Use despair to create art. Like the bird that flew from the hand of Noah we find our hope through art. Art is the stylization of our experience. We learn to display the benefits, and necessity of maintaining the faith. Through this act we help people face themselves; through this act I found myself. Creation is no easy act, but requires a commitment to spontaneity. A commitment to discovering the blessings sitting outside our sight. One must use art to understand that every tribulation contains the potential of meaning. We create our meaning through the walk of attentiveness that is art.
But how must one become the strange souls that our culture calls an “artist”. The aim of Brewster Ghiselin, in the Creative Process, is to provide us with the habits of our greatest creatives. Young creatives need the mentorship and wisdom of the least traveled path. We need to know that our doubt is necessary for creation. We need to judge our work in order to creative a worthy product. The creative process teaches us the path of our most valuable saints: creatives. Anyone with the desire to maintain the faith needs to devour and meditate with this book. Brewster Ghiselin on Creativity says:
Today, when widespread, deep, and rapid changes are taking place in the very structure of our lives, whether we desire it or not, and when still other changes seem necessary to preserve us from disaster, understanding of the creative process is particularly important because it can assist in the control of these difficult developments. The creative process is the process of change, of development, of evolution, in the organization of subjective life.
There is no way of estimating how much the development of humanity has been lamed by such delay and waste. Simply the self-interest of mankind calls for a more general effort to foster the invention of life.
Art shapes the world, and the responsibility of the expansion of our consciousness rests upon the shoulders of artists. The traditions we assume are inherent to the structure of our world are given away to the nameless desire resting within man that all his methods of expression are insufficient. The restlessness of the artist can only be satisfied by producing work that contains the wisdom necessary for us to live a life of equanimity.
We must carve meaning from the substance of our lives, and the strength it requires to walk alone can only be trailed, without weariness, through the wisdom of the the artist. This chaotic and dysfunctional substance relies are more spontaneity, intuition, and aloneness than any book, teacher, or painting can prepare us. But if the artist strives successfully toward their end, we are given a useful art that assists us in moving with faith. Brewster speaks on the importance of extending traditions, and the necessity of change saying:
The human mind is prepared to wrap the whole planet in a shroud, and the exercise of all our best effort and ingenuity has produced no assurance whatever that it will be deterred from that end. The prolonged failure of traditional means in dealing with this problem does not prove those means useless. It does strongly suggest their inadequacy.
Our work creates us like a child growing within the womb of its mother, however, we are both the mother and child, for the fetus will grow without much work but the mother is responsible for feeding the child everything that will help it live a healthy existence. Brewster Ghiselin on Creativity. goes into the relationship between the artist and his work saying:
This self-surrender so familiar to creative minds is nearly always hard to achieve. We sustain purity of motive through dedication and discipline. When their life is strong in them they can sometimes surrender themselves to it without effort.
Bringing together material from 38 well-known writers, artists, and scientists who attempt to describe the process by which original ideas come to them. Contributors include Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amy Lowell, Rudyard Kipling, Max Ernst, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry Miller, Carl Gustav Jung, Mary Wigman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Henri Poincaré and many others. Brewster Ghiselin on Creativity offers the supportive instruction for every artist that decides to make the journey towards self-realization. Continue this reading by learning Henry Miller perspective on love.
