Clouds

I know this is really random, but have you ever just looked on Google at pictures of clouds? Today I learned about cloud streets, which if you don't know about, you should really look up. Look at the picture on the right. Because of space, this isn't the full size of it, but you really should (see the URLs at the bottom of this post) it's huge, and absolutely beautiful. I love pictures like these, pictures that make you feel like you are right there in the clouds themselves. It's what everyone loves about window seats on the plane, but somehow I can never capture anything like this. I always end up with a very detailed picture of how scratched up the window was.

Whenever I'm in the car, I can sometimes see beautiful clouds, and my absolute favorite is when you see sunshine streaming through a little hole there, like something in a painting. It's an amazing feeling whenever I witness something like this. It always makes me feel happy and hopeful.

Something I learned about today are cloud streets. I don't know how they are made, because I haven't looked it up, even though I very easily could. I can't really describe this, so I will just include a picture. Let me know what you think!



Cloud streets are pictured on the right.

















Images:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Clouds.JPG
http://dcruzinphotography.com/gallery/cache/Landscapes/Light-Streams-Through-Clouds-Over-Puget-Sound.JPG_595.jpg
http://giceo.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/cloud_streets.jpg

Creativity Reflection

This is it. This is the time, the week, the day that I was dreading. This is the last week of TAG. I know that I will spend the next month or two talking to camp friends about what we plan to do next year, how amazing this year was, and who is coming back.

By September we will probably have created a count down and will know exactly how many months until TAG next year. It's something always on the back of our minds. All of our friends are quickly sick of our never ending sentences that start out with phrases like, "Oh! When I was at camp..." and "At TAG sort of the same thing happened..." I try not to talk about TAG all the time because people really don't understand. We get annoyed looks, sighs, rolled eyes. But instead of thinking about these next, sad, few weeks, I'm going to focus on the last three.

This year in Creativity has been so much fun! I loved learning about the different ideas about creativity, and I didn't know that there were so many. I always thought that creativity was not something that you couldn't produce and build up, I thought it was something that you were either born with or not. I was very interested to learn how you could develop your creativity. In Twyla Tharp's book, she has gray sections at the end of each chapter that show you how to develop the part of creativity that the chapter was talking about. I really enjoyed the book in this class. I thought that it fit in very well to what we were talking about, and it was easy to understand it, and fun to read.

After the book, my favorite part of the class would have to be the games we played. We played The Triangle Game, The Picnic Game, and solved riddles to enhance our creativity. My favorite was The Picnic Game, and we had lots of fun playing this game with some of our friends. Whenever we were bored we would play The Picnic Game. We even played The Triangle Game a few times. Everyone loved The Picnic Game!

What I enjoyed a lot were the exercises that we did to build right and left side brains that were equal, to create a Superbrain! They were called lateral exercises that are really difficult at first, like Finger Walking, but after five minutes or so, you get the hang of until you are really great. The thing I loved about Finger Walking was that it looks like you are just twiddling your thumbs. You can just sit when you are bored, Finger Walking, and no one knows that you are building a Superbrain! That was one of my favorite parts.

There was so much more to this class that trying to go through everything would take a really long time. If I could, I would take this class again next year. It's a class that I would recommend to anyone, started at TAG, or finishing.

Images: http://www.blogcdn.com/nintendo.joystiq.com/media/2008/11/calendar_pages_flipping_sm.jpg

The Creative Habit: Book Review

As part of the Creativity class, we read Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit Learn it and Use it For Life. Though we didn't finish the book, we read bits and pieces of it from scattered places in vague chronological order. It was a much more personal book than I expected.

All authors have voice. They have a certain way of writing that allows you to identify that author, just from the way they string a few words together. It's what I believe makes us say, "Wow! This is a great author!" You can even think about why some people particularly enjoy a certain writer and others think they aren't that great by thinking of it like personality. You could say, that the people who love a certain author love their personality, the way they tell a story. I think it's the same thing that draws us as individuals to certain people.

Tharp has a interesting way of pulling your attention to her book and what's in it by speaking very normally. She doesn't talk with huge words no one can understand, and you can easily imagine her then as a very approachable person if you were to actually meet her. Whether or not this is the case, you are happy to be reading the book, you feel welcome. She makes the book very applicable. I loved the examples of people that she gave for each of her chapters, making it easy to imagine how this applies to you, and you aren't stuck wondering what the point is.

