Enhancing Creativity

Attentiveness. "Originality," Woodrow Wilson asserted, is simply a fresh pair of eyes ' " While this statement is a bit too all-inclusive to be accurate, there is definitely value in fully engaging the senses, seeing things as if for the first time, and being aware of how things took, taste, feel, sound, and smell. The sensory memory of the creative person is generally quite strong. Scenes from childhood can be vividly recalled. Subtle distinctions of touch or taste are possible. What you notice, what you bring into closer focus-whether it be a tree, an insect, the way your friend moves her hands, the noises a child makes while playing- triggers in you a response. The response is not a duplicate of what you see, hear, taste, smell, or touch; it is a reaction to it and a reinvention

When you perceive the world as new - every bit of it new you will find fresh reactions within yourself. A 37-year old woman writer, who had been mistakenly informed by her doctor that she had only six months to five, drove home from the doctor's office with her perception of herself and her life completely altered. Two hours before, she had been a normal person living on the earth. Now she was one of the dying. She began to experience highly-charged reactions to the slightest event in an otherwise ordinary day. Everything took on a new quality. Each shape, each subtle shade of color, each movement, became a gift. She wrote: "When I looked today at a sliced lemon, I saw, as if for the first time, the pale yellow, perfect miracle of it; in the afternoon I was struck by the unbelievable beauty of blue shirts flapping on the clothesline, waving abandonedly at freedom. Everything was fresh and had new meaning. And that evening the clouds thinned out, moving under the moon like steam, drawing a line across the black sky-as if, for me, they were underlining heaven."

The gift of your perception, which can recreate what you see, is both vital and compelling. Encourage it to be active, call it out, let it enrich your life.

Playfulness. "Play" is a loaded word, and when used in relation to adults the context is almost always negative. "What business," one may ask, "does an adult have playing?" In order to create, play must be an indispensable ingredient in your life; that is, often you will need to play with materials, concepts, perspectives, and to direct yourself away from those things that are real-to fantasize. Carl Jung has said, "Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has yet come into being."

Part of the reason children are so innately creative in their actions and their speech is that they engage frequently in fantasy. if you are a painter or sculptor, play with your materials. If you are a writer, play with dialogue, become your characters, assign Aunt Martha's speech habits to seven-year-old Jason. If you're a dancer, try dancing the way your name feels, the way a fire siren looks in the air, the way an orange sounds. State the experiment to yourself, then try it out.