Creativity and primeval soup

I've been reading Ewan's post on creativity - where good ideas come from. And already from the comments there it's obvious that creativity underpins exciting practice in all manner of areas, whether it's marketing or micro-surgery. However, we all tend, I think, to look at the places we're most familiar with, and mine tend to the traditional.

In discussion with Mr B I pointed out that while he is a creative musician, I am not. I am quite a competent one, with a decent voice and an ability to read at sight and to interpret certain kinds of vocal line - but I don't write music and I don't improvise on any instrument. I do, on the other hand, create in the literary sense, with most of my most satisfying creative moments resulting in a poem with which I am happy. So I'm going to wander briefly down the process which results in the creation of a poem.

I sometimes find myself in a situation where I think: I'd love to write about this. I should write something about this place/experience/emotion. And nothing happens. It's dead. Or perhaps I produce a line or two or several - and discard them. Hopeless. So when does the magic happen? It happens when a phrase or a line suddenly comes into my head and demands attention. Here's an example. I was standing in Delville Wood on the Somme battlefield, a place filled with the resonance of the battle fought there, and a line came: "and birdsong in an empty wood". I actually said it aloud, sort of fixing it. A short while later, down another leafy avenue "and bluebells on the parapet". By the time a third line crept in, I knew I had to remember them and dictated them one at a time into my camera as I filmed the trees. That first line - which ended up as the final line of the poem - gave me the metre and the mood; the rest followed.

At the time, I wasn't thinking about writing or poems; I was thinking about death and loss. The rest of the poem came galloping out when I had a chance to sit down and think about it, but that first line had given it to me. So the creativity came from something over which I had no control, and I know from experience that I can go for months without having a single creative moment. But after the initial power-surge, as it were, what happens to the result is anything but random. All I have ever read, all I have ever worked on in language, these feed into the writing, providing me with word-associations, imagery, sentence-structures, line-breaks and so on. It's unconscious, in a way, but at the same time I'm aware of it.

The other thing I'm aware of is the need to keep reading and studying so that my own creativity is nourished. If I visit a friend who encourages me to read a poet I've never encountered, I can find myself suddenly bursting to write - perhaps because of an idea, or maybe simply a sense of liberation given by seeing a new style unfold. And that goes into the voice which, I am told, is now recognisably my own. Add to that the immense reservoir of language and image to be found in religion - not just religious poetry, though that's there too - and you have the basis on which creativity is fed.

Come to think of it: when I was teaching English, one of the greatest gulfs in the experience of the pupils, one of the biggest barriers which they had to overcome in understanding so much of English literature, came from the lack of exposure to religious experience and language in their lives. I felt I had to fill in so much background to make their understanding more complete that it was like having to explain why a joke was funny. So maybe the answer to the question "Where do good ideas come from" has to do with the quality of the primeval soup in the brain of the creative person - even though there will always be many more people who will simply interpret and recreate.

Just like me and music, in fact.

Blast from the past

DGS Wind Band 1989
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This has to be a record for me - I put this photo on flickr this morning and already it's had 93 hits: a tribute to the power of tagging?* It's a bit extraordinary how time passes; this feels like a foray into another era on the one hand, aided by the terrible quality of photo reproduction in the local paper at the time ( I'm happy to say this is hugely improved), while on the other I can recall it so well that it could have been only last year.

Life is, in fact, incredibly short - a brief candle indeed.

Note: The band members look incredibly well-dressed; they were in fact more uniform-conscious than many of their contemporaries outwith the band.
*No. It's the power of Twitter, actually.

Walking on water?

I’m writing this on Sunday morning, watching Edublogger’s latest keynote – or second latest or whatever – and growing slightly concerned by the realisation that I’m preaching in just over an hour and I haven’t delivered the sermon to the mirror, or even timed it. I usually do this, but I’ve had friends staying for the past three days and time has flown, in talking, walking and – inevitably – catering.

I have been thinking about this sermon, however, for the past three weeks (that’s when I found out it was my turn). And for once, almost all of my subject-matter is my own – either self-generated or springing from conversation with Kimberly – with one theological area which was new to me but which made something else fall into place.

And where does Ewan’s video come into it? Well, I still hanker after the ease with which I used to teach my own subject – that total familiarity which allowed for a rapport with my students and the chance that I too might enjoy the experience. The audience in the video is an adult one, as mine will be in – woops – an hour. I have my bullet points, and the full script as backup. But I know that something vital to the process will be missing.

No-one will put their hand up. No-one will volunteer an answer to a rhetorical question. no-one will burst out laughing – though that will probably be because I’ll be inhibited too. And no-one really imagines that I have any authority to be telling them anything.

I’m an English teacher, not a theologian. I’m a good teacher, I have expertise in language and literature – but few people recognise that there is skill involved here. I’m perfectly happy talking to adults, but I’d find a crowd at a demonstration less challenging than a tiny congregation who have known me for years. And so I’ll stick to my bullet-points and not make any asides, and I hope I’ll not be boring and that maybe – just maybe – some Good News will seep through the cracks.

Here we go.


Footnote: I've often said that we of the Lay Team should be subjected to the equivalent of a student teacher's Crit Lesson - a Mystery Worshipper sort of thing. Today I had my MW in the shape of the Primus. Beware of what you ask for ....

Flying high

Being someone's mother can be a real pain. Right now, thinking of Edublogger, Mrs E and Baby E travelling to New Zealand, I am acutely aware of how much of a pain. However, I'm relieved to see their plane heading serenely and on time over the Pacific, 238 miles from Los Angeles with just over 6,000 miles still to go. Thanks to Flight stats, a nifty site which reminds me of my own trip to NZ, I can follow their progress, know if they're going to land on time, know that they took off 6 minutes late. (On Emirates airlines, we followed the map of our progress all night over the Indian Ocean. Nightmare) I feel strangely reassured - but glad that I at least was not compelled to check the computer at 4am ...

On another tack entirely, I'm off to the Cathedral of the Isles again, to sing Scottish music from the time of James 4th to the present day with the St Maura Singers. This quartet has been on the go since 1968, though purists will be glad to hear that our current soprano is of the generation below ours. In fact, the combination of the quartet and the Cathedral is largely responsible for my being a Piskie - even for my being a Christian. God the Musician?

I like that idea.

We are ...

We are a Grandmother! This will be the only time I quote the Blessed Margaret in a blog post - trust me on this. But after pacing about the floor of long-suffering friends in Edinburgh, we've just had a call from Ewan to announce the arrival of his daughter. I don't see him blogging this tonight, but I'll leave the details to him - at least till the morning.

Apparently today - no; it's yesterday now - was a very auspicious day, being the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's day, a day in which you carve the name of the beloved on melon. At least, this is what the Bishop of Edinburgh told us at Spiky Mike's, aka St Michael and All Saints, Tollcross, in the morning. Presumably he knew what he was talking about.

Which is more than I do, after a day which began with a speeding drive through Edinburgh at 5.30am. I shall lay off the bubbly till tomorrow. Goodnight!