When I first picked up the book, I was afraid of a book that was written in a dense, boring textbook style that would make it a pain to get through. I was very happy to learn that it wasn't. Going back to voice, this is what made this book so enjoyable. It felt like a normal conversation, not something you would have to have a Ph.D. in creativity to be able to follow. It's written for the average person, which is a breath of fresh air to me, since I have been reading psychology journals and theorists' papers for the past three weeks. It was a welcome change. It was written almost in the style of Sean Covey, who wrote the book Seven Habits For Highly Effective Teens, required reading for me last year. Both books have a very easy going style that make them easy, effortless, and even enjoyable to read. Outside of class I have even read the Seven Habits again, which is something that I plan to do with Ms. Tharp's book as well.

The structure of the book also was great. She has one page at the beginning of each chapter that is written in a much larger font that is a brief summary of the chapter, usually with the help of an example. Paragraphs are broken down into sections with big bold headings, sort of like a text book has, and what at the beginning seems like random, here and there, sentences pop out of the rest of the book's pages by having been changed to a red font. These are important parts. The parts that, if you forget anything else from the chapter, you should remember that part, and how it applies.

This was not something that I would have found myself drawn to if I wandered down bookstore shelves, looking for something. But it really would have been a loss had I seen it and decided not to pick it up. I consider myself fortunate that this book was brought to my attention this way. Since I haven't finished it, my first stop at my town's library will to be to see if Tharp's book is in stock.


Image: http://www2.winthrop.edu/studentaffairs/DSU/pages/calendar/images/tharp.jpg

Freedom

A huge problem that most people have when they are attempting to produce something creative is what our creativity class calls, "The

Judge." The Judge is your inner critic, your inner fears of what people might think when you show them your final product. But to create something that you really want to show people, you have to quiet The Judge.

This is a crucial part of the Preparation Stage, and that leads to the Incubation Stage, which leads to the Aha! Moment, which leads to the Verification Stage. Which means that without quieting The Judge, you can never get started.

The best way to accomplish this is to brainstorm. Don’t scratch over something, don’t erase anything, write about whatever you want, get as many ideas out as you can, don’t worry about the correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and most importantly, don’t let your hand stop moving. Don’t even give The Judge a chance. Once you have all of your ideas down, then you can pick and choose which ones you think are the best, and which ones you think you don’t need. A lot of your best ideas can come from these brainstorms (also called brain dumps) that you wouldn’t have gotten had you allowed The Judge to come in. Allowing that stops your whole train of creative thought, and then you don’t get any more ideas.

Look at your list, and look at some of the things that you know The Judge would have kicked out, and look at the ideas that came after that. Think about if those were good ideas, and if they were, remember that had The Judge been there, you probably wouldn’t have those great ideas.

Another thing that I do is if I am writing, I just write out what I know I want to say. That way, I can focus on that and I don’t get caught up in little details. What can happen when I am writing is that I am getting so many ideas so fast that if I stop to re-read something, half of my ideas are gone. So it’s important to me then to just write down the ideas when I have them.

The only difference between this and brainstorming is with my method I either write in complete sentences or in note shorthand only I can understand. With brainstorming you can list things, too, and the medium doesn’t have to be writing.

It’s important to kick The Judge out in the beginning so you can get started, but at some point, it’s also just as important to bring The Judge back in. The Judge is the little voice in the back of your head that helps you edit your papers, tells you how to fix a line on a picture you drew to make it look more realistic, etc. The Judge comes in and cleans up your rough drafts so that they are more presentable and have the finishing touches on them.

Images: http://www.lagolaw.net/images/judge_hammer.jpg

Creative Process

There are certain steps of creativity that experts have decided always take place that are called the creative process. The creative process is the order of events that take place when something creative is being created.


First, is the Preparation Stage. This is where all the planning happens. This is to make sure that there won't be any "technical difficulties" while the creative product is being made. Even though this takes place on the "Hard-Thinking" side of the diagram, brainstorming occurs during the Preparation Stage, which is "Soft-Thinking." Brainstorming is used here to come up with as many ideas as possible so that the Incubation Stage will have a lot to work with. In our creativity video for this stage, we planned out in class what we wanted to happen in our movie, what parts we had to cast, who would play them, who would write the scripts, what jobs people would have, and so on.


After the brainstorming and the Preparation Stage, comes the Incubation Stage. There, the mind just wanders and contemplates unconsciously the ideas it came up with during the Preperation Stage. This is where dreams come in because a lot of the time, people can get their ideas in a dream. While the mind just "incubates" and processes all of the ideas and sees what else it can come up with, we are reading, watching a movie, sleeping, sitting in class, daydreaming, anything. This is the beauty of the Incubation Stage. It doens't take lots of effort, which is why it is considered on the "Soft-Thinking" side of the Creative Process diagram. So for this part of the creative process, everyone in class just did their own thing and came up with their own ideas.


