Bad Weather and What Pours Out; Inspiration and its Whereabouts

Painting by Zao Wou-Ki
04-06-62

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As she laid there, visibly shaken, in the middle of the eye of Anemoi.
Eurus whispered in her ear:
“Fear not, my dear, just lie and rest
For the world forever to forget
Your strain will remain in vain
Thus being trapped in pain

For you, zephyr, for you to see
I will vanquish this agony
I, fearsome, sword in hand,
Will strike upon notus’ land
To free me from your titanic grip
To escape this blustery kip

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She enters the wind wall with unbound will

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Ever raging ,ever trembling
thunder roaring, sky is changing
wind strong, air is shaking
gaping rifts, ground is breaking
Aeolian voices fading

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She exists the wind wall visibly beleaguered. Her sword stuck between the eyes of Zephyr. Clothes partly ripped of her body. Yelling:

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I struck upon you godly fiend
My mind of nightmare weaned
For I have fulfilled my destiny
Banishing my remedy
Now show me what you have to offer
For me to finally live prosper

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For those people that cannot be bothered reading all of this I have a little poetry attempt that connects the idea of battling with the wind gods, quite fitting if you consider the horrible weather outside. The idea was to represent the challenge of a strong force and just see what it mixes with.  A very simple poem but it had to fulfil a purpose

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Chaos and Creation; A Thought

I sat in my kitchen thinking about this website and the need to upload something again. It is the exam period, so I had to shift some priorities around, but I do not want to neglect this project. So what should I write about? A vocation that is always challenging so let’s try to come up with something, or anything for that matter. Let me just take the first things that are going on around me and do something with it, shall we? How about the weather and trying to write something? Ahh, see my lazy line of thinking… The next best thing.

There is a terrible downcast outside in freaking June. I sit here with my laptop in my kitchen and wondering and pondering how I shape and adapt the circumstances into a fitting mold. A ridiculous wind is tearing at the trees outside. This leads me to think about clouds, rain and all that jazz. It creates an evocation of some stuff I wrote ages ago and slowly creates the idea of what I ought to write on some blog.

I titled this blogpost: Bad Weather and What Pours Out; Creativity and its Whereabouts for a specific reason.  I want to tackle the idea of creativity and I thought that a raincloud might be a fun idea to tackle it.

How You Fill Clouds with Rain to Have Ideas; That Almost Sounds Poetic.

I might have to premise it a bit more to give it some sustenance and formulate some groundwork. Creativity is, indeed, a tricky one. Bear with me at this attempt to explain something I’m thinking and constructing on the fly. What is creativity and where does it pour out? Is it found just by waiting or shall I seek it out? And in which direction should I set sail? I asked myself this, or… I rather doing it right now on the fly. Look at this blog as something that tries to explain the concept by recreating it. In essence, learn by doing. I will put you in my backpack and see where we land. Keep in mind that I love rambling, so this might be one of those longer posts again. So, relax and kick back grab a coffee or your vice of choice and enjoy.

(There are a million questions that will only clutter this discussion. I will try to have a reasonable starting point)

So being creative and finding inspiration…What is it really? Well, intrinsically I would like to look at it as 2 different entities at first and then gradually combine them within 1 concept.

Firstly, I would like to introduce an approach that fosters creativity of some sort. It is a very subjective approach so it might not be useful whatsoever for you and, heck maybe you gauge it completely differently. Nevertheless, I want to make a point. To make matters worse I will not be able to give you a clear-cut approach to this topic so be warned. Well, and- if I may allow myself to say that- I am trying to achieve the exact opposite. Creativity is indeed a process and what good is a direct approach to something that relies on a multitude of approaches?

“If you walk on ice you might as well dance.”

