Creativity: A Metaphor For A Missing Moment

According to over 7 billion people we (humans) are alive. We're not quite sure exactly how long we have been doing this thing called life nor how long we have been conscious that it has been happening. However, the great majority of us believe that something different from absolutely nothing has been occurring in the universe for quite some time now. One day a shift occurred in the dark abyss and whether it was God or a God particle we have been detecting life ever since.

I liken the entirety of our lives to a blip on a CD. Wait, I suppose that reference is a little antiquated....allow me to try again. I liken the entirety of our lives to a blip on a poorly copied Ipod file. Imagine that the Ipod track is called "Complete Silence" and the track is put on repeat. There would be no way to determine when the track begins or ends because the silence would have no ending. However, if there was the tiniest imperfection in the track then you would hear a tiny audible distortion once every time that the track is played. This original Ipod flaw is representative of human creativity. Our mere existence implies a lack of perfection We are that little break in the silence. No matter how well we compensate we will always register as something different from the norm.

How is this relevant you ask? I think that individual human creativity is based around this same concept. While I do believe that we have original impulses the majority of our creativity is in fact based in error. Most of the great inventions that exist today are variations or extensions of a preexisting theme. Many of the great original ideas have been by accident or through observing a naturally occurring act and mimicking it.

When I speak of creativity though I am doing so with an emphasis toward artistic creativity. I think that technology is the natural enemy of true creativity because of its ability to produce predictable results. There is no better example than the internet era to articulate this argument.

Long before a million monkeys were typing on a million typewriters information traveled very slowly. Like the game of telephone that we all played as kids ideas took a long time to get from one side of the country to the other and when it did it was usually vastly different from what it began as. Someone may have been hard of hearing, someone else might have had a speech impediment while another person might have just been an asshole who wanted to watch the world burn. Whatever the reason, it was rare for a string of 8 to 10 words to be able to survive a trek of a million minds without being messed with.

The invention of the record player allowed us the unique experience of being able to hear a song at our leisure over and over again. This afforded any child who fancied themselves a musician the a chance to annoy their parents by loudly singing along with their favorite songs for hours. Some other kids might have got stung by the six string bug and bought themselves a guitar in order to duplicate some of their favorite riffs. Invariably while trying to decipher lyrics or the solo from Comfortably Numb a few errors occurred. Sometimes those misheard lyrics were better than the original and sometimes those discovered guitar notes were more interesting than mere duplication. The next thing you know those same kids who were listening to lyrics were now writing their own and those kids playing covers poorly were writing their own music. In essence their inability to seamlessly duplicate gave them the means to create.

Certainly Hollywood with its penchant for solely releasing reboots, remakes and sequels has a little to do with  influencing the world's lack of creativity. Certainly Hollywood with its penchant for releasing copycat reality shows and singing competitions that encourage kids to sing karaoke has a little something to do with it as well  but, a void in creativity has often in the past been the impetus for creation. So what then is the greatest reason for the slowing down of all creation? The Internet.

It is true that the internet has been instrumental in changing the pace at which we live our lives and that it has greatly reduced the time it takes to find an answer due to millions of minds working on a common problem.  However, in terms of originality the internet has stifled us in many ways. 

In order to create there needs to be that gap in time when we reflect on what we have learned and add our own little bit or variation. Sites like Youtube have given us access to all the information that we need whenever we need it. This means that any song you want to learn has been tabbed out and videotaped so that you can watch it on an endless loop until you get it right. You no longer have to wait for your favorite song to come on the radio and imagine what your favorite singer is saying. Anticipation is all but dead and has instead been replaced by an endless supply of white noise. Generally speaking what is funny or interesting is instantly reposted and immediately becomes a dominant thread of conversation. No details are lost in translation, everyone ends up getting their news from the same pool of information. As a result everyone makes the same observations about the same things and are only look as deeply as the most recent update on their Tumblr account into any issue/topic. Whatever buzz words you feel like you have discovered will be used by all of your peers within minutes. If someone should take the time to develop a well articulated thought by the time it comes out of the oven it is passe. Plugging in keeps us in tune with society but the song we're singing is Friday by Rebecca Black and we aren't singing it ironically.

Kids Think The Darndest Things

I was recently pondering my accidental use of the phrase "all intensive purposes" and feeling a little shameful. As an adult  any time that someone else picks out something that I say that is grammatically incorrect or otherwise inappropriately used I feel embarrassed. In my own small, petty way I feel inferior to them, in that moment. Even if I am technically more intelligent than someone else or if I am deeper and more thoughtful I find it upsetting for days when I expose myself and say something stupid. So this got me to thinking, have I always been like this? Have I always felt guilt or shame when I made a faux pas in the past or failed to make a logical leap to an otherwise obvious conclusion? and the answer is no.


I tried to think back on some words or ideas that escaped me and others as a child and I came up with a few.


1) When I was young I often heard this phrase uttered from another kid's lips: "What are you...Death?" Hilariously they had misheard their brother/sister/mother/father say the word "deaf" a time or two and since they had no basis for comparison, decided that the word was "death". So, in a surprising twist of fate perhaps the person calling me "deaf" was infact "death" himself.

2) As a youngster I'd often see commercials about the danger and severity of HARD ATTACKS. That's right, I was deathly afraid that my father might have a hard attack and I wouldn't be able to help him. 

3) Dandy Lions, self explanatory.

4) Every year there was a big to do about cookies. Apparently, young girls all over the world were selling Girl  Guy cookies. I could never figure out why packs of young girls would sit outside the super market and call themselves Girl guys but their cookies sure were delicious.

5) This last one is more of an anecdote of stupidity rather than a hooked on phonics fail. When I was 8 or 9 I was told that we the family were going to pick up my mother's new car. It was a 1988 Chrysler Lebaron. Just by its fake French name you can tell that the Lebaron meant business. With a whopping 100 horsepower the vehicle could scoot down the road with the prestige and elegance of a much pricier sedan. As we pulled into the lot I looked up and read the large letters that were suspended on a string in the sky, they said: USED CARS. I thought to myself "Used cars, what a strange way of saying new car!" After all, used was a term to denote something that had been USED not something that was clearly new.

As we climbed into my mother's new car which had the vague scent of cigarette smoke and ass crack I decided to ask my mother this question: "Mom, why is your new car called a used car?" What followed was an anticlimactic explanation about the difference between actually new and previously owned. I remember afterward feeling a little deflated. The illusion and triumph of something that was new had disappeared. I did not know of nor did I want to grasp the concept of "new to me". I didn't know it then but pretending to be enthusiastic about being dealt someone else's leftovers was about to become the theme for my entire life.