Creativity - by Darylynn Starr Rank
January, 2005

Art. Creativity. We have the urge to to write, or paint, or weave, or dance, or make something beautiful. Something! Beautiful! And we feel like we can’t. Or we don’t know how.  We’re probably afraid of it. And we can’t seem to make ourselves get down to it anyway. 

And we certainly don’t know why that is.

Sometimes I think I’ll never really ‘get it’ – art and creativity. I write columns about it. Teach courses. I see clients. I talk about it endlessly with my husband who’s a photographer. I think about it every time I sit down to write a piece of fiction. 

But still I keep searching to understand. To figure it out. To explain how it works. 

You see, I was trained as a social scientist. The scientific method was all-important.  Research, research, research. Isolate the variables. Manipulate them. Analyze the evidence.  And (or so the idea goes) you come up with an answer. Maybe only a partial one, but an answer that is empirically supported with the appropriate data.

Hmmm. 

In creativity… Maybe not.

The fact is, the one thing I’ve figured out for sure, is that creativity is magic... 

It happens when I’m sitting in my little rowing boat in the middle of the ocean. A thought, a hint, a breath of an idea. Or when I’m playing with a dog or a cat. Or a piece of string.  Maybe I’m talking to my niece on the telephone. Sometimes it even happens when I’ve been sitting at my computer for five hours working hard at it, waiting for the inspiration to arrive. Five hours of nothing. Thenbang!it comes.

Would it not have arrived if I hadn’t been out in the middle of the ocean? Or if I’d shunned my little niece? What if I’d stayed completely away from my computer?

I don’t know the answer. But I keep wondering. 

One of the ongoing debates in my own world and in my classes revolves around this concept of magic vs. discipline. Free floating inspiration vs. structure and planning. Bolt out of the blue vs. plodding pedestrianism.

One of the most frequent comments I hear from students is, “I’m just not disciplined enough.” Or (from those making New Year’s resolutions) “I need to be more disciplined.” 

I always react badly. “It’s not discipline,” I yearn to whisper. “It’s got nothing to do with discipline!” I want to yell. And it’s true. It’s the magic, remember? But deep inside me I know it’s not the whole truth. Thus I’m always struggling with my conflicting views of how we do our art.

So the other day I was swimming the backstroke in an indoor pool, staring at the sky through the skylight. Thinking about discipline. And planning. The structured part of doing art.

And suddenly – magic! My mind filled with the image of a rocketship at Cape Canaveral sitting securely on its gantry (that huge and intricate platform structure designed and built with extraordinary care and planning). Suddenly, the rocket takes off, roaring into the heavens with an enormous explosion, riding a brilliant tail of fire and smoke, soaring out into the universe. While down below the poor gantry, the foundation from which this extraordinary flight takes wing, burns to smithereens and disintegrates into smoldering embers.

Ah, the magic of creativity. The struggle, the work, the studying, the grappling, the planning, the learning to create – now invisible. All eyes are on the rocketship.

Take care all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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