The Creative "I" - Variations on a Theme
"Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash (click to hear)
“New Eyes Blues” variation by Zoltan Raffai
I hear the train a comin'
I see the numbers wavin'
It's rolling round the bend
They’re moving they don’t stand,
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when,
And I see them they’re out there, yet they are all within,
I'm stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin' on
I am trapped inside my own head and I let days pass by,
But that train keeps a-rollin' on down to San Antone...
And the primes keep on buggin’ but I know facts don’t lie...
When I was just a baby my mama told me: son,
Two fellows came and told me, some patterns you must see
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
Try to do what we do, use creativity!
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
But these glasses just don’t come off, Kant was right, all right
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry..
When I must use my six senses, this mind is just too tight…
I bet there's rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
I know some people out there at a university;
They're probably drinkin' coffee and smoking big cigars.
Now are they using models or ingenuity?
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free
And I feel I might not get it, I feel I just won’t see
But those people keep a movin'
When these figures just don’t add up
And that's what tortures me...
How could I be all glee?
Well if they freed me from this prison,
What if I started synthesizing
If that railroad train was mine
If the mind could that way learn
I bet I'd move it on a little farther down the line
I might just get some closer to that tricky old pattern
Far from Folsom prison, that's where I want to stay
Close to making insights, that’s where I long to be
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.....
I’d throw those glasses right off and get new eyes to see…
As the authors of Twisting knobs and connecting things: Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century
(Danah Henriksen, Punya Mishra, & the Deep-Play Research Group at Michigan State University) find, creativity is not a random divine gift, neither it is an innate talent bestowed on some people but not on others. The source of creativity is hard to pinpoint because the creative process is unconscious, brief, and arises unexpectedly. As the article's authors state, a person's creative powers can be developed. A person's creativity is correlated with the broad range of personal knowledge, interests, and experiences that the individual "collects" during his/her lifetime. By pursuing varied interests and not shying away from the risk, challenge, and strangeness of the extraordinary, everyone can lay the foundations of his/her own creativity. The product of creativity is the recombination of ideas already present in a person's mind by way of new associations between those ideas. In teaching, creativity's potential is infinite. It may be applied to finding new pedagogic methods, to enhance already existing methods, to vary presentations by way of creatively linking seemingly unconnected didactic contents, or to reach a greater variety of different learners, etc.. Without creativity teaching tends to become formulaic, uninspired, and eventually ineffective.
A person's varied knowledge from a broad, even eclectic, background, and his/her diverse experiences seem to foster a level of cognitive flexibility that is requisite for the recombination of ideas. This flexibility is key in the creative process and it is antonymous to the rigid adherence to customary associations and cognitive norms. Though creativity can be applied to make ends meet in hardships, the creative process itself is not premeditated and rational, rather it is a "superfluous" capacity of the mind. I use the word superfluous to describe this capacity because day-to-day we don't use it; but I think it is probably the highest function of our mind. So high in fact, that we can't consciously reproduce it we have to let our mind "do it" on its own. The fact that we are not in immediate control of our own creativity is the source of creativity's historic mystique that Twisting knobs article refers to. The proclivity to be playful relates to the tendency to be creative. Playing implies the application of the game's rules in unpredictable ways for a purpose, and with the side effect of joy. Cheating is an issue in playing exactly because the creative variation on the game's rules requires consideration of legality.
Do we ever have original thoughts or do we just play variations on old themes? I think that original thoughts are very-very rare events. However, there is an immense value in reconsidering and reconstructing old ideas. On the long term variations on old themes are the mutations by which our collecting thinking evolves.
Click here to read The Creative "I" - Part 3.
"Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash (click to hear)
“New Eyes Blues” variation by Zoltan Raffai
I hear the train a comin'
I see the numbers wavin'
It's rolling round the bend
They’re moving they don’t stand,
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when,
And I see them they’re out there, yet they are all within,
I'm stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin' on
I am trapped inside my own head and I let days pass by,
But that train keeps a-rollin' on down to San Antone...
And the primes keep on buggin’ but I know facts don’t lie...
When I was just a baby my mama told me: son,
Two fellows came and told me, some patterns you must see
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
Try to do what we do, use creativity!
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
But these glasses just don’t come off, Kant was right, all right
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry..
When I must use my six senses, this mind is just too tight…
I bet there's rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
I know some people out there at a university;
They're probably drinkin' coffee and smoking big cigars.
Now are they using models or ingenuity?
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free
And I feel I might not get it, I feel I just won’t see
But those people keep a movin'
When these figures just don’t add up
And that's what tortures me...
How could I be all glee?
Well if they freed me from this prison,
What if I started synthesizing
If that railroad train was mine
If the mind could that way learn
I bet I'd move it on a little farther down the line
I might just get some closer to that tricky old pattern
Far from Folsom prison, that's where I want to stay
Close to making insights, that’s where I long to be
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.....
I’d throw those glasses right off and get new eyes to see…
As the authors of Twisting knobs and connecting things: Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century
(Danah Henriksen, Punya Mishra, & the Deep-Play Research Group at Michigan State University) find, creativity is not a random divine gift, neither it is an innate talent bestowed on some people but not on others. The source of creativity is hard to pinpoint because the creative process is unconscious, brief, and arises unexpectedly. As the article's authors state, a person's creative powers can be developed. A person's creativity is correlated with the broad range of personal knowledge, interests, and experiences that the individual "collects" during his/her lifetime. By pursuing varied interests and not shying away from the risk, challenge, and strangeness of the extraordinary, everyone can lay the foundations of his/her own creativity. The product of creativity is the recombination of ideas already present in a person's mind by way of new associations between those ideas. In teaching, creativity's potential is infinite. It may be applied to finding new pedagogic methods, to enhance already existing methods, to vary presentations by way of creatively linking seemingly unconnected didactic contents, or to reach a greater variety of different learners, etc.. Without creativity teaching tends to become formulaic, uninspired, and eventually ineffective.
A person's varied knowledge from a broad, even eclectic, background, and his/her diverse experiences seem to foster a level of cognitive flexibility that is requisite for the recombination of ideas. This flexibility is key in the creative process and it is antonymous to the rigid adherence to customary associations and cognitive norms. Though creativity can be applied to make ends meet in hardships, the creative process itself is not premeditated and rational, rather it is a "superfluous" capacity of the mind. I use the word superfluous to describe this capacity because day-to-day we don't use it; but I think it is probably the highest function of our mind. So high in fact, that we can't consciously reproduce it we have to let our mind "do it" on its own. The fact that we are not in immediate control of our own creativity is the source of creativity's historic mystique that Twisting knobs article refers to. The proclivity to be playful relates to the tendency to be creative. Playing implies the application of the game's rules in unpredictable ways for a purpose, and with the side effect of joy. Cheating is an issue in playing exactly because the creative variation on the game's rules requires consideration of legality.
Do we ever have original thoughts or do we just play variations on old themes? I think that original thoughts are very-very rare events. However, there is an immense value in reconsidering and reconstructing old ideas. On the long term variations on old themes are the mutations by which our collecting thinking evolves.
Click here to read The Creative "I" - Part 3.