| The
Column is a monthly feature that explores the world
of creativity and aesthetics.
Time and Creativity
Mike
de Sousa, Director, AbleStable
| "Time
is what we want most, but what we use
worst." William Penn |
|
Time
defines our experiences and yet we understand
so little of what time is. Does
the pressure of getting things done in a limited
time stimulate or stifle creativity? When
we have little time to ponder, to take in what
is
happening, has
happened, will happen, the desire to be creative
heightens, and yet when we have time on our hands,
the ability
to create often runs dry.
Is clock time the best time for the artist within? or is the absence of a
sense of time the only time when inspiration
bites?
Time
Flies
There
are at least five million species living on the
earth. Of these, and as far as we know,
fewer than
a handful conceive of the past, present, and
future. These three ideas together with the benefit
of memory allow us to make decisions and take
actions that provide us with a distinct
advantage in our efforts to survive. We plan
for what may occur as a consequence of our
imagined future.
Our
individual experience of time is different
from moment to moment, from person to person.
Depending
on what is happening to us and how we feel
about it, time may fly
or pass as if watching paint dry. In conflict
with this personal experience of time is our
need to
cooperate as societal animals. Community,
trade
and work requires we coordinate with one another
in shared time. We have agreed international
standards of time to communicate, and yet clock
time has little in common with our own
experience of time
which we continuously monitor with our wrist
watches that call for our attention
as we move out of sync and into our personal
timeframe.
The
length of day, the phase of the moon, the
season. All have a significant
affect on our experience of time, but as
ever more channels of communication
develop and the demands of the material
world dominates, so the tyranny of strictly
measured linear time masks a broader, richer
experience
of what time in truth is.
My
Time
Despite
the ideas of past present and future, our
experience of time is "plastic". Time
is like chasing a bar of soap in the bath.
As soon as we grab a hold, it slips from
our
grasp. We know it's there, we search blindly,
feeling around until we have it
once again, and as we use the soap, so
it changes, shrinks, goes soft, and slips
away once more.
Our
understanding of good timing is
inherent and intuitive.
We
know instinctively whether someone has
great
comic timing or plays a musical instrument
well. We do not need learning or training
to appreciate this, appreciating good
timing is a part of human
nature.
We
respond to music because of our
bond with time and our need for
feeling. Music exists both within
linear time and personal time.
It is that delicious mix of the
rational and experiential that
is at its heart.
One
of the greatest pleasures in life is playing
music. If
you do not play an instrument, start
learning today. If you persist and practice
you
will find something magical:
the duality of disciplined
linear time and the loss of
a sense of time. There is no time for
looking at a watch when one plays an instrument,
there is only
music. That is my time, the best
of times, a time that has no beginning
middle or end. A time of only now. A true
time.
The
Need For Time
My
creative instinct operates well when
I have released myself from clock time. When
now is interrupted with the many demands
for what must be done, our time is limited.
Some
find the pressure of a countdown to completion
stimulating, however I have
found I need free time before
I am open
to explore creative
possibilities. My mind cannot be full
with external pressures and considerations,
rather, I must be open to explore new
directions freely. This is
not to say one cannot be creative under
pressure. Commercial designers, artists,
and writers need to deliver their work
on time and on budget, however art, the
most creative of pursuits, requires freedom.
The
greatest challenge for the artist is being
honest
to themselves. It is all too easy
to delude oneself that doing nothing is
required for ones art. There is a world
of difference
between freedom and
inertia. In seeking to provide
a context where our creative potential
is best explored we must have time
on our side rather than allow the time
of others to define our limits.
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