-related activities:

  • reading Lego History books (yes, they do exist),
  • designing Lego kits on his computer
  • building new scenarios and characters using pieces from Lego kits,
  • making Lego stop-motion videos ( he’ll soon start posting on YouTube),
  • calling friends to talk about Legos,
  • talking to his siblings (and anyone else who will listen) about his latest Lego creation/project,
  • watching Lego videos on You-Tube,
  • updating his page on the Lego social site,
  • writing a screenplay for a Lego movie (which he’ll start making soon),
  • writing the Lego company in Billund, Denmark (no response, yet) asking for a job as a designer,
  • reading Lego Brickmaster magazine,
  • collecting free tickets to Legoland (from magazine, etc)

He organizes his days to produce.  He learns and makes.  He talks and makes.  He makes new stuff everyday. He goes to bed excited with a head-full of ideas for the next day’s projects. No doubt about it– he’s a Creator-type.  All my son needs is free time (he must control his schedule) and some tools. We give him that. So he creates constantly, fully engaged.

Another child of mine also created constantly and fully engaged when she was nine years old.  We gave her free time (she also controlled her own schedule) and some tools. Her domain– writing.  Check out some of her daily domain-related activities:

  • writing short stories
  • writing sketches and observations
  • writing plays (and faxing them to cousins so they could start memorizing their lines)
  • listening to audio-books
  • writing/reporting/editing a newspaper she founded
  • learning newspaper-making software
  • sending newspapers to relatives and friends across the US
  • writing a children’s novel
  • walking outside– thinking up new plots for stories
  • writing in her journal
  • writing letters to cousins
  • writing the introduction to her autobiography

Drawing and painting (which she also enjoyed) got less time as she got older because she needed more time to write.  No doubt about it– she’s also a great example of a Creator-type.

Albert Einstein was also this type. His domain– theoretical physics.  Einstein didn’t make stuff but still constantly produced. He constantly produced new thoughts.  He walked and thought.  He read and thought. He ate and thought.  He sat still and thought. He wrote and thought.  He took breaks to converse (usually about big ideas– peace, religion) or play Mozart on his violin– but mostly, he thought. Not all his thoughts were ground-breaking.  Most were not.  But all this time thinking eventually gave him the intellectual heft to produce the Theory of Relativity.

Responders:

Responders also produce creatively (eventually) but spend major time (especially in childhood) noting (mostly unconsciously) the activities of others.  They produce as a response to others.  Their creative domain– other people.  Responders write, cook, dance or build for fun but their creative potential lies elsewhere– in the realities of the human condition.  They take in what others feel, think and experience as if by osmosis. Because they are so other-oriented,  many responders lose creative drive (about the same time Creators take-off– fourth grade) in favor of service to others.  For responders, Creative drive is maintained consciously.  They have to want to be Creative. They need tools and protected free-time, but they also need prompts.  Responsive creativity emerges as an ongoing conversation of sorts. Responders play idea ping-pong.  My eleven year old daughter is a Responder-type.  When she walks in a room she immediately intuits the emotional climate there.  She tracks my moods and everyone else’s, for that matter.  She does this naturally, as if by osmosis.  Check out some of the ways she spends her free time and note their great variety (as opposed to the examples above):

  • playing the piano
  • texting friends
  • taking long nature walks
  • reading historical fiction,
  • organizing homework
  • making the baby giggle
  • looking up horses (she wants one very badly) to buy–online
  • daydreaming
  • helping siblings do stuff (i.e., reaching a high cereal box, gouache-painting)
  • attending extra-curricular classes (science, pottery-making, etc.)
  • swimming
  • listening to audio-books
  • riding her bicycle
  • wondering what to do next

These activities seem energy-neutral for her (except for giggling with the baby).  They steady her energy but add none to her reserves. Her intellect and energy to do runs on people-powered batteries. A full day with friends leaves her bouncing around the house like Tigger– full of energy and ready for anything.  But if I act tired or grumpy, her energy disperses into the breeze and she sticks to what’s required. Responders need proper tools and protected alone time AND  people (family, friends) charged with positive energy as well as creative peers to play/work with.  Everyone benefits from creative peers but responders Create because of them. Their creativity requires partners.  Without partners they don’t play at all and produce nothing original.

Mother Teresa, deeply moved by the plight of the poorest of Calcutta, spent her life holding them, loving them and feeding them. But she did more than aid people one-to-one.  She responded by creating organizations so more people could reach the poor and help out. I don’t know how my eleven year old will make her mark in the world.  I cannot yet see the scope of her creative contribution.  But I am learning how she functions.  She is clearly a Responder.  So I’ll do my best to give her what she needs– tools, protected time, creative peers/people and me.

