GRAHAM WALLAS on CREATIVITY : WORTH REPEATING

GRAHAM WALLAS on CREATIVITY

"According to Graham Wallas, a sort of re-ordering process takes place in the brain during creativity, which he calls incubation. A creative person develops interest in a particular subject, gathers supporting material, and studies everything possibly related to it. He calls this first stage preparation. After some time, the accumulated material reaches a boiling point and something incomprehensible goes on during the period of incubation that forms a prelude to the next stage, illumination. In three stages - preparation, incubation, and illumination - the creative person receives a new insight and finds a solution to the problem, or can rearrange the accumulated material to put it under an all embracing principle."

As mentioned in THE KUNDALINI BOOK OF LIVING AND DYINIG
Gateway to Higher Consciousness
Ravindra Kumar and Jytte Kumar Larsen

Worth Repeating:  First posted September 25, 2010

MY DRAPERY FAILURE : THE MUNDANE and RIDICULOUS

The mundane and ridiculous!

A few weeks ago, in an effort to let the sun shine in, I removed thick draperies, broomed cobwebs, washed windows, and thought new draperies were in order.  I found a fabric that was miraculously unable to wrinkle, a small almost ditsy print that would flow and let the air through.  Ditsy is not like me but I felt that teeny rosebuds  from afar would appear to be an overall textural repeat pattern and,close up, the three colors would work for the rest of the room.

And then...

I spent an entire Saturday from morning to night hand sewing these draperies.

At least I was listening to an audiobook at the same time.

Audiobooks I increasingly embrace because I get to free my eyes and hands from reading while I Create!

This is the "mood" I've been in.

Back in teenage days I had a friend who was a naturally talented seamstress on top of many other talents and skills. While I sewed a zipper in the wrong way more than once on the same pair of summer shorts and didn't get it that corduroy is generally not a fabric to be worn in the heat and humidity, she fashioned a long wool grey coat with a fur collar and silky lining and impeccable buttons that fit her perfectly and kept her warm in the freezing weather. That coat looked like something on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue for a thousand bucks.  Wearing it made her sachay. 

It seemed that although I was a failure at sewing, most summers I would get a hankering for something new and sew something. It seemed the sewing machine my mom had always had problems with the tension and was in the shop repeatedly. When people saw me wearing one of my creations they would not say, "You look great!" or "How pretty that blouse is!"  They would say...

"Did you make that?"

To be fair to myself: I had another friend who never threw out a single item of clothing she ever bought. She had sweaters that looked new for years. She said this was due to a trick her mom taught her. Something like throwing in vinegar into the wash water.  If there was anyone on earth worse at sewing than me, it was her.  Because I knew when to give up. One day she walked into a store where I was working at the time, a store that sold 100% cotton clothes that included summer dresses with elaborate ruffly collars. She walked in wearing her version of one of these summer dresses which she might have even made in order to look like one of us girls on staff. There were visible, erratic. and large stitches - the kind one would use to baste - all over the ruffly area, which she had not attached to the body of the dress.  I was embarrassed for her. 

But back to the new draperies I hand stitched.

Around ten at night I finally had them finished and decided to hang them.  In the evening light it was clear to me that they looked terrible. 

The next day I watched the draperies as the day sun progressed through the windows. These draperies look great only when the full light of the sun is coming through them but terrible the rest of the day and look particularly bad in the evening.

Well, there they are... until I find some better fabric and more time.

Back in the day I got sewing out of my system with my most recent failure.

It's my hope that this latest fail will also work to get sewing out of my system.

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

TRIVIAL or SUPERFICIAL or LIGHTHEARTED ; THE LIST OF THE MOMENT

WHAT'S NEW?

I'm Curious About:  Sewing blouses without using patterns.  Making one's own custom shoes using flip flops for soles.

So Bad - So Good : The Cold.  The Rain. After a True Winter, I'm so ready for a True Spring and True Summer.

I Might Just Be Done With : Some of the guests who appear or appeared on Coast to Coast AM - which is still broadcast. Finding their YouTube stations and listening to their full agendas that are not discussed on the talk program, I realize just what they have withheld or have not been questioned about on that program with George Noory. I'm about 90% done with the whole Coast to Coast program. 

So funny! : Phil Hendrie's parody renditions of the old Art Bell Show. I burst into laughter and almost rolled off my bed the other night when I discovered these.  East of the Rockies, West of the Rockies, South of the Rockies, North of the Rockies...all those phone numbers... and he's got the bumper music right...

