Chewing on Creativity
The other week I went to a lovely Mexican restaurant with great tacos and absinthe. It was so close to being a personal utopia, but what kept it from being that was what made it a personal hell instead: tortilla chips. People were destroying chips as if in a competition to out-obnoxious each other. If an atomic bomb went off nearby, they’d be deaf and oblivious, maybe then wondering why it got so hot and radioactive all of a sudden. Maybe they were simply communicating to each other, with a loud gnash of chip-in-the-mouth meaning “Hello” and a somehow even louder one meaning “Fuck Jackson”. Clearly this produces lots of emotions in me, and I’m fully aware that I’m the crazy one here. Nonetheless, a silver lining I got out of this recent experience (besides a nice absinthe buzz) was that lots of creative energy is internally generated when I’m surrounded by loud chewers. Carnal, all-consuming rage aside, this energy can then be directly siphoned towards music-making, writing, visual arts, and other practices that bring me to create something new.
I’ve been thinking about creativity sporadically for a while, mostly in how technologies influence the output of this creative desire. “Technologies” has become somewhat superfluous to me with “tools” and “stimulus”, while my intrinsic, somewhat ineffable “self” is some kind of catalyst as well. These days, I’m both too busy and too much of a woolgatherer to more analytically consider these terms. However, my interest in this dichotomy of exterior stimuli and interior motivation has lots of shapes and facets that I think are interesting to write about, so here you go. In this essay I’ll briefly and flippantly consider these concepts and how they interplay, then linking it back to my own selfish ass. Truly, this website is to me the lake that Narcissus drowned in.
What is Creativity?
Truly, what the fuck is “creativity”? Google says it is an adjective, “relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.” So already the term is bound to be especially “artistic”, and in order for me to get sleep at night I won’t start analyzing the definition of art. Another term to tackle is “curiosity”, as it is frequently linked to the creative process, and is simply labeled as “a strong desire to know or learn something.” So what’s the difference between these two? “Curiosity involves the pursuit of new knowledge and experiences. Creativity involves transforming existing knowledge, ideas, or objects into something novel and interesting.” Thanks Google!
To label a pretty universal trait of life like creativity to a singular definition is kind of useless to me, but not pointless. Although things have been creative for far longer than the term “creative” has been around, there’s lots of meat on the bones of this analysis. In a form I unfortunately know quite well, academic writings by white men in the Western world, it’s been a hot topic around here since the 1950’s/1960’s. TOTALLY COINCIDENTALLY, a guy named Mel Rhodes was a big thinker in this field of thought, and offers a few cool things to digest it all with. Here’s his ideas of the steps of creativity:
A human mind grasps elements of a subject.
They engage in prolonged thinking about the parts and their relationships to each other/the whole.
Sustained effort works over the synthesis so that it can be embodied or articulated competently.
So what part does external stimulus play in these human mind things? Mel thinks that "Inventions are not just accidents, nor the inscrutable products of sporadic genius, but have abundant and clear causes in prior scientific and technological development.” For example, if two music producers were given the same sample, they will likely interpolate it in two different ways. However, those unique interpolations are directed by previous experiences as well as the technology at their disposal. Who they know/knew and why, the software/hardware they’ve used/are using, the drugs they’re taking, and more abstract stimuli like cultural phenomena all mesh with an individual’s unique creative urge in this gumbo of action and reaction. A determinist would point to these potential causes, among and including countless others, as necessary parts towards the eventual whole of a creative act.
But what about my pride?!? Does this mean that the pigeons walking by me playing horribly in Alewife Station only think I’m the result of causes out of my control? Fear not No Koudai! “History proves that great inventions are never, and great discoveries seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is either an aggregate of minor inventions or the final step of the progression.” One can take this in many ways, and that I perceive my work thus far as an aggregate of minor inventions that culminates in something new is, personally, rad as fuck. But although fascinating and even motivational, I gotta be so real rn guys: This is exhausting. So let’s pivot towards some different but still heady shit, as well as some case studies of people whose creativity is influenced by different forms of stimulus.
