Jazz, theater, dance.
Do you imagine artists working alone, in a basement somewhere, detached from society? Do you imagine them being poor, bad with money, unable to function well in the everyday world of work? This image is mostly false. Artists are embedded in the world, just like the rest of us, according to a recent article by… Read More Artists Who Work
Like all creativity, writing is a wandering and iterative process, where the creator doesn’t know where it’s going. A writer makes hundreds of creative decisions along the way–sometimes, a hundred in just one day. Which word to use; choosing a comma, period, or semicolon; moving a paragraph a few pages forward, or maybe up at… Read More Writers’ Drafts: Who Needs Them?
I’m re-reading John Dewey’s 1934 book Art as experience in connection with an article I’m writing. This passage, near the end (p. 347), jumped out at me: It is by way of communication that art becomes the incomparable organ of instruction, but the way is so remote from that usually associated with the idea of education,… Read More Teaching is an Art (John Dewey)
I was going through some old files this weekend, and I found a journal I kept while designing videogames for Atari in 1982. My journal ends on December 22, 1982. I’ll never read the whole thing, but I scanned the first and last pages, and here’s the final paragraph on the last page: Though I can’t speak for… Read More Videogame Design as Art
Who knew that turtles played a key role in the downtown New York experimental music scene? A recent New York Times article calls it “a substantial, and neglected, history of turtles in experimental music.” Reporter William Robin did interviews with influential composers in musical Minimalism, including the members of an influential group from the 1960s, Meredith Monk… Read More Turtles and Creativity
Here’s the creative process behind the hit song by Martha and the Vandellas, “Dancing in the Street.” It’s a story of collaboration and of the zigzagging creative process, as reported to Marc Myers in the WSJ. In early 1964, songwriter Ivy Jo Hunter was in a Motown studio, playing around on a piano and trying… Read More Dancing in the Street
In 1949, the psychologist Donald MacKinnon started a research center at UC Berkeley called “The Institute for Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR).” During World War II, Dr. MacKinnon had developed personality and ability tests for the U.S. military. The purpose of the IPAR was to extend this research into civilian life. One of its priorities was to… Read More The Creative Architect Study
Here’s a story of the unpredictable, improvisational process of creativity. It’s the story of how the 1968 hit song “Magic Carpet Ride” was created by the band Steppenwolf. Maybe the process works this way: A songwriter writes a song, usually alone, and then gathers the band together to perform the song. If that’s what happens, then musical… Read More Magic Carpet Ride: How Music Gets Created
In today’s New York Times, author Stephen King challenges a common belief: The more one writes, the less remarkable one’s work is apt to be. He agrees that there are a few super-prolific writers who aren’t great writers; mystery novelist John Creasey, who’s written 564 novels under 21 different pseudonyms; and Barbara Cartland, with over… Read More To Be a Better Writer: Write More Books
For my summer job while in high school, in 1977 I passed a stage audition at the Busch Gardens theme park, in Williamsburg Virginia, to perform as the costumed character “Buford Beaver.” Just today, I found a long-lost photo that shows me, in costume, with my mother and grandmother, check it out! I stumbled onto… Read More The Costumed Character “Buford Beaver”
The Creativity Guru 