The Aha! Moment comes during the Incubation Stage but is a whole other thing entirely. This is when the stroke of brilliance comes and you get an amazing, creative, wonderful idea to solve your problem. Because the mind has been working on the creative problem the whole time, the Aha! Moment can occur anywhere, any place, and any time. During the video's creative process, this happened at different times for different people. For some they had an Aha! Moment while we were in class, still discussing, but for some people it happened when they were fast asleep and then they woke up because of that idea.


After you get your idea, you have to test it in the Verification Stage. There, you double check if your idea will work by actually putting it into play. You start building, and see if there are any problems. If your great idea was a new math theory, you would test it out during the Verification Stage to see if it really did work. For us, the Verification Stage was when we created the video. If there were any problems that we didn't foresee, they had to be dealt with then. All creative ideas were added, and or edited into the video at this stage.


Because the Creative Process is flexible, these steps don’t' always necessarily go in this order. Sometimes after the Verification Stage you have to go back to the Preparation Stage, or the Incubation Stage, or even the Aha! Moment. These can be mixed around into almost any arrangement.


The video: (because of illnesses, the video isn't done yet, but if it ever is I will probably link it here)


Image: http://jhubler.schoolwires.com/115710718163526213/lib/115710718163526213/paint-splatter.jpg

Artist Profile

My Creativity class and another class, Photography worked with each other last Tuesday. We asked them questions, and they took pictures of us. Bailey took a pictures of my for her portrait project, which is my profile picture at the moment. At the bottom are the rest of her pictures of me.


1. Name: Bailey


2. Age: 13


3. Are you in any classes at school for creative people? LEAP (like GT)


4. Do you know what personality type you are? And if you do, what type? ENFP



5. When you produce something creative, is it very detailed, abstract, what medium...? abstract writing



6. Do you have a ritual that you follow everyday before you can produce something creative? Or just something you do every day? after running



7. When you get creative ideas, is there a place that you usually get them? (ex: some people get their best ideas in the shower) outside, somewhere with lots of trees



8. What is your definition of creativity? something more different and something not everyone would think of



9. Are there any traits you think creative people have? standing out from everyone, don't blend in, know who they are



10. Do you think you have any of these traits? not really, kind of, not exactly


11. Do you have a process you go through when you have to think of something creative? Or are producing something creative? daydream, don't think very hard, mind wanders

Summary:

Bailey's creative DNA (how she is creative based on her personality, what her prefered way of doing things is) is very abstract. She focuses more on the big picture than in little details. Her traits are that she is extroverted, but doesn't believe that she has the traits of a creative person. Her rituals are that she likes to run every day, and so she gets good ideas after she goes running. The process that she has is that she just like to relax and day dream while trying to come up with new, creative ideas.


Image: http://www.uwc.se/newsite/grafik/writing.jpg



Bailey's Pictures:


These are not Bailey's original photos. I had to crop them for them to fit.

Traits

There are certain traits that experts agree that are shared by creative people. A few of them are being persistent, visualization, and curiosity, which I think are some that I possess. I believe that I possess those traits for a few reasons.

I think that I am persistent because I try a lot of things. When I try those things, there is no guarantee that I will succeed at those. Sometimes when I try to do something, I don’t fully understand what needs to be done so it’s very often that I fail. When that happens, I usually decide that I need to know what I misunderstood and what really needs to happen. What occurs most of the time is that I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do or I have no idea and so I make up what I think might be the instructions. When I do realize what I have done wrong, I most likely will take any opportunity to re-do what I have done wrong. In this way, I think that I am persistent.

The reason that I think that I have visualization is because I like to daydream. When I decide that I am going to work on a project, I can automatically imagine what I want the final outcome to look like. I know what color it will be, what materials will be used, and I can imagine what it would look like as I present it (if it’s a class project). There are so many parts of the project that I can visualize that my visualizing capability that I sometimes don’t pay attention to the mechanical part of the plan. I don’t plan out how I will execute all of the plan’s parts. This can lead to lots of problems in the future when I am trying to work on the project and it all falls apart. This is because I have a very strong visualizing capability.

I am also curious, which is another trait of creative people. I like to understand why things happen, what happens, and who is behind things. When I watch reality shows, I like to watch what happens, why, who, and how people react. What intrigues me is why people do the stupid things that they do. I also like to look at the news and ask the same questions. I also like to learn about new jobs that are coming up because of the changing times, why we need them, etc. Basically, I’m always asking who, what, when, where , why, and how.