How Language Changes Thought
Language is profound, to put it very lightly. I perceive it as being a technology/tool/stimulus like what I mentioned earlier, where its form and our usage of that form is customizable and always changing. To be clear, I don’t mean to die on any hills of this topic that I’ve been lightly gnawing on here and there for a wee-little bit, as people who have devoted their entire careers towards this stuff may tear me limb from fucking limb for gaps in logic I don’t yet understand. Lera Boroditsky is one of those people, but I’m hopeful she wouldn’t murder me if she came upon this somehow, especially as I think she writes well about how we can observe language determining thought. Lera’s one of many folks over the past 100-plus years (although this kind of discussion has been around for much longer) who argues for a version of linguistic relativism, or that language influences a speaker’s worldview or cognition. Like all things fun and relaxing, there are many low-key disagreements about how applicable this all is, especially with folks who believe that thought precedes language, to which I start to tap out pretty quickly. I find much more fun in superficially applying these theories towards practical case studies.
1. Polynesian Seafaring (Section: Stars, Seas, Winds, Birds)
This was put on to me in grad school, so shoutout Brian Gravel. Europeans who encountered Polynesians, before they massacred their cultures and everything else they held dear, were fascinated and impressed by how the Polynesians navigated the immense, dangerous Pacific Ocean on exposed, vulnerable catamarans. These Indigenous peoples had no known Western tools like compasses and maps to communicate with to traverse the vast oceans and currents. So what did the Poynesians have?
Basically, the Polynesians knew their environment extremely well. Like the quote above about great discoveries being the cumulative work of all prior human history, Polynesians relied on ancestors and regional experts to learn and continue communicating about how to travel between the islands to find food, water, and shelter. To navigate on dangerous seas, they had to be intimately aware of all elements and how they interacted, especially through environmental variations and when otherwise reliable information became unclear. For example, “A rising star cuts the horizon at a low point, but can only be used as a positioning reference for a certain time before it has risen too high, and the next star to rise is then used to keep the craft on course.” Minute nuances in all elements, like the crest of waves or a shift in wind pattern, is caused by a shift in the environment elsewhere, and was taken in stride by navigators to traverse towards particular points. Supreme understanding of these patterns not only helped these travelers avoid dangers, but also to locate sanctuary, find friends, and maybe even eat some fish friends along the way.
What blew my mind when learning about this was how the Polynesians perceive directions. My Western ass is used to birds-eye-views of geography, where land is seen from a high point two-dimensionally on a map. There’s great usefulness in that, but there’s great usefulness as well in a point-of-view perspective like what the Polynesians use. Instead of charting out maps, star charts seem to have been the primary illustrated maps (when they were created at least, and not just conveyed orally) and were taken from the perspective of somebody in a catamaran. Where birds-eye-view maps aim to chart landmarks and geography as an objective, universal truth for all to learn of, star maps are more like directions to see through. It’s more difficult to share, but eventually more reliable in that it aids the individual to become the map themself. The Europeans were understandably shocked by the Polynesian’s ability to traverse the Pacific, as the two groups, through their visualization and intimacy with the environment, synthesized the Pacific as a radically different thing entirely.
2. Malcolm X
In his autobiography, Malcolm X wrote about how his thoughts towards his condition and his perceptions of society were muted through his language:
“I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there—I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn't articulate, I wasn't even functional. How would I sound writing in slang, the way I would say it, something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat. Elijah Muhammad—”’
Imprisoned for some time, Malcolm X read voraciously through day and night, then attributing his constant reading in low light to his needing glasses later in life. He essentially taught himself how to write by reading and copying a dictionary, which he expressed as being like an encyclopedia in how it began to describe what he saw in the world:
“Between Mr. Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors… and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”
Cause and effect of language and thought are deliberately flipped in this example. Instead of language changing one’s thought, Malcolm X here seemed to have thoughts he wanted to articulate through language. Linguistic relativism in its strictest incarnations doesn’t allow for this kind of thing, which is one of many reasons why modern linguists tend to believe in a more flexible dynamic between language and thought at the very least. Furthermore, while Malcolm X’s thoughts here were described by words he found, the effect of that action was to then experience a multitude of experiences in the world later in life which, among other things, changed his opinions on Mr. Elijah Muhammad. Furthermore, Malcolm X was teaching himself English words. How do we know whether differences in language create differences in thought, or the other way around?
Along that Malcolm X thread, let’s consider somebody a bit different: The Archbishop of Canterbury in the 6th Century, Saint Augustine. In Augustine’s auto-biography, he describes learning language as such: “By constantly hearing words, as they occurred in various sentences, I collected gradually for what they stood, and having broken in my mouth to these signs, I thereby gave utterance to my will.” Like what Malcolm X was describing, Augustine’s thought preceded the language he then learned, against the arguments of linguistic relativism.
