One of the books I’ve started dipping into is Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. The book doesn’t easily fit into a genre, but there have been some really interesting nuggets so far:
- ‘Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human’
- ‘Creativity doesn’t exclusively relate to making art’
- ‘To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem’
I especially enjoy this notion that creativity is not solely about the artistic. Generating thoughts and ideas are just as much about creativity as creating a piece of art.
‘The outside universe we perceive doesn’t exist as such. Through a series of electrical and chemical reactions, we generate a reality internally. We create forests and oceans, warmth and cold. We read words, hear voices, and form interpretations. Then, in an instant, we produce a response. All of this in a world of our own creation’
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
While that last line goes a bit Willy Wonka-era Gene Wilder, this sentiment reminds me of a conversation I once had on the subject of geography education. I was speaking to Alan Kinder, Chief Executive of the Geographical Association, as part of some academic research I was doing. He made the point that geography, the academic discipline, doesn’t exist ‘out there’ – geography is not all around us, as the popular adage would suggest. Instead geography exists in our minds, it is our interpretation of the world. This is the geographical imagination. Understanding the world, as geographers or historians or scientists, is just as much a creative act as the work of musicians, or painters, or poets.
- ‘To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention.’
That last quote could just as easily apply to any discipline of study: geography is a way of perceiving. It also pays to pay attention – noticing the exceptional in the everyday (the quotidian geographies, as GA President Alan Parkinson discussed).
I also get the sense from what I’ve read of Rubin’s book so far, that he recognises the need for knowledge within the act of creativity. He recognises that creativity is not some kind of skill which can exist in a knowledge-free vacuum. As well as paying attention to the world, Rubin mentions the importance of reading, listening and conversing. This is to help shape ideas.
It’s been an interesting book so far and I’ve only scratched the surface.
Commonplace 