The general act of creativity is often regarded with either a sense of revery or of nonchalance, depending upon the particular proclivities and station in life of the observing individual.
Those observing in admiration might perceive the process as engaging with forces beyond human understanding as a means of moving along the needle of spirituality, as it were. Some less invested folks might dismiss artistic endeavors altogether as a counterproductive waste of time, and some of the most natural conduits to the creative spirit might simply view the creation of a masterwork as a typical Tuesday.
In any case, most folks have their own ideas of how creativity manifests and what its function in society actually entails. Many creators strive to avoid looking too much into the inner workings of the muse altogether for fear of disrupting an unseen balance responsible for the manifestation of the work.
“It’s so hard to understand. I don’t really understand it,” Tom Petty once said. Despite being one of the most successful and highly regarded creative forces of his time as a result of his own songwriting mastery, the musician was reluctant to look too closely at the muse itself during his lifetime.
“I hesitate to even try to understand it, for fear that it might make it go away. It’s a spiritual thing.”
Indeed, many have regarded the creative process as a sort of magic. This is true at least to an extent, as historically the most progressive and interesting artistic work has often emerged as an instinctual or improvisational response to certain stimuli.
However, one might argue that the process of creating something new isn’t at all about the manifestation of something entirely unique out of thin air, but about the strategic arrangement or already-existing elements.
This is evidenced in part by shared elements among otherwise disparate artistic works. Paul Gaugin’s Spirit of the Dead Walking, for example, was directly inspired by Édouard Manet’s Olympia, itself a work inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino.
The blues as a musical form is an uncannily effective springboard from which unique ideas can be derived from a well which has been visited time and time again over the course of generations. From Robert Johnson, The Rolling Stones, Hank Williams, and just about everyone in between, the 12-bar blues structure is one which has served as the basis for as many tasty offerings as have flour and eggs.
One must consider the restrictions with which humanity is confronted based upon its own limited sensual perception. There are only so many colors, tones, and visual/auditory stimuli which a person can even perceive, yet the realm of the arts allows for essentially endless variation.
The variation in question is a result not of the manifestation of never-before-seen elements, but of the arrangement of existing variables in configurations which may have never been considered previously, or existing configurations in contexts within which they’d never before been considered.
Consider the phenomenon of butterfly effect: one minuscule change leads to a considerable and previously unanticipated impact. A seemingly minor musical decision, for example – such as a bassist electing to go to the third rather than following the rest of the band to the root – can alter the entire chordal and melodic movement of a song, bringing about radically different implications, including and with specific attention to those of the emotional variety.
Such is the case in all forms of artistry in essence. So many remain hung up on the prospect of forcing something otherworldly into existence, when the elements have been spread before each of us all along, ripe for the picking. It’s simply a matter of deciding which pieces one would like to incorporate and where.
