Years of Suddenness

My hunger for experience (and finding connections with other people) leads me into some strange places. And no, I am not talking about crashing my van into a Dutch police car high on dope with Neil Gaiman’s daughter passed out in the passenger seat. You have me confused with Amanda Palmer -- yet again. I’m talking about finding myself on the ice with a leading astrophysicist, thinking.

“Yeah, I know just what you’re feeling, man.” What, you might well ask, does a loser writing about creativity (stuck in the middle of Minnesota) have in common with a world renowned scientist? And am I SURE I’m not on crack? Answer: we both create for living (and struggle to understand that process in the same way that a jet pilot really should know how his airplane works) and, no... I’m not high -- right now. But if I get into the creative zone (and I feel it coming on) I might be soaring.

I have been watching a DVD called “Me and Isaac Newton” just because I have a insatiable hunger for knowledge of all kinds. At times it was boring as hell, but at other times (when the scientists discussed how they came up with their ideas) it was a revelation. I have been talking to songwriters to understand the process. It never even occurred to me to ask a scientist about creativity. Oh! I’m an idiot! Scientist create, take much better notes and rarely run afoul of the Dutch authorities. I should have done this ages ago.

Writers Block

“When things go wrong, I get on the ice and all the problems just melt away. ‘cause once I'm on the ice rink it is just me and Isaac Newton. I realize that Isaac Newton’s law’s have been well understood for 300 years. I don’t have to bat my brains against the quantum theory, against black holes, against the big bang. It’s just me and Isaac Newton skating on the ice, free of all the constraints I had before.” -- Michio Kaku (Theoretical Physicist)

“I think, we get stuck all the time. All of us that are doing exploration. Because you pursue a path and then suddenly it looks like a dead-end... Sitting down and saying, ‘Okay, let me think about it really hard while it is silent around me,’ doesn’t really work for me. It is better to do twenty different things per day. Often you end up doing one of the little things -- and that kind of gets your brain thinking laterally. Next time you look at your problem you might have a new insight.” -- Maja Mataric (Computer Scientist)

“I think the failures, in some ways, are kind of fertilizer for accomplishments. I think you sit there, you’ve just had a paper rejected. You know, something just didn’t work out... your whole world has been shattered. I think out of that you actually build something better.” -- Patricia Wright (Primatologist)

Years of Suddenness

“I’m often asked if there were these wonderful eureka moments when you know you had finally accomplished what you sought. But I don’t think so. I think there are a lot of little eureka moments when you are heading for something and you suddenly find that the pieces begin to fall into place. So that doesn’t mean you’re there yet. It is never the kind of thing as described in movies or in books... suddenly the light dawned and you knew you were there. It’s not quite that sudden, it’s years of suddenness.” -- Gertrude Elion (Pharmaceutical Chemist)

“Like a lot of people, I often think ideas occur in a flash of inspiration, welling up form the unconscious or a light bulb goes off and all of a sudden a brand new idea occurs without warning. But there are psychologists who study creativity and genuinely creative people: brilliant scientist and artists. And they often work with historians and go back over their diaries, correspondence and notebooks. The usual finding is that what seems like a sudden epiphany is actually a tiny little step from hundreds of little baby steps that went before.” -- Steven Pinker (Cognitive Scientist)

Scientist and artist? Both are explorers of thought. The mind is as vast and unknown as the universe. Then again, with space telescopes we can almost see to the end of the universe. The mind? Dang, we still have not fathomed its true depths. I still haven’t the faintest idea what makes me tick.