Thing 5: Reflections on RSS Read
I liked the post Of Creativity and Art. The blog site is called Newly Ancient, and in this post, the author has captured the way I feel not only about creativity as it relates to art, but also as it relates to teaching (which is a form of communication). He writes that art is a product of creativity. Products can be observed, qualified, and quantified, whereas creativity is more ethereal. I agree. If art is a product, creativity is a process, and for each creator, it is very unique and most often impossible to define or transfer.
Example: I believe that teachers are born, not made. Teaching is a process; it is not a concrete skill that colleges can just cut and paste into job occupants’ toolboxes, or minds. Teaching is certainly creative. Lecturing, on the other hand, is not. Lecturing is an attempt to transfer information. Teaching is a process of communication, and communication by its very definition, is a two-way street.
I suppose my readers will bring up that tree falling in the forest here. (If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?) I am not a scientist; I am a phiIosopher. I will suppose that there is living matter in that forest, and the sound waves react with it.
I think that our contemporary definition of the word communication is off-base, as is the word creativity. Both are processes, and therefore, INTERACTIVE. Speaking AT someone does not make one a communicator; transferring teaching SKILLS to students in formal education classes does not make her or him a teacher, and attempting to define creativity as the process of producing art, is to reduce it to an occupation, or a simple skill, rather than to understand it as a way of BEING, or EXISTING.
People who create do so not because they can, but because they must.
I am NOT happy with this post, and as a creative person, I would spend much more time refining these words if I could. But since this is just ONE piece of a weekly ssignment, and there are many more pieces to finish, I must leave it here. Perhaps if someone comments on this blog, we can then establish a conversation, which will help me streamline the thoughts. Creativity IS ongoing.
