>>6 The two main operations in a creative act are a) discrimination and b) taking a perspective. By discrimination I mean choosing between possibilities and discarding some in favour of others, consciously or not. By taking a perspective I mean intentionality; either assenting to the perspective you already have or changing the angle. Error occurs when you either seize on a possibility and discover later by taking a different perspective that it was the wrong one, or you miss the window for possible right action in considering the perspective(s). The application of these in human action is quite obvious but as an example of the latter in works of art think of a movie (or a novel) that goes on for too long and could’ve used editing and cutting down. The author applied intentionality to the wrong place from the wrong place and ignored the possibility of stopping, cutting, moving on. An example of the former would be simply a boring work, a compound result of seizing on many wrong possibilities. But a failure is still a creative act even if not a very compelling one for an audience and potentially disastrous for the one who took it.
A self-image should be truthful and that requires knowledge, even if it is simply the knowledge that you don’t know. Self-knowledge requires you to look at what’s inside you and distinguish between the mutable and immutable characteristics, what is there by nature and what by nurture, what can you change and what you can not, and then consider these in relation to the situation you’re faced with and the situation in relation to the entirety of your life, and your life in relation to other lives and so on. You have to take innumerable perspectives into consideration, in the situation and looking towards future to your ideal self, and choose your actions carefully if you want to realize that self. Often we’re confronted with strange new situations that require choosing possibilities that we were not even aware existed. Does it not take creativity to conceive of and then seize them? Or to withold from seizing the possibilities that are present to you in the current moment in the absence of a perspective that you can assent to in good conscience? Inquiry into certain subjects allow for more creativity because you can only grasp them at such and such a level of clarity and precision before you have to accept some ambiguity in the results and move on. There’s a creativity that goes into the taxonomy of plants but something with more ambiguity like ethical theorizing and moral action allows, and demands, more creativity and greater genius.
On “aesthetics of the mundane.” I kinda just threw this vague term out there and moved on quickly because the concept is still kinda hazy to me but I’ll try to pluck some things out of the void to get more insight into it.
Initial angle of attack: Interior design in its barest form. You’ve got an empty room and you place a single chair in it, but where you place it, which side up, facing a window or facing a wall is up to you. Depending on your choice the room will feel different and it may negatively affect your mood, making you feel on edge and unable to concentrate. That’s a problem that can be solved by creatively changing the position of the chair. Of course in a real room there’s many more moving parts, but the principle applies. If you’re always losing things is this a matter of having a bad memory or could it be solved by creatively rearranging things so that you live more effortlessly in the space and the relations of objects reflect their usage (or the symbolic importance they hold)? Interior design is just arranging of visual information based on the frequency you access certain things and giving your eyes enough empty space to rest when turning 360 degrees, not being cognitively overloaded at any point, and your gaze should always be automatically directed to the right place, the less frequently needed or less important things within sight but not in a place of prominence. Picture a more sophisticated bird building a nest.
Another angle: As a series of images with duration, cinema is as much a form of thinking as it is an art, “Thinking in concepts emerged from thinking in images through the slow development of the powers of abstraction and symbolization[...].” Since the camera lens is fashioned after the mechanics of the human eye, what differentiates me looking at a scene and me filming a scene? Does the scene become art only once I press record? Does the camera complete the act of creation by making it more concrete and communicable? Is an audience of one--myself, seeing through my own eyes and embodying the scene--not enough for it to be creative? I could as well not see anything in the scene and only later notice something in it worth my attention, and I think this movement of thought, from disinterest to interest, can constitute a creative act. Maybe it’s just a preliminary stage of creation, but is there also not a skill or sensitivity, a creativity, in getting oneself, deliberately or not, consistently in these kinds of situations or becoming aware of their presence in midst of the mundane? Pathos makes memories more lasting and vivid, and by manipulating the scene, by simply moving your body or other things around in it and changing your relation to the environment or choosing what to pay attention to and for how long, you’re making a decision that will create a slightly altered whole that generates a different kind or stronger pathos in you, and if you’re successful you end up creating meaningful memories, or, discovering new thoughts and connecting the dots. Since the mundane is that which is around us everyday these memories compound and build up over time like a patina that gives meaning to the ordinary. We give meaning to the ordinary and the ordinary gives meaning to us. I suppose I’m talking about growing old now (as opposed to getting old), but don’t mistake this for mere sentimentality. To get obscure for a minute, it’s not a living in-some-environment but a living-in in some environment.
Third angle: This deepening or focusing of perception operates on the same two principles I laid out at the beginning. I don’t believe in the death of the author but the audience plays a role, a creative role, in bringing out the meaning of a work. It can be helpful to step outside a strict subject-object dichotomy for a moment if you can. Consider folk-ways, the habitus and the material culture of the people in some village, for example: their ways were born through generations of creative work and adaptation to the environment and they belong to no single person, but every person who lives those folk-ways partakes in and makes up the particular genius, so to speak, of the village that gave birth to their traditions because they were raised up and live in a peculiar consciousness of them as opposed to an outsider. Now, turn your thoughts to your own being-in-the-world and broaden your scope from particular folk-ways towards the scale of the cosmos, or the creative principle itself, and then consider your surroundings.
