The creative urge.. part I

Salut,

sitting in the bus again, going back home to pickup the kids early, have a quick dinner and on with the taxi rides for dance and acting classes. "sitting in the bus" seems to be my equivalent to "once upon a time"... Maybe I should change the title of the blog to the MAD bus rides... But Na... MADLY-MAD suites me pretty well I think.

I don't think my MAD inspiration depends on the bus (or the train)... I do get influenced by the weather though... While the bus was still in the garage of the downtown terminus, I had no clue how to start this, and where I would go (actually, I still don't, but I go anyway)...But once the bus got out, and I saw the nice blue sky and sunshine in my face... I started typing... The sun just hid behind a dark cloud now, as if to contradict me...

I almost succumb to the temptation of not writing and reading instead... But I realized a little while back that I'm much more a producer than a consumer (though I'm working on that). When I was a kid, we were thought to give more then receive and I seem to have taken this a little too seriously. If I go see a live band, I would rather be on stage... When I watch a movie, I wonder if I could make a movie like that, or wish I could tell a story like that... Same thing when I read, or take pictures... Some of my friends that are into photography love to browse for other people pictures and learn from it... I guess I'm too lazy, I prefer to just take my own pictures... But I'm working on it...

That might be one of the [many?] reasons why I do so many different things and never really succeeded in any of them. I don't invest enough in learning from others... Even for blogging, again, I write much more than I read... Why do I do that? Why am I that way? Is it in my genes? Is it related to something that happened in my childhood? Or later on? I have no clue...

But I keep my eyes open, looking for hints of why, and how I could fix it. Yet, only when and if I need to fix it. It is not necessarily a problem, but I get the feeling I would be a better producer if I did a little more consuming... Of course, I have to be careful not to fall in the "Copycat" trap (I already suffer from that enough!!!), but there is definitely something to learn from what the others have done. This is one of the great skills that makes us humans as opposed to other animals.

For those who don't believe in anything supernatural (whether you call it God, inspiration, or collective consciousness, or whatever), our brain is just a very fancy computer. When we were born, it had some pre-wiring done based on our genetics, that allows us to scream when we are hungry, and be scared when we are in danger so that more blood get pumped in our muscles, and of course, for males at least, also having blood pumped into a specific muscle when we feel the urge to reproduce (at least, for most males ;-). But that's it. That's about all the human animal needs to survive and reproduce, get fed, flee danger, and have sex.

Yet, there is a little subtlety that was added to our brain pipes that allows us to learn from our experiences and make new links to create bigger pipes in our brain and invent abstract concepts that we can discuss amongst ourselves... Creativity is one of those abstract concepts that might simply be a complex combination of simple reflexes and the more we are exposed to the art of others, the more we feel inspired to create our own. After many generations of humans that have impressed each other with their creations, we got to a point where we have a hard time believing that only a few simple brain pipes could come up with all this, so we convince ourselves that it must come from a supernatural power that inspires us... Maybe... Maybe... I dunno... What do you think?

Arriving to the suburbs parking where my car is patiently waiting for me (good boy), so I will stop here, and let you have fun with this little reflexion of mine...

Till next time...

BYE
MAD