The Bathtub, The Bed, and The Bus

According to psychologist R. Keith Sawyer of Washington University, these are the places that creativity researchers refer to as as the places where different ideas or creative solutions have famously and suddenly emerged. 

 What researchers have discovered is that, when we are faced with a problem that we just can’t seem to solve, simply changing what we are doing, changing context or changing location can activate a different area of the brain, so that if the answer we were seeking wasn’t in the part of the brain we were using, it might be in another.  We might hear or see something that relates, albeit in-directly,  to the problem we had temporarily set aside and then be able to use that information to solve the problem.

 Similarly I believe that the “block” that we all face from time to time can be overcome by switching creative activities.  Over the Christmas holidays I was stuck.  I could not find a way or a reason to pick up the camera and shoot.  But niggling away in the back of my mind was a project that I had started awhile back and had stashed away, not because I lost interest, but because I just didn’t have time.  Years ago I had read a book on the particularly Japanese phenomenon of Ukiyo-E, which roughly translates into “pictures of the floating world.”  Ukiyo-E dates back to the 17th century and it refers to the style of imagery prepared by carving blocks of wood and then printing the images from the wood block.

 As I kid I learned to carve birds and I have always been fascinated with wood carving and carvers.  So  I dug out some carving tools and took one of my photographic images and reproduced it onto a piece of basswood and carved a relief image that I will use to reproduce onto fine hand-made Japanese paper.  This wood block carving is a tremendously satisfying endeavour, meditative in fact, but more importantly I found that I was starting to loosen up a bit, seeing things a little differently and before long, I had the camera back in hand and was shooting again.

 Researchers tell us in fact, that creativity doesn’t come in one sudden burst of creativity, but that it is a process, more like a series of little sparks that when woven together provide the solution to a creative problem, or a block.  It’s always going to be about the process, about collaborating with colleagues and friends, experimenting, trying different approaches, exploring and taking risks.  

 But most importantly perhaps,  it is about moving away from the notion that being creative is about being the artistic type or the genius or having a special gift.  If you wait for that one sudden flash of genius, you may have a very long wait.