 I would suggest that you approach it as such. Look at it like a medium that needs input, a mouth that needs feeding to have a brain that keeps producing; you fill clouds for rain. “But how?” you might ask, and what does this input look like? Definitely a reasonable question to ask. Well, yet again there is no direct answer… but worry not this makes it better… (I know I have not said much yet, have I? hahaha )

For me, the creative process is the creation of the interconnection and interrelationship between 2 entities which in of itself have an appeal to a thought. These thoughts or carriers of innate expression (the field of semantics is occupied with this) have a degree of expression. The creation of a metaphor would be, in essence, the final product of the dialog between your inner interlocutor. Look at it like you would discuss ideas and concepts with yourself.  You combine different ideas and concepts you have rummaging in your mind. How would idea A intertwine with concept B? How is Feeling C related to object G and how do I present that in a coherent manner? How coherent should it be? Should I lead with something direct or indirect? Should I maybe this or that or whatever?

You see what I mean? Good ol’ chaos.

To wrap this idea up, I would l would label it a “modus of expression”: an emotion, a thought, a concept an idea etc that expresses something in any way. Engage with different ideas and throw them together. How does this modus of expression mix with that idea or concept? And how do I do that in the first place? I am afraid that this is, yet again, a question I can´t directly answer, but I can share some thoughts!

This would lead me to the “process” part of the of the creativity and I would like to engage with that concept.

I am an avid advertiser of the idea that chaos is indeed an enabler/input for creation. Well, depending on how you define chaos. Since we like pretending to have any clue about science, here is a neat definition I can get behind:

“the property of a complex system whose behavior is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions”

dictionary google definition

Chaos connotes a vast multitude of things and it is tainted rather negatively as it is the breeding ground for the unknown and potentially dangerous. People tend to dislike the unfathomable to the extend that they much rather abide by the known. I mean, you are somewhat in the clear with yourself ,but maybe, oh maybe ,you are a tad bit scared of some ideas? Some thought lingering somewhere in your head. The one you just thought about whilst reading this silly line? Maybe you have your ideas of the future, the past, and the now neatly tied and tucked away into different drawers. Each drawer worked out neatly to the last bit, down to the oddest of odd question of your past. You wrestled long and hard with the could- have-beens, the what ifs, and whatever else poisoned your mind. You made a conscious and unconscious effort to resolve the millions of questions over the last odd years of your existence. Well, why be scared then?

Chaos as an infinite number of potential outcomes is kinda scary. The abductive heuristic represented within Occam´s razor will inevitably manifest itself within the thoughts of the ever questioning. To put it in simpler terms it is the inference to the best explanation, which does not include the problem of human “logical” interference.

 (Here a little link about the theory of Occam’s razor it might be a neat additional read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor)

 It might be human nature to paint chaos in the most vivid of colors.

As there is room for interpretation the curious mind tends to engage with it. Possibility created breading grounds for the imagined unknown and all that is left for it is to sow and reap whatever ideas planted. Chaos sprouts in the must miraculous ways; whilst we are occupied with watering and withering it ourselves.

 And, well…No lover leaves a rose garden without blood on their hands. 

 The self-exploration seems to plague our minds; plague it to the extend that we get fascinated by it. Men get tangled up and flung around by the fascination of chaos, fascinated to the extend that there will be little of man left. We accredit possibility of thought the reign of existence. We lost the ephemeral as such, and breath live into chaos. The possible has become the real by thought, not reason. The ideas has materialized itself within our mind through possibility; we gave a body to an idea, a soil to a plant, chaos a place in our mind.

 Well, if you do not believe me and proclaim to have the mental fortitude of a mountain; go and seek for yourself. Go out in the woods at night and see for yourself how much fresh breath is blown into ideas of your mind. Go and sit down in nothing but darkness, surrounded by a plethora of unanswered questions. You will realize that you ask more questions then you can ever answer. And it grows, stronger and stronger, till the breath of fresh air turns into something else. Panic is slowly creeping into you, slowly up your neck with grasping hands. It claws you without a touch and slowly, wheezing into your neck, with your mental manifestation of your worst ideas.