***

AM I WHO I KNOW?

My Favorite Person Is : The highly intelligent, flirty, twinkle eyed man who must have memory loss, since he's wearing a wedding band.  No harm done, my friend. Everyone wants to be thought of as beautiful.

The Celebrity that Interests Me : None.

The Celebrities I've met (Just saying) : (Maybe another time.)

Historical Person I'd Like To Interview :  Isadora Duncan

TRAVEL?

If I Could Travel Back In Time : The Village in New York at the time of the Russian Revolution.

AM I WHAT I INDULGE?

Oldie Film I Want To Watch Again Sometime : Niagara  (Just watched it for the first time.)

Oldie Favorite Album I Blissfully Recently Listened to from Beginning to End :  Buffalo Springfield (debut album)

Book I Recently Read Cover To Cover :  (See the reviews)

Book(s) I Keep Meaning To Reread : Mantra Books and Audio by Thomas Ashley Farrand

Person I Get and Nobody I Know Understands :  Shall Remain Nameless.  (I get it that he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.)

AM I WHAT I EAT?

Favorite Cheese Of The Moment :  Fontina

Bread : Home Made Old Fashioned Farina muffins. Bakery Pretzel Bread.

Condiment : Mayo.  

Sweet : SweetTarts.  Chalky bits of flavor.

Spice : Paprika

I'm Drinking : Columbian Coffee - Cowboy Brew.

I Just Cooked : Chili with ground beef steak, black beans, carrots, onion, garlic, paprika, diced fresh tomato, canned tomato sauce.

I'm Craving : Old Fashioned Creme Puffs with pudding filling like mom used to make. Light airy crust, smooth warm milk pudding.

AM I WHAT I BUY?

Charcoal- Eucalyptus soap from a small -business - crafts fair - home-maker.  Made in U.S.A. Love the delicate perfume scent and the hard milling.

Beautiful tiny rose patterned fabric for the above mentioned blouse without a pattern, even though ditsy patterns are not like me. Pre washed and shows no sign of being crinkly.

Water Buffalo Lung dog treats :  I still have dogs to sit. These treats are real stinky and crunchy and they love it. They come running without being called or hearing the word "treat."

AM I WHAT I MISS?

My dog. Memories of her always put a smile on my face.

Having my own garden in pots.

Being able to afford using the house heater.

LATEST REALIZATIONS : 

That my best woman friend is never going to be a person who likes to get out there and do things.  (This is not just about Covid-19.)

That I need some new friends who do like to get out there and do things.

That I miss the real Art Bell. Check out this program about a man who was camping out by a lone phone booth in the Mojave Desert and spends hours at night talking to people who call it.  ART BELL INTERVIEWS DESERT CHAD  (Research shows that the booth was removed some time ago as it was feared that the people traveling there to see it were causing some environmental harm... Really!)

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

Ask yourself the same questions.

Don't let me influence you. 

LOU REED - LAST INTERVIEW - MUSIC and the SOUND of HEARTBEATS and LOVE

Beautiful interview and he was just so ill.

I once met the woman, an early girlfriend, who was the inspiration for the song Sweet Jane. 

QUINCY JONES ON CREATIVE PROCESS

From his book 12 Notes On Life and Creativity

Excerpt pages 94-95

As I learned from my two mentors, Victor Young and Alfred Newman, it's important to "just write and turn the page. Never look back." This proved to be an important aspect of creating  in the alpha state, because it's important not to block what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you. Sometimes it's difficult to get started, but you've got to stop overthinking and just begin, even if it's just a single word or shape. Before I pursued music, I explored various art forms such as drawing and painting, and I would always start with a charcoal sketch.  Even if I didn't know what I wanted the end product to look like, I just put down a basic structure or contour.  Then from there, I'd add watercolors and finally oil. When I started producing music, I used a similar process.  That is, I tried not to get locked in right away with an expectation of a final product.  Instead, I followed my instincts and translated them into a basic shape or sound.  The, I built on top of it by defining dynamics, colors, density, and so on.  Start with an image or melody, and let it out.  And as the sketch or song takes shape, you can lay on the watercolors.

Creativity is informed by what you feel, not what you think, and learning to tune into those feelings is what is ultimately going to carry you through when distractions come. I've 100 percent relied on my instincts throughout my career; without doing so, I know I wouldn't have been able to create art that has stood the test of time,  I recognize that it's easier said than done, but the next method I'm going to share with you is without a doubt the best way to do it.