Jesus Christ was also a Responder.  Try to imagine Jesus without his Father, his disciples, the ruling sacerdotal class or the masses of people needing inspiration in a Palestine under Roman siege.  Jesus noted the human condition and changed the world.  He responded to the people (their needs, ideas, fears and troubles) around him.  No people.  No Jesus.

Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva.org is a current-day example of a Responder responding to people in her world.

Her TED Conference presentation (below) is worth watching:

Creators are easy to spot because they are so productive.  Responders simmer long instead and need more preening. Both are rich in creative potential.

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Still Writing…

Posted on May 5, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

I have good news! I’m busy working on a book length project.

So… for the next two months (May and June 2011) I”ll post on Fridays only.  To read new posts at their freshest subscribe by e-mail (see right sidebar).

Visiting Creating Brains for the first time?  There ‘s lots to read! Check out 5 of my favorite posts below– and thanks for visiting.  Please leave me a comment.  I love to hear from readers!

Write– No Matter Your Domain

Childhood Dreams– Super-Important

Setting Your Own Path Sometimes Means Saying “No!”

What “Getting” Insight Looks/Feels Like

Eating a Flashlight and Sucking Up Dust 

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Lessons from The Music Room No.5: Creativity Can Be Learned

Posted on April 4, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we callThe Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. My previous post: Friends or Lovers Can Squash Your Creativity If You Let Them.

Creativity– like human consciousness, is an emergent system.  Look down at your feet for a moment. How long does it take you to register something about them? Probably much less than a second.  But the moment you catch something sticky about your feet–  how lumpy your shoes look or the shell pink of your toenails,  your brain’s on the job to push out the thought.  Check out (a tiny portion of) what your brain does simultaneously and wickedly-fast, below:

When these (among other) multiple representations converge and agree, you have a thought– in this case, about your feet. And you can share that thought at will.

Creativity can’t be taught,  but I’ve realized it can be learned.  How can this be?  Well, since Creativity is an emergent system, it is made up of parts– like my thought example above. Check out (a tiny portion of) what parts/actions converge into Creativity, below:

It may take your entire life to learn to do all these things,  but the moment you’ve got it all down to a life rhythm–  I think you’ll find your Creativity has emerged and you’ll have a lot to show for it.

Now I want to write You can do it!  Come on, get started! (O.K., I already did).  But even if I could walk you onto the perfect creative path,  you have to struggle  for yourself. Creativity is never handed to anyone because to be Creative you must be original. Nobody can make you Creative.  You have to learn it for yourself.

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Lessons From the Music Room No. 4: Friends or Lovers Can Squash Your Creativity If You Let Them

Posted on April 3, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we callThe Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. My previous post:  Creativity Can’t be Taught.

Friends or lovers can squash your Creative development,  but you have to let them.

If you’re easy-going and curious you often go along with whatever someone else wants.  Not because you’re spineless but because little setbacks to your own plans don’t bother you or following someone else’s whims is an adventure.  My eight-year-old is like this.  Today, for example, every seat at our round dining table was taken for lunch– my sister, my brother, their families, my parents, my kids.  We ate my husband’s fabulous lasagna and talked about upcoming birthday parties.  Four of my five children are Spring babies, so birthday talk is very now. But when my sister asked for exact dates, I unintentionally skipped my eight-year-old’s birthday. We talked about everyone else’s birthday, except his. This pass-over didn’t bother him a bit. He is an easy-going kid. For now this is a plus for his creative-development.  He’s emotionally free to think up new Lego designs, dream up adventure stories or wonder how far stars go on in the universe. But someday, forces that vie for his attention will pull harder–  girlfriends will want more attention,  buddies will propose cooler plans. He’ll no longer be so free. If he stays so easy-going he’ll eventually find himself no where.

Creative development grows proportional to time and energy put in.  If you give away all your time and energy– the only things really yours,  your creativity gets squashed out of your life.  With the easy-going this happens almost unperceived.  Other creative-types suffer the same fate–  but they see it happening at every step.  If pleasing others makes you happy, you may disrespect your creative work and set it aside for the sake of another.  When a lover complains you’re always working on your project,  you’ll willingly drop it for love.  Or when a friend dives into a passion (i.e., chess, knitting), you go along.  You take time from things you love to do and do what she loves, to stay friends.

