blog five

Before reading these introductory chapters of the Hughes book, I hadn't really considered that there is somewhat of a formula to creativity. I always assumed that creativity was just a "spark" rather than an entire (somewhat unconscious) process. According to the text, creativity relies on both our divergent reasoning (which is more of the "spark" aspect) and our convergent reasoning (which is the fruition of the creative experience of the creator), the latter of which I had overlooked. This idea is more specifically explained in the part of the text where Hughes asserts that the drugs or other inductions used by shamans and other creative people are the means; the usefulness of the experience to the people or the finished piece or work by the artist, these things are the end.

In the second chapter, I noted that Ramon Medina Silva explains that shamans have the ability to "venture without fear onto the narrow bridge across the great chasm separating the ordinary world from the world beyond" (24). Later in the book, Hughes calls them "professional dreamers" (49). In essence, shamans are responsible for communicating with larger forces (Nature, God, etc.) in some other world or consciousness and for then explaining their experience (and its meaning) to their communities. They achieve this through entering altered states of consciousness. I think it's interesting that these states are altered, when, apparently (no offense to shamanistic societies) this could be done by everybody. Thinking about famous artists, musicians, etc., drugs are an accessible portal to an altered state: the realm within which creative experience lies.

By the third chapter, Hughes is informing us about our brains, which are the processing centers of our bodies. I think it was an interesting point that both "sides" of our brains can be used for both mundane and creative processes. I think that someone like Dali would have employed his right brain for the purposes of creating his arts, while someone like Bill Gates would employ his left brain for his more analytical creations. Either way, both were able to use their brains to create new, meaningful work.

Continuing in chapter three, Hughes' point about the Internet and the dissociation of the self got me thinking... For people who are used to functioning as a unified whole most of the time, the Internet allows them to explore other parts of themselves, perhaps revealing something new. After all, according to the text, creativity is about "confront[ing] differene aspects of [our]selves and emerg[ing] with a new unity" (45). This new unity would result in some creation itself or possibly a new understanding.

Finally, the fourth chapter about dreams (something we've discussed in The Field), illustrates, once again, that our dreams unlock our unconscious. Hughes compares the dreamer to the psychotic, and I see his point as impressively valid. Aren't we all a little bit crazy in our dreams? And isn't that one way to know the difference between our dreams and our "ordinary" consciousness (the fact that we view dreams and psychotics as crazy)? Lucid dreaming--if only I could have more of those!--is one way that we can access and empower our creativity. Dreams, like trances, enable us to communicate with things that we do not "normally" bother with or understand in our "ordinary" consciousness. Dreams, out of body experiences, drugs, and the like are all ways in which we can connect to our unconsciousness or access a kind of collective consciousness (remember the Zero Point Field), in order to harness our creativity and produce something with it.