And that method is "the Goosebump Test."

If the music I'm creating gives me goosebumps, odds are it'll do the same for at least one other person on this planet. But if it doesn't move me at all, and I'm trying to do it for the sake of getting a reaction out of someone else, I'll get stuck in a never-ending cycle of mediocrity.  It doesn't work....."

DAVID LYNCH ABOUT HIS CREATIVE PROCESS and THE UNIFIED FIELD and ART HOUSE THEATER VERSUS SMALL AN TINY SCREENS

He loves bringing people into a different world.  He misses the quality of celluloid though obsessed with digital.  Loves a continuing story - such as a TV series.

MUKUNDA ANGULO's TED TALK HOW MY IMAGINATION SET ME FREE

A really interesting talk by a man who, with his siblings, spent years confined in an apartment.

Their story became the documentary film THE WOLFPACK.

SOUNDTRACK : EXPERIENCE TWENTY-ONE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 

The last thing to do when we die, I hear (pun intended), is our hearing.  Many of us have remembrances of music," earworms" or have a "SOUNDTRACK" for our lives.

Name a song - or two - or a hundred - or as many as you want.

What life experience is attached to that song, tune, or performance?

Did you hear it live, in concert, on the radio, as new music or as an "Oldie?"

How do you feel when you hear that song again?

Christine Trzyna

This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop. 

C 2018-2025  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

BLACK LIVES MATTER BUT LOOTING BURNING and VIOLENCE MAKE PROTESTS A MOOT POINT

I was busy helping a friend garden.  We didn't know that riots had begun, that looting, burning, and destruction had replaced the expectation of a peaceable BLACK LIVES MATTER demonstration around the country.  We didn't know that Los Angeles had an 8 o'clock curfew until well after our meal together, when we turned on the news. Watching the coverage, I was disgusted.  Where was the Black Lives Matter leadership?  Why were individual city mayors speaking up but no-one from Black Lives Matter?

A couple hours later, I got my dog and went to bed. I shut out the lights and was laying back when a boom and bright flash of light zipped past the curtains - a blast aimed between houses that illuminated the room. 

My neighbor is Black.  He has a White wife.  He has a Black son.  They are nice people.  His work van is out at the curb.  Shit!  Was someone in the neighborhood attacking them?

I put the lights back on. Got out of bed. Worried, I opened the front door and looked out for the possible source of the blast.  Across the way a family was having a birthday party. They are Hispanic. There were lots of adults and children over there.  Why wait until past 10:30 at night on a Sunday to set off fireworks?  I watched as a large white blast went up over the street between us flowering into a stadium-worthy sparkler.  Needless to say, this is illegal behavior and insensitive to both Coronavirus-19 and the fact that people were pillaging all over town.  Taking advantage that no police would come. Setting nerves already raw on edge.  What a horrible example for all those children!  Their back yard is small.  What if they had been injured or set my neighbors house on fire?

I was tired from yard work so I slept.

This morning I woke to watch videos of destruction all over the country.  Countless businesses - many small one family businesses - looted or destructed.

I learned that a church in Washington D.C. built in 1815 in which just about every U.S. President has worshipped once, was burned down. I think as a child I toured that church on a trip to Washington D.C.  The Lincoln Monument graffitied?! 
I mean, the LINCOLN Monument!?!  Lincoln, credited for freeing the slaves.

HOW DOES THIS HELPS BLACK LIVES MATTER?

I know the answer. So do you.
It doesn't help whatsoever.  Actually, it's made things worse.

It HURTS the cause.

HOW DOES THIS HELPS THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY?
Did anyone who looted ever intend to BUY what they took?

Well, good luck getting hired.

I saw expensive vehicles pulling up and looters throwing things into trunks and getting in and driving away.

TELL ME HOW SOMEONE WHO CAN AFFORD TO KEEP A CAR can't afford to buy their tennis shoes, their cell phones, their computers?  Because I've been too poor to own a car or buy new shoes and have gone without a personal computer or a phone and I know it's not easy - or cool - but it can be done without resorting to criminality.

SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME on YOU! 

For doing it, for helping it, for putting up with it.