Pleasing others makes my eleven year old happy. She’s naturally tuned to the needs of people she loves. This morning, for example, she bought fresh Chamomile at the farmer’s market.  She kept a sprig to make herself some tea this evening, tied a white ribbon around the rest and presented the small bunch to my mother.  My mother once commented off-hand, how much she likes chamomile and my daughter remembered.  She loves to make people happy and does this kind of stuff for fun. Someday, she’ll need to set boundaries for her giving and keep some time sacred for creative work. When you give all your time and energy away to please others,  you eventually morph into someone else’s worldview. Your own worldview– the place where your creativity begins,  fades to nothing.

The greatest gift I can give my children is to remind them– through the years, to always respect creative work and to keep it alive. The writer Charlotte Bronte said,

Imagination lifted me when I was sinking. I am thankful to God, who gave me this faculty; and it is for me a part of my religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession.

I hope they’ll love deeply– as I have, knowing all along, time and energy is theres to keep or give away.

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Lessons from The Music Room No. 3: Creativity Can’t be Taught

Posted on March 30, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we call The Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it.Yesterday I wrote “Just Do” Cold Showers and Write Short Lists.

A year ago I believed Creativity could be taught.  Today I don’t.  To start– Creativity is difficult to define.  A dozen thinkers have tried in the last fifty years but the concrete/undeniable definition is still at large.  Creativity is still like porn–  you know it when you see it.  There is no flowchart, Krebs-cycle equivalent or educational model to point the way to Creativity. Unlike porn, Creativity cannot be commodified. It is not a process, a brain pathway or a box of crayons ready to go.

Creativity, instead, is an emergent system. It requires a multiplicity of interactions to converge into patterns (i.e., a cultural zeitgeist, clusters of divergent thinkers working at the edge of their fields– each having put in 10,000 hours beforehand, enough money to fund everything).  When so many patterns reach a tipping point, Creatives (See Characteristics of Highly Creative)– and their products, sprout through the cultural milieu like skyscrapers in Shanghai.

My brother just arrived from Shanghai.  He came back totally hyped about China.  He’ll definitely take his children there someday and maybe even live there for awhile. He said,

Just walking the streets you absorb a tremendous amount of energy. Shanghai is super futuristic in architecture.  There are bullet trains going everywhere.  Everyone under thirty speaks English. Parents play with their kids and everyone looks sharp.

One hundred years ago, people said stuff like this about the United States. Seasoned travelers like Alex de Tocqueville hailed new railroads from coast to coast, giant companies still monopolizing trade, landless men claiming free land to improve it and gold nuggets sparkling in small rivers.  Immigrants still arrive in droves to this country shining on a hill but the United States is no longer an emergent economy.  The United States is now complex, grown-up and working hard to keep up economic liveliness and relevance.

Highly Creative people are like that–  complex, grown-up and working daily to Create.  They have set patterns, schedules and tools of the trade to work/play.  They may write books to tell you what worked for them but they can’t teach you Creativity.  Because your Creativity is set at a different life-angle (yours), in a different time, place and among different people.  It isn’t one skill or even a bundle of skills.  It is an individualized system. Just like China will never be another United States.  Even if it were to follow a step-by-step U.S.-based guide to free-market capitalism, China’s cultural roots are vastly different from our newer American culture. But the differences don’t stop there. And so, China is emerging on its own terms instead. Just like each creative person emerges on her own terms, within her cultural milieu, with all her tools, baggage, life experience and unstoppable desires.  Skills that facilitate Creativity can be taught. But Creativity itself cannot.  It is too complex– it is an emerging system and personally unique.

_________________________________

Coda:

You can’t teach Creativity, but I’ve learned you can feed the formation of creative patterns.  Check out my series: Creativity’s Terrain.


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Lessons from The Music Room No. 2: “Just Do” Cold Showers and Write Short Lists

Posted on March 21, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring 2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we call The Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. Yesterday I wrote The Creative Life is a Struggle.

The Nike slogan Just Do It works well enough as my family’s current task-accomplishment (including all things creativity-related) plan.  I hope this is only temporary because I’m a big fan of the perfectly tuned schedule.

When my first daughter arrived my mother said,  She’ll take over your life until you get a good schedule.  But once you’ve got a schedule you’ll have time for anything you want.  And so it was.  At six months my tiny girl woke at 6 a.m.  I bundled her up, strapped her into a jogger-stroller and ran several miles before breakfast.  We ate at 7:30.   Then I sat her facing the bathroom shower on a bouncy chair with toys so I could shower in peace.  We took walks, sang songs, giggled and read books.  I made her baby food from scratch and tried complicated recipes (i.e., Shitake-mushroom fried polenta topped with tomatoes, slivered almonds and parmigiano-reggiano) for dinner and she watched me.  Twice a week my lovely mother-in-law took over, while I took off for grad school.  I’m barely scratching the surface here.  More than a decade later (I may not be young), I still believe a perfectly tuned schedule is best.

