I haven't been feeling very creative recently.
The blog posts have dried up a little (certainly in comparison to a couple of weeks ago!). Mainly this is down to the fact that work has been ridiculously busy and I therefore have less thinking time. However, even at work my lack of creativity has been noticeable. I have a couple of things I have needed to do that, whilst not really a full-flung artistic extravaganza, are what I would vaguely class as "more creative than normal" - i.e. involving having to think about words and images.
I happened to catch a snippet of a programme on Radio4 last week called Grayson Perry on Creativity and Imagination. Sadly for some reason this is not available as a "listen again" option on the Radio4 website, and I therefore only have the few minutes I caught to go on. It essentially seemed to be a list of what he considered myths about Creativity and the creative process. The gist of his argument seemed to be that artistic creativity was neither easy nor particularly exciting (a lot of the creative process being "dull and repetitive" once the original idea had struck).
To quote from a synopsis of the programme:
"Grayson wants to (...) show how creativity isn't a mystery, but at the same time it isn't necessarily easily accessible."
I can see the argument that says that if it was easy, there would be thousands of great works of art by millions of people. However, what I didn't agree with was the inference that you somehow had to be special to be creative.*
A lot of the joy in writing this blog is not necessarily down to the fact that I have some kind of strange idea that I am going to get discovered for my fantastic writing - I have no such delusions. I have come to terms with the fact that I am never going to be a "creative genius". I can't take a decent photograph to save my life. My work will never appear in a great gallery or library. I do believe, however, that in their own way everyone can be creative.
You only have to look at the joy with which small children scribble their way through life, drawing everyone and everything with complete abandon. Why is this something that seems to be drummed out of us as we go through life, discouraged and disillusioned by both internal and external critics?
I would loveto rediscover some of that joy of experimenting, of letting myself go with something just to see what happens. Whether real life will really let me remains to be seen.
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*Obviously I am making a big assumption that this was how the argument was going to pan out - as I said, I was unable to listen to the whole of the programme, so may well have got the wrong end of the stick. Feel free to correct me if you heard it!
