Creative thinking

[vaneramos]

Photo: Ring-billed gull, yesterday at the Beaches, Toronto, 3:43 p.m.

~~~~~~~~~~

[Toronto] I want to say something important. I want to say nothing. We need to let everything drain out of our creations in order for them to say anything. To find meaning, we need to embrace no meaning.

Yesterday we went to the Beaches, Danny and I. There's a line of shops along that eastern section of Queen Street I had never noticed before. We found a bead store, a Wicca shop, a new yarn store. We passed The Nutty Chocolatier reluctantly. You can visit the Beaches and spend all kinds of money without paying any attention to the water.

But we walked to the sand and passed through a cloud of gulls. I photographed them lying still on the wind, rising in small clouds. I stood on a pile of rocks and took shot after shot of waves breaking, sending spray into the air, trying to capture a moment in time. We walked through the strange wintery light of late afternoon, the sun setting over Toronto's skyline. It laid a pearly path across the bay where people were flying big kites. These kite flyers used the full force of wind to surf across the sand. One man in a wetsuit went skimming across the rough bay on a snowboard. How did he keep his balance with something as ragged and temperamental as a kite?

How do any of us keep our balance? We're buffeted by ideas and emotions. I stand with my face into the wind sometimes, but it all drains past. How do you hold onto it?

I dig to the root of creativity to understand what makes it happen. We must understand how culture has shaped our ideas. Some of these conventions can be discarded, salvaging others but with a critical view.

Actually, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I'm resting like a gull on the wind. Gulls don't think about what they do. It's not that they're stupid. I believe many animals are sentient, beyond what we have traditionally supposed. But they think about flying less than we think about walking.

Our remarkable brains give us the ability to stop ourselves in the middle of something instinctive and ask ourselves what we're doing. We have these imaginations that can lift us out of the moment and pretend we might be doing something else. This allows us to think of better things, to invent tools and delicious foods, paintings. Instead of walking we could build a cart or car.

Sometimes our imaginations fail us. Danny and I went to see Hero last night, another stirring, sensual martial arts film in the same tradition as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But in this case I was disturbed by the basic thesis of the film: that force of arms, might and cold-blooded brutality could be the best road to lasting peace. The idea, which seems to justify current world events, is despicable and irresponsible. People invented war to solve primitive problems. Sometimes with the aim of improving ourselves we imagine things that degrade our world, ourselves. We need something better now.

We enjoy life when we live in the moment, not craving much more than we have. We strive with curiosity not desperation. We improve ourselves by lifting our minds temporarily into different moments and possibilities.