That’s why I’ve tried all sorts of plans and schedules this year to put this creativity thing on rails. But all of them required more energy than they generated.  I nixed each plan when it turned more needy than a child.  Who wants a needy schedule?  I don’t.  Real kid voices (expressing human needs) filter into my dreams at day-break Sunday through Saturday. Check out my current (not-so-needy) 5 item schedule:

  1. I nurse the baby.
  2. I head for my semi-private wake-up chamber–  the cold shower.  (Did I use the word “cold’?  Freezing is more appropriate this time of year– Freezing showers are perfectly safe. I choose to do this, OK?)
  3. I dry my body with the available clean towel.
  4. I pull on my best jeans, dab on the lipstick.
  5. I run the rest of the day (it’s kind of a blur– except when I follow my two-year-old outside and read at the same time, or when I drive to kid-classes or when I lecture at the University. And all running stops when I write.  Which I do almost every day. Some days I even write three pages of long-hand free thought.

Someday I’ll return to a perfectly tuned routine– all Highly Creative people fashion favored schedules.  To read some favored routines I’ve come across check out my series: Routines.

But back to now.  Let me tell you, with five children under twelve–  it’s just impossible to follow a perfectly tuned schedule.  For children each little habit expressively worked on (e.i., flushing the toilet after use or signing every piece of artwork) takes thirty days of practice.  Perfectly tuned schedules are built of a thousand little habits.  You do the math.  So instead, we all meet in The Music Room and make short lists (one for each person above five-years-old) and each finds a way to do it.  On Sundays,  I often have only one item on my list– Write.  And I do.  Of course I still bathe the baby, drive the kids to hit tennis balls and make lunch.  But those things tend to get done list or not.  A one-item “To-Do” list makes you happy at the start but turns exhilarating when you’re finished.

Just Do It is the motto of the determined desperate.  The person who came up with the motto (don’t tell Nike)–  a serial killer about to die for his crimes and ready to get dying over-with, was certainly desperate.  I admit I’m not always determined or desperate.  But this post is proof Just Do It is working out for now.

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Today (March 21, 2011) is…

…The exact One Year Anniversary of Creating Brains!

To my faithful readers:

Thank you for sticking with me. Just knowing you’re there adds intensity and relevance to every word I write. Thank you!

To those who’ve left comments:

A capital THANK YOU!  Your feedback keeps me thinking–  what a gift.

To all my Hitters (is that a word yet?)– Creating Brains has been visited over 9,000 times so far!  Whoop-y! Hurray!

Thank you all for visiting.

Filed under: Lessons from The Music Room, Making Time, Mantras to Increase Creativity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Lessons from The Music Room No.1: The Creative Life is a Struggle

Posted on March 20, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

For one year– from Spring 2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we call The Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it.  This is the first post of the series.

The Creative Life is all about dichotomies. The most troubling dichotomy is that what makes you more Creative is exactly what also kills your Creativity.

Years ago, Alejandro (my uncle’s childhood friend) drowned in a sparkling river on a sunny day for no good reason at all. One second my uncle saw him swimming ten feet away.  Then the boy was gone.  My uncle dove under, desperately looking for him. Over and over and over.  He finally figured out Alejandro was sucked into a very black hole by a whirling under-river tornado invisible from the surface.  The boy lost his life while very much in it.  He drowned for too much of the very substance that makes life possible.

Creativity requires flow–  but sometimes to get flow you tread over under-river tornadoes.  You could leave this energy absorbing zone to glide with gentle water, but you choose to stay. You stay in the thick of the River for love, passion and material.  I’ve been treading over mild water-whirls all day today.  I stopped my writing to read the writing of my students.  I stopped my writing to hold the crying two-year-old I love.  I drove an hour to visit my sick dad.  I talked on the phone with my traveling husband and sang to my eleven-year-old daughter.  All the while my laptop sat open ready to take all I had to give.

All day I wanted to write–  I’ve learned so much this year and have so much to tell you.  But I must begin with the things that stopped my writing.  Interruptions gained force with mass.  They pulled on me to shut my computer and write another day. But I kept coming back to add another line.  I kept treading.

But my biggest struggle–  fierce enough I fear for my own Creative life,  is helping my children discover their Creative lives.  In his book You!  Having A Baby, Dr. Mehmet Oz explains why some babies are born large.  He says pregnancy is a constant battle for the mother’s resources.  The fetus wants more of everything the mother can give.  To live, the mother’s body fights to keep what she needs.  So the battle rages until the baby is born.  A big baby means the baby was winning the fight.  If the baby is tiny, the mother stored more than necessary.