Image: http://ionholdings.com/images/dna.jpg

Dreams

While at TAG (the summer camp I am attending) this year, I have had many dreams. Actually it is odd for me to even dream, because I normally don't. The one that I had last night was one I had had before (but a little different), but is difficult to remember. The last time I had that dream was a really long time ago. But it was about me dancing. I haven't danced since November, due to foot injuries, and because of time, I will probably not be able to dance much again, even when my feet have completely healed. In this dream, one of my friends who is an amazing dancer was insisting I dance her part in a ballet piece for a minute, and she was teaching it to me. I know that there was much much more to the dream than that, and that the whole dream was not focused on ballet. But it's the only part that I remember.

The symbols, patterns, and images in this dream are very clear to me. My friend was in her costume, tutu, tights, and pointe shoes, and I was in jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. My hair was in my face instead of being pulled back correctly like my friend's. This would symbolize my being absent from dance, the obvious fact that it has been months and months since I have dressed the part of a ballet dancer. And my embarrassment at not having dressed correctly symbolizes how much I miss dancing, but I know I can't explain why I miss it. It's more of a feeling that I know I can't share but that you would have to experience, because my favorite thing in the the world now is dancing on stage. I have strangely never been nervous, which is exhilarating.

The pattern in that dream was that I kept comparing myself to my friend. She is a much better dance than I am, and I noticed myself comparing my awkward foot movements to hers which I know that I would do the same in dance class, wishing I was as good as the older girls.I also kept wishing that I could have been in class the last few months so that I was not so out of practice.
So now I have a conclusion. There is the obvious assessment that I miss dance, but then there is the second one that just occurred to me as I am typing. That I should try to stop comparing myself to the achievements of others when I know there is no way I would be as good as them or catch up to them. Let's go back to dance. Many of the girls I used to wish I was as good as had been dancing for years longer than I had. So it was an unfair comparison. There is no way I can make up for not starting to dance when I was three, or however old. And I know I won't catch up to them while we are the same age. It's impossible. So I should stop comparing.

I had another dream earlier on into TAG. It was about me and my family unpacking me instead, at a music camp, at Interlochen, the art camp.

My dad went there when he was my age for the music program. He played the clarinet, and so he went there for three weeks, I'm not sure actually how many (though he was accepted for more), to intensely practice his clarinet. Every day.

Before I left home, my piano teacher moved me up a level on my ensemble (where we play the same four handed piano piece with as many as thirty people on fifteen pianos at the same time) team. For the past four years, I have been playing on the elementary team, which for a long time, hasn't fit my age group. So I got moved up a level in age, but also in difficulty. This year, instead of beginner pieces I will be playing a much more challenging piece. For these teams, there are also auditions and so I will have to practice a lot every day if I want to make the team. There is only one really big problem.

I'm at camp. And after that, I will still not have access to a piano for the next three weeks, so that's six weeks total without being able to practice. When I had the dream, I knew what it meant. The symbols are the music, camp, piano, and time. I know that when I come back to the piano, I will have to practice like I'm at Interlochen. A lot, everyday.

Sometimes, like I just did with my dance dream, we assume that we know what dreams are trying to tell us, and why. Sometimes you have to probe at them, and discover what lies just beneath the surface that only takes a little wave of thought to bring it up.

Dreams are very important to the creative process. After the Preparation period, the next step in the creative process is the Incubation Stage. In this stage, the artist has all the ideas down on paper and lets them self day dream. Their mind wanders and they just think about their ideas, trying to see if there is anything else they can come up with. This is a very relaxing time where dreams come in.

Your mind keeps working long after you are asleep, and this is a key concept in the Incubation Stage. A dream can sometimes give you an idea or solution to your creative problem. This is called the Aha! Moment. This is your amazing, creative, genius idea that solves your problem. This is also why dreams are so important to the creative process. Dreams can be the important part of the incubation process that leads to how and where your best ideas are born.

Image: http://www.eso-garden.com/images/uploads_bilder/dream_a_z.jpg

Rituals

Rituals are, applied to creativity, specifically the creative process, something that you do everyday when you are going to produce something creative. They are an important part of the creative process, because once set up, they can jump start it.

In the preparation stage of the creative process, the first part, the idea is to have as many ideas come out as possible, so that you have many to choose from. Having a ritual you always go through before that can get your brain in the right mode and lets it know, "Hey! It's time to be creative! All those great ideas please start pouring out....right about.....now!" It sets everything into motion.

Many artists, mostly unnamed, are mentioned in Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit Learn it and Use it For Life. They all have these rituals, things that they have to do everyday before they get started being creative. I have been able to find another famous person, with rituals of their own. Stephen King.

"“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write,” he said. “I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon." (http://lateralaction.com/articles/daily-routines-famous-creative-people/)
This is the perfect example. King does the same thing every day to create a habit for himself to prepare himself for what he needs to do.