The two main operations in a creative act are a) discrimination and b) taking a perspective. By discrimination I mean choosing between possibilities and discarding some in favour of others, consciously or not. By taking a perspective I mean intentionality; either assenting to the perspective you already have or changing the angle. Error occurs when you either seize on a possibility and discover later by taking a different perspective that it was the wrong one, or you miss the window for possible right action in considering the perspective(s). The application of these in human action is quite obvious but as an example of the latter in works of art think of a movie (or a novel) that goes on for too long and could’ve used editing and cutting down. The author applied intentionality to the wrong place from the wrong place and ignored the possibility of stopping, cutting, moving on. An example of the former would be simply a boring work, a compound result of seizing on many wrong possibilities. But a failure is still a creative act even if not a very compelling one for an audience and potentially disastrous for the one who took it.
A self-image should be truthful and that requires knowledge, even if it is simply the knowledge that you don’t know. Self-knowledge requires you to look at what’s inside you and distinguish between the mutable and immutable characteristics, what is there by nature and what by nurture, what can you change and what you can not, and then consider these in relation to the situation you’re faced with and the situation in relation to the entirety of your life, and your life in relation to other lives and so on. You have to take innumerable perspectives into consideration, in the situation and looking towards future to your ideal self, and choose your actions carefully if you want to realize that self. Often we’re confronted with strange new situations that require choosing possibilities that we were not even aware existed. Does it not take creativity to conceive of and then seize them? Or to withold from seizing the possibilities that are present to you in the current moment in the absence of a perspective that you can assent to in good conscience? Inquiry into certain subjects allow for more creativity because you can only grasp them at such and such a level of clarity and precision before you have to accept some ambiguity in the results and move on. There’s a creativity that goes into the taxonomy of plants but something with more ambiguity like ethical theorizing and moral action allows, and demands, more creativity and greater genius.
On “aesthetics of the mundane.” I kinda just threw this vague term out there and moved on quickly because the concept is still kinda hazy to me but I’ll try to pluck some things out of the void to get more insight into it.
Initial angle of attack: Interior design in its barest form. You’ve got an empty room and you place a single chair in it, but where you place it, which side up, facing a window or facing a wall is up to you. Depending on your choice the room will feel different and it may negatively affect your mood, making you feel on edge and unable to concentrate. That’s a problem that can be solved by creatively changing the position of the chair. Of course in a real room there’s many more moving parts, but the principle applies. If you’re always losing things is this a matter of having a bad memory or could it be solved by creatively rearranging things so that you live more effortlessly in the space and the relations of objects reflect their usage (or the symbolic importance they hold)? Interior design is just arranging of visual information based on the frequency you access certain things and giving your eyes enough empty space to rest when turning 360 degrees, not being cognitively overloaded at any point, and your gaze should always be automatically directed to the right place, the less frequently needed or less important things within sight but not in a place of prominence. Picture a more sophisticated bird building a nest.
Another angle: As a series of images with duration, cinema is as much a form of thinking as it is an art, “Thinking in concepts emerged from thinking in images through the slow development of the powers of abstraction and symbolization[...].” Since the camera lens is fashioned after the mechanics of the human eye, what differentiates me looking at a scene and me filming a scene? Does the scene become art only once I press record? Does the camera complete the act of creation by making it more concrete and communicable? Is an audience of one--myself, seeing through my own eyes and embodying the scene--not enough for it to be creative? I could as well not see anything in the scene and only later notice something in it worth my attention, and I think this movement of thought, from disinterest to interest, can constitute a creative act. Maybe it’s just a preliminary stage of creation, but is there also not a skill or sensitivity, a creativity, in getting oneself, deliberately or not, consistently in these kinds of situations or becoming aware of their presence in midst of the mundane? Pathos makes memories more lasting and vivid, and by manipulating the scene, by simply moving your body or other things around in it and changing your relation to the environment or choosing what to pay attention to and for how long, you’re making a decision that will create a slightly altered whole that generates a different kind or stronger pathos in you, and if you’re successful you end up creating meaningful memories, or, discovering new thoughts and connecting the dots. Since the mundane is that which is around us everyday these memories compound and build up over time like a patina that gives meaning to the ordinary. We give meaning to the ordinary and the ordinary gives meaning to us. I suppose I’m talking about growing old now (as opposed to getting old), but don’t mistake this for mere sentimentality. To get obscure for a minute, it’s not a living in-some-environment but a living-in in some environment.
Third angle: This deepening or focusing of perception operates on the same two principles I laid out at the beginning. I don’t believe in the death of the author but the audience plays a role, a creative role, in bringing out the meaning of a work. It can be helpful to step outside a strict subject-object dichotomy for a moment if you can. Consider folk-ways, the habitus and the material culture of the people in some village, for example: their ways were born through generations of creative work and adaptation to the environment and they belong to no single person, but every person who lives those folk-ways partakes in and makes up the particular genius, so to speak, of the village that gave birth to their traditions because they were raised up and live in a peculiar consciousness of them as opposed to an outsider. Now, turn your thoughts to your own being-in-the-world and broaden your scope from particular folk-ways towards the scale of the cosmos, or the creative principle itself, and then consider your surroundings.
I sneezed.