Seeing in the Dark:
Exercises
and Limitations in Creativity
Annie
Dillard’s freeform story illustrates (albeit in a very lengthy way) core
principles that prove key to any explorer of personal creativity. The engines
of our minds are constantly turning away, attempting to process the daily and
lifelong challenges and excitements that we face. Sometimes there is so much going on that we
seem to overheat and burn out. Picking a
song with no prior visual connection and then linking it to images in our mind
is a great way to expel our inner build up of mental steam. The lack of visual images eliminates a cloud
of pre-existing thoughts and emotions tied to them, freeing the space for
writing or drawing our own thoughts without any clutter. In a sense, we are forcing our brains to
illustrate external originality based upon our internal excess.
This
is all very reminiscent of a famous Playskool
toy kitchen set, that I am sure most of you have seen at some point of your
life…assuming that you have some connections to the nineties. Playskool
released two famous plastic home play sets: one based on a father’s workshop,
and the other on mother’s kitchen. The
shop set included plastic screwdrivers and a hammer, and even a perforated workbench
that allowed the imagineer to hammer in oversized nails. The kitchen set included a small sink,
stickers of spices, play food, and a coffee maker and pot that could dispense
water.
When
I was very little, still then an only child with few external friends outside
of my family, I played with both almost equally…though I did favor the tools a
bit since they resembled those of my grandfather. Now and then I’d switch to playing with the
kitchen, without ever thinking of gender roles or stereotypes: my imagination
was free to wander without any previous social bounds. As I grew older, it was “clear” that some
things are for boys and some things are for girls. To upset that balance would be indicative of the
brand “gay”. And I wasn’t gay, and I
didn’t want to be called something I wasn’t.
And so kitchen time went away, clouted by preexisting images and
emotions from the world.
Upset
the common view. Ruffle the feathers of
dogmatism. There’s a whole world out there just waiting to be explored in a new
light, if only we let ourselves find the courage, and the clarity, to do so for
ourselves, and in our own unique, creative, and personal ways.
“Tryan’s
Song” has been played by my best friend, the originator of the tune and origin
of the title, on an array of apartment couches over the past eight years or
so. The song is played by him almost subconsciously,
and is reflexive of both happy memories, and dangerously depressingly times:
most beginning in Missouri where we met.
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