Haruki Murakami says, "When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity." (same source)
This is another great example, because it shows everything that a good ritual has. There are certain things that the ritual includes doing (swimming or jogging) exact times (getting up at 4 AM). Stephen King's quote has the same required elements. There are certain steps, thing have to be done in order, the same, exact times, same place, but above all, having done the same ritual for long periods of time. These all make great rituals.

As for me, I don't have a concrete exercise I take part in everyday to ensure creativity. I don't interact in creative projects often enough to have established a strong ritual. The only one that I would say that I have, is that when I know that I would like to be creative, I do everything else first to get all possible distractions out of the way. I check the news, Yahoo, email, Facebook, do chores, homework, everything. That way I know that I won't get into trouble because I haven't finished something yet. That way I know that I can devote that period of time to what I want to do.

Image: http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1491/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1491R-1061676.jpg

Quotes

"Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives...when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life." -Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi

We are usually so caught up in our everyday lives that we rarely take a moment to step back and look at the big picture. Where we want to go, what we want to do with our lives, who we want to meet, what goals we have to fulfill before the ends of our lives. Though I know I'm not really old enough to be writing about this like I know what it's like being full of worries and dreams and ideas as a person that is fully dependent on themselves, I know enough to know what I'm talking about.

I certainly have lots of goals, worries, dreams, and ideas that I know I need to fulfill before my life is over, and sometimes I stop and wonder how what I am doing is helping me get there. Of course there are many things I have no control of; whether or not to go to school, what is being taught in those classes. Eight hours of my day is taken up with school. This doesn't bother me. Because I know that, of course, one of the things I must do before I die is graduate from college, and so these daily eight hours are necessary. But what about when I get home? After all the work is done from homework and chores, I usually watch TV or go on the computer and waste my time there trying to find something to entertain myself. When I know there are many thing that are would be more valuable to my time, which would help me reach my life goals.

Yes, I do have life goals, and so, yes, I have projects that I work on to achieve those life goals. All of those life goal achieving projects demand creativity. This above quote directly relates to that.

When I have finished a project, I feel like I'm one step closer to my goals, even if things didn't turn out as I hoped, I try to look at it as a learning experience, what to do, what not to do next time. I feel more satisfied, knowing that I ignored the siren songs of the computer, particularly Facebook, and TV, particularly TLC, E!, ABC Family, all the channels I check. It always seems like I have so much work to do, the TV and computer seem like an easy guarantee that I will be distracted from being bored. But I have never had that same satisfaction like I do from finishing a project; the one thing they can't guarantee. I know it's because I have finally finished something I might have been working on for years, months, who knows long, but that it's finally done. The fact that I produced something of my own work, that I try to make creative, has come out of my time and effort, that I have something to show for the time I put in. All that sitcom re-runs do for me is temporarily numb my brain, stopping creativity.

I do feel like I am living more fully when I have produced a project I know was creative. And that gives me that feeling, that I am feeling more alive than at other times. This quote is like a direct sum of my feelings at those moments.

"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." -Scott Adams

This quote means to me, that to reach that ultimate life experience the first quote expressed, you have to allow creativity to take over. Creativity to me means letting yourself pour out ideas, anything, even if it sounds ridiculous, they can lead to sparks of genius. You let the creative part of you take over so that the artistic part of you has something to pick from. Just because you make a mistake, that doesn't mean that it can be a bad one. They sometimes seem like that at first, but sometimes the artistic instinct knows what to do with one, that transforms it into a masterpiece.

"Your mood doesn't really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plain junk." -Julia Cameron

I write, and while doing so, I create characters, places, and most of all, situations. These situations test characters, and can do whatever I want them to do. Then it's up to me to see how these characters react.

That means that emotions are important to me. If the project that I am working on is writing, then the days when I feel a particular emotion like what I am doing is worthless, those can be some of the best days.

I can channel that feeling and energy into a reaction to a situation, so I can easily see how this quote directly applies. To someone else, though, it might not. However I decide to use my creativity, I know that even if I don't feel like it, it needs to happen. Just looking back one day and knowing that, even on the day I felt like my work would never amount to anything, I still worked, it gives you a tremendous feeling of commitment. It makes you feel the opposite of how you felt that day, that you were not going to be able to create anything worthwhile, because you see that you stuck with it, and so something good has to come out of it someday. Even if it's another one of those days where you feel like nothing good is happening, you stick with it because of one thought. Why not that day, when something amazing happens today, when my results show, the day I know that my work is worth something, be today?

Image: http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/space/images/poetry_270.jpg