C 2020 Christine Trzyna

PAUL MC CARTNEY's SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY and THE RINGO SHOW AT THE GRAMMY MUSEUM

Just watched the video of the recent Late Late Show with James Cordon, in which Paul McCartney makes the rounds with him singing songs.  So they were in Liverpool and what got to me - during the near half hour video - was when they returned to the house Paul grew up in, where he composed his first songs and had John Lennon over.  Such a little row house, with the sink his dad hand-washed undies in, and the bathroom as the best acoustics in the place. Clearly the house Paul grew up in is something of a local tourist spot since there are early Beatles photos on the walls and so on. Paul said he had NEVER been back there since the early days. That surprised me.  So I had to wonder if he went home and then processed it. I also found it interesting that his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was about 16, had come to him in a dream, saying "Let It Be!"

As you may know if you've read this blog from the beginning, Paul McCartney makes occasional appearances in my dreams, and usually he is cheerfully on the move.  When he shows up in my dreams I take him to be the spirit of creativity.

But last year - wish I'd written down the date - I had an entirely different Paul McCartney dream.  He was sitting on a chair, not in movement.  Yes he had his left handed guitar in his lap but he wasn't playing it. I sat down across from him. And when I briefly touched the top of his left his hand with my right, he allowed this. Our eyes also fully met.  And Paul looked like the aging man he is.  So maybe this had something to do with continuing to create even as one ages.

Watching the video this morning, I was thinking about the Grammy Museum, one of my favorite spots, and the Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) Show.  Sadly, I missed the previous George show and John show.  On display was a black and white TV set that looked like it was from the very early 1960's and through some video magic, Beatles performances were being played on it continuously.  I found myself smiling, but then everyone standing around me, and all through the exhibit was smiling.  The vibe was just tremendously positive and happy.  I must know the lyrics to most of the Beatles's songs, and listened to all of them hundreds of times, yet I have no attraction to a local Beatles Songs radio show or going to see the reenactment groups that tour.

I didn't grow up with the Beatles, but then I did, simply because I had older female cousins who were into them who lead the way. And then in high school I had a friend who got an allowance and did some extreme "baby-sitting" (child-care) who had almost the entire Beatles collection, plus a hot robin's egg blue bedroom that was full of Beatle's posters.  So we'd sit and listen to these albums together.  Yet, all these songs were already Oldies.

She moved away and one day when she came back to visit, she handed me ALL her Beatles Albums and I still have them, though I have not had a stereo system to play them on in as many years. Sometimes I think I'm going to sell them.  Sometimes I think I'm going to surprise her and ship them back to her.

In a sense I was too young or too old for the Beatles.  In the question about who I idolize, I said I had stopped having idols after my teenage years, so no one.  And this is true.  Though Paul McCartney has been showing up in my dreams since I was maybe 10 or 12 years old, and in the fifth grade I made the claim that he was my boyfriend (!), my friend and I used to sit up in her tree house and go through magazines she bought, such as Creem, and try to decide who was the cutest of any number of Beatlesque mop tops.  I'm now savvy enough to know how well I was marketed to!

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

HENRI MATISSE quote

"Another word for creativity is courage." - Henri Matisse

BOOK EXCERPT : CATCHING THE BIG FISH by DAVID LYNCH

From DAVID LYNCH
CATCHING THE BIG FISH
Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Pengiun Publisher

Chapter called SUFFERING page 93

"It's good for the artist to understand conflict and stress. Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won't be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don't have to live in it...

In stories, in the worlds that we can go into, there's suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger. There are murders; there's all kinds of stuff. But the filmmaker doesn't have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don't have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you're not in it. Let your characters do the suffering...

It's common sense: The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be. It's less likely that he is going to enjoy his work and less likely that he will be able to do really good work..." DAVID LYNCH

WHAT I WANT IN MY SOCK (NOT MY STOCKING! I DON'T WEAR THEM!)

WHAT IS MY HEART'S DESIRE?

My Favorite (Cheap) Chocolate: Hershey's Dark and Hersheys Chocolate with Almonds. (However I'm open to Chocolate Swiss.)

My Favorite Gum: I've been trying all the new chewing gums in their newly designed artistic packages but ORBIT brand in WATERMELON or CITRUS is the best! (It turns out 20 minutes of chewing after each meal really is good for your teeth and digestion!)

My Favorite Nut Candy: Pastel Jordon Almonds.

My Favorite Fruit: Oranges. These are perfect!

A GOLD COIN - much better than a half penny though a half penny will do.

MY LONG LOST RING RETURNED MYSTERIOUSLY (Perhaps an apportation!)

A LOVE LETTER (It must be sincere!)

All the money that is owed to me by various scoundrels (including intellectual property thieves) so I can pay off all my own debts.

A year's supply of Indian incense.