It creates a false sensation of the “real”. As real as an idea can be I reckon. Exactly this idea, or the million other potential ideas of what ought to be created by chaos – some of them far far worse then the quick  reminder I just set- are to be put into the chaos drawer. There will be one drawer that will excite and scare you at the same time. For some people it might be labeled the what if, filled with questions baring the same name; What if I said this or that or done this or nothing; for others it bears a different name; your personal attributed name.

Oh what a negative image of chaos you just set why would I engage with it at all now? Will I just scare myself to the extent of succumbing to my own mind? Well, see I wanted to prove a point at this given moment. We connote chaos to a lot of negative things. Since we won´t sit in a forest at 3 am wondering about the dope animals living around us. Our imagination shout and yells potential problems into our mind and we create a little microcosmos for ideas. The dilemma is thus created; we create a room for ideas to breathe, we call into life an idea.

The goal would be to curb these thoughts and funnel them into something feasible and approachable. The exploration of an idea is NOT the manifestation of an idea. Just because you think of something does not mean it is real or exists. Think of it like googling your symptoms when you are sick. You have a headache and a sore throat but google tells you the worst of the worst possible outcomes. Yeah you might have a serious illness but it will probably only be  something minor. (Keep the causation and correlation in mind!)

Well, what an interesting premise for something new eh? This idea of chaos made me think about how it would be connected to the creation of art.

What makes you mind ramble and raffle around to the extend that you must set chaos in order? And why chaos or why even order? We can deduce slowly but surely that the goal would  be to achieve a certain mindset or approach to shape and shift a plethora of ideas together and merge them into one cohesive “thing”. A thing of use, and idealy, a thing that helps you put the creative chaos in order. Some people see a therapeutic value in this.

Chaotic Order through Materialization?

Well, you are not just materialize it out of thin air are you now? What is that even and furthermore when does that even occur? . An odd question to tackle out of the blue but then again creating art is materializing thought if you think of it in simpler terms.

Well, curiosity and the exploration of it is key. Look at curiosity as broad as you heart desires. We are getting abstract now ladies and gents. If you made it this far kudos to you!

The confrontation between the potential of creativity, thus conversely creation, and chaos enables the emergence of the new. Take the chaos and extract potential out of it. Our consciousness transforms these thoughts into a presence.

This leads us to the process aspect, or like I like to put it “you cage the thoughts. “But how? Well, here comes the creation aspect. Remember the cage that went looking for a bird? The blogpost about absurdist poetry and so on? Come on you remember the dope Aphorism from Kafka?

“A cage went in search of a bird” -Kafka

Well, you probably forgot and that is fair; so let us blow some fresh air into that idea. Let s keep that romanticization of the idea that you can “trap” a free thought an idea or whatever the bird stands for is in this case.

(This might be a stretch of a thought but then again explaining and exploring it helps me understand it as well. Explaining anything subjective would entail pages upon pages and this blogpost has been long enough already)

You could make a claim that you try to catch “the bird” by creating a microcosm for it. By establishing a degree of boundaries you can start exploring. You interject your idea into a different surrounding and let it play out. This could be labelled as the chaotic nature. Let your thoughts wonder and ponder about the what if and the could-have-beens. How does this idea bounce of the book I read 2 weeks ago, the feeling I recently had, or whatever the heck inspires you, raises questions within you, and engages you.

The human should approach creativity and creation as such. We should be open-minded with a conscious effort of creativity; Encounter that which you have not encountered yet. This mindset enables me to intertwine different ideas and views. Through this I hope to find anything new and, well… usable. Throw open the drawers and learn to cage the chaos. Keep something to note things down with you and just see where it takes you.

Disclaimer:

Well, I think that inspiration and creativity should, ideally, include each other so I will allow myself to merge them together to facilitate the whole process of “inspiration leading to creation”.

If you actually read through the whole thing and came across something you want to tell me or the world feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a message. Feel free to subscribe as well since it is literally free.