00III of potential hindrances to our creative development continued…

You may have noticed that I’ve been stalled out on this chapter for a while. It’s an umbrella assumption that has a way of instigating exponential second guessing. It’s the one that comes charging at me in my  ‘teacher’ role the most. There is this foremost expectation to learn ‘proper’ techniques first. Adult students, parents, and even kids are like, “Don’t you have to know the rules before you break them?”

Those seven words are bandied about far too often and they have a creepy way of settling deeply into many areas of our lives (think of all the times you ask yourself, “am I doing this right?”). So let me just say that while I’m doing my best to present it in a mini chapter, it feels more suited to a dense volume. To begin, I just want to talk about a connection between rules and creativity in very broad terms.

So the first question I want to consider is, what do rules have to do with creativity? 

Let’s recall or imagine that we have an abstract inner sensation, feeling or impulse that wants to be actualized. This may be triggered by an experience or seemingly come from nowhere etc. This ‘something’ requires some action on our part to bring it into this particular physical time and space. If we feel a strong enough urge to act, we’ll start taking steps or making choices for momentum to give shape to the ‘thing’ (I say ‘thing’ but we’re wandering into some metaphysical territory and there’s no time for that right now). In some cases, a step may be to build or arrange thoughts around the impulse as an idea or it could be the immediate selection of materials, tools, and techniques etc. (with no fixed idea of how it will turn out).  How this unformed non-thing is manifested is radically different from one person to the next and, in my case, from one work to the next. I know this might sound confusing or esoteric-y but that’s because these aspects of creativity are in constant flow and so damn evasive.

Sometimes I like to think of the manner of bringing this creative entity into the world as building a fort in the living room. When I have an impulse I want to explore, I have to form a structure to create the space for that something to be expressed, and exist in the physical world. I’ll choose materials and methods like I would gather and assemble blankets and chairs for a fort. Some of these things will be selected by my taste (my favourite blankie a.k.a. maybe paint, a guitar or an inspiring experience) and others just by chance (whatever is in reach). As I am spontaneously and deliberately building the frame, some sheets may slump and cramp the space or a sibling starts messing with it so I’ll have to make adjustments along the way. Expectations, judgements and opinions sometimes have this slumping effect. Some chesterfield may have to be moved aside because it’s taking up space like notes in a song might need to be edited out. Ideally, all of this is playful and sincere or, at least, not self-conscious. Once my fort is in place, I can just crawl in the space I’ve made and give myself up to the present vital experience. Other people may be drawn in by my scaffolding (creative form) but the deeper attraction is to the essence that stirs up something inside of them. The structure is necessary but only to allow for spontaneity without restraint.

John Cage. (source unknown)

American composer and musical theorist, John Cage, once described the need for structure in a lecture:

We really do need structure, so we can see we are nowhere…Everybody has a song which is no song at all: it is a process of singing, and when you sing, you are where you are. All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing.

Back to the question, what do rules have to do with creativity?  For the sake of this inquest, I propose that we consider rules as the aspects that we choose as the structure (fort) for our expression- such as the materials, tools, processes and skills to give form to what needs to be voiced or created in the physical world.

Even though I no longer think in terms of rules when I make my own work, I vividly recall the times when I was grasping for some way to share my mysterious abstract impulses and looked to some authority, pre-existing models or steps to show me the way. And that’s where rules can be trouble.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

-EDGAR DEGAS