Struggling to stay on your Creative path turns into an all-out-war for resources if you bring the kids along.   But all this drama makes you more Creative than a mental couch-potato version of yourself.  A complex dichotomy-ridden, ever-flowing life gives you plenty of material to Create with.  Complexity makes you larger.

The American poet Walt Whitman said,

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

I couldn’t agree more.  Your Creative life exists only among contradictions and you need them all to Create. The scary truth is you can drown in a mess of Life or you can swim among your many selves and choices non-stop–  inhaling energy constantly.  If you keep up the struggle the flow moments will come.  But for now, there is more struggle than calm.

I say– Keep on treading baby!

Filed under: Lessons from The Music Room, What I've Learned | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Creativity for All– A Vaccination for Depression?

Posted on March 16, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

When my grandfather started out in business, he groomed his reputation with care.  People all over town thought him bright, lucky and hard-working.  So banks lent him money and city leaders sought his opinion.  He once told me he was not as rich or clever as everyone believed but he worked harder than anyone thought he did.  These days creative-types are expected to build platforms for themselves and construct solid reputations before they sell novels or garner funding for projects.  Is this a good thing?  Or are creative-types dumping precious time into stuff manager-types would handle much better?

Actually, all this platform-building talk portends an historic shift–  the democratization of Creativity.  The word “creativity” is fairly new to the English language–  it popped-up in dictionaries less than a hundred years ago.  Since then the word has been tossed around in certain circles (i.e., education, psychology).  But  today even business schools (where manager-types congregate) want to teach their students to think outside the box.  Still,  the true benefactors of this amazing trend are people who lost their creative selves in the business of growing up.  Pablo Picasso said,

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

When you’re grown up and weary with life but have a comfy couch to slump into every evening– you may remember how you used to be.  Swiss psychologist Carl Jung said,

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves.  But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, “Something is out of tune.”

If you are lucky, you’ll start to remember how creative you were once.  And when you uncover this side of you– you’ll also know its the perfect moment in history to live the creative life.  Now you–  any you, can be creative.  That’s what this democratization of creativity is doing–  making it possible for more creative-types to actually Create.

Will you get back in tune and be happier if you can create?  In the past great creative achievement was more often linked negatively to depression and other mental illnesses.  Will the democratization of creativity destroy the links between depression and creative achievement like vaccinations cut the connections between polio and childhood years ago?  I may be over-reaching my point here but, I also think if you can imagine it–  it could happen.

Filed under: Feelings | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

Dammed Creativity

Posted on March 14, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

Benjamin Franklin had little free time in his old age.  He complained of this cram-packed-with-politics schedule to close friends.  The very new United States– still fighting to survive needed his diplomacy, wit, wisdom and time.  And nobody else could fill his shoes. His science experiments lay unfinished collecting dust in his backyard laboratory.  Like some homeowners in my neighborhood are house poor–  great salaries funneled straight to paying the mortgage and fixing up the house,  Benjamin Franklin was energy poor. State-building sucked every last bit of Franklin’s remarkable energy–  and he felt his soul shrink.

A few days ago, my eight-year-old son asked us all at breakfast, What is the worse possible thing you can imagine happening? I immediately thought of losing my child to scurvy or a car accident.  But my six-year-old daughter said,  Oh.  I think living your entire life and never having done what you were meant to do–  without doing what you love. That would be terrible.

My daughter is right on.  I’m so glad she can say this out loud without a second thought.

But how could you die without ever reaching your potential?  For Franklin a new nation claimed his time, thus suppressing his exuberant creative pursuit.  But energy-claimers are most often historic only in your wildest dreams– masses of urgent incoming e-mails, houses to build, fortunes to lay out for the future. You could die without ever cracking your creative potential by failing to ever decide to start.  You could give up attending to your dreams when the phone starts ringing or when your wife complains about the yard.  If you must choose between keeping bargains you never made or owning your energy and creative potential– well, I think you can guess what I’d say.

Having a choice at all, is a privilege.  If you have no food, many sick children, a husband who beats you, no shelter and no work in sight,  your choices are much, much smaller.  But my guess is,  if you have time enough to read these words– you have at least some (education, time, money, space) options for creation.  The French philosopher Ernest Renan said,

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Ignored creativity–  no matter how plentiful or unruly at the start or how honorable the competition, dries up. And once you decide you’ve got to create come hail or high water, what you do with the truths you know–  that is what makes you Creative or not.

 

 

 

 

How about you?  Is your creativity still dammed up inside you?

Filed under: Choices, Creativity Killer, Making Time, Mistakes, Philosophers, The Child, The Scientist, Truth | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

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