Creativity

Once again I lay before the gentle reader, a total lack of ideas of what to write about.

One of the reasons I took such a long hiatus from this blog was my belief that all my posts had to be profound and original. In a sea of human experience of billions of individuals, my voice had to be unique, I had to put forth new ideas, new thoughts. I had to be creative.

However, as I've been meditating on creativity, I've come to realize something: It's both utterly unique and an activity of reproducing.

When we think about reproducing, we usually think biology. Two creatures of the same type get together to create reproductions of their genetic code. Copies. The copies are not perfect, but the source material is the other two creatures. The combination of the DNA of the two parents is unique, but the offspring are still of the same species.

It's the same with any artistic or creative endeavor. While our individual creation is unique to us, it is of a type, whether it's a painting, or a melody, or a blog post. It probably has influences from other pieces of the same types. It's not going to be completely unique, as there are other paintings/melodies/blog posts. However, the combination of common form and individual experience causes our creation to be unique.

There's my attempt at profundity.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is exactly the hang up I get with blogging. I have this feeling that what I write should be important enough that others will want to read it. I get hung up on wanting to have a post with substance to it. I want it to be well written. Etc. Etc. Etc. The problem is that all of this keeps me from writing anything at all. I need to find a way to just write without judgment on whether it’s “good enough” according to my standards. Light and fluffy posts are OKAY!
9:58 AM
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