In this short article, Paul Bloom points to research on 5-month-old English and Korean babies. I don’t want to talk too much about it as I think a lot of it is obvious and kinda dumb, but the conclusion is that 5-month old babies are not-yet conditioned to analyze the world through their culture’s grammar, thus humans are not born with specific languages present in their brains. I bring this up to firstly agree that, although our brains are uniquely good at conversing with language, it is not hard wired. Chomsky, aka “Daddy Chomp”, is famous for hypothesizing about a physical section of the human brain that is unique in the animal kingdom for its presence of a hard-wired grammatical intuition, but he himself is no longer so strict. What can be more generally agreed upon is the fluid nature of language, in that all languages are constantly evolving and changing. Tautology and non-objectivity oh my! For example, if I were to tell a pilgrim that they gotta up their clout game and get some rizz to land a baddie, they may try to put me to trial as a witch (as they should). Furthermore, if I were to say the same to somebody in the modern day, although there is a greater chance that they are similarly dead inside and can understand what I am trying to convey more accurately, there is never a point with language that one’s unique thought is perfectly conveyed.
No Koudai
So why did I just spend a ton of time thinking about how language precedes/comes after thought? Abstractly, I find that much discussion about this coincides with how I consider the music I create. Cause and effect of stimulus, both conscious and unconscious, both deliberate and accidental, composed of actions and reactions, is mutually influenced in who knows how-the-fuck towards whatever-the-fuck comes out.
How I went about making my pedalboard supports both sides of the above debate about language. Before the pedalboard even began, my equipment consisted of my electric violin, my amplifier, and Garageband (Even by just writing that, I think of the luxury that I had to start with this as well as how that slots into other’s similar experiences, especially because No Koudai is not my full-time career). The work that I was putting out at that time was almost entirely sample-based and in Garageband, the violin then “filling holes” and “gluing” together bits of the songs I was putting together. I had an idea and set out to find the pieces that would realize that idea, but the pieces then in-turn influenced how I came to that final product. Interplay between deliberately finding samples/playing an instrument and making accidents or finding something unexpectedly is constant.
The pedalboard began with my loop pedal, which allowed me to experiment with rhythm, harmony, and goof around in an entirely new way. My vocabulary for what could be expressed grew immensely, transforming my live performance and what I recorded. From there, I discovered that I wanted a deeper sound and got an octave pedal, which kinda made the violin sound like a cello, enhancing my options again. From there I wanted to control the EQ, and then from there I wanted to add a more dynamic pedal to play live, et cetera, et cetera. At no point in the process of creating the pedalboard did I have it all lined up. But, simultaneously, each new pedal presented the opportunity to be enhanced by another, which diversified the board and my holistic “instrument”, composed of all its elements in tandem.
Conclusion
There are many great cocktail party conversation starters, where the point of them is less a definite answer and more about the art of the discussion towards an answer. For example, “Was Kubrick’s poor lighting of the moon landing intentional?”, “Why does my tummy hurt?”, and “Hey this isn’t a cocktail party! Help! I’ve been tricked!” come to mind as a few bangers to spark some fun conversations. Questions about the nature of creativity are similarly unanswerable, but in trying to come to an answer of some kind there is great opportunity to further understand the elements and perspectives supporting these thoughts. Many minds have considered it before, and we can, in whatever way, add towards that legacy of thought.
I’ve found recently that, despite all of my shiny nice things, I’ve grown a bit complacent. Like any language, you lose what you don’t use, and by playing the same kinda stuff for a while I’ve constrained myself to what I know. So how do I get more creative? Restricting myself artistically may have some use, as well as actually practicing my violin for once. Maybe like Malcolm X I can read a dictionary of some kind, increasing my vocabulary and my understanding of art-making in the process. Maybe like Polynesian navigators I can re-chart my perception entirely, to see what I’m doing from a refreshing, profound perspective. Maybe like Saint Augustine I can convert the Saxon invaders to my ways by playing some hypnotic violin/sampler loops, then of course wearing cool robes and achieving martyrdom. For now, the only thing left to do is to do, and see how it affects myself and the environment around me. And, of course, to go back to a Mexican restaurant where I can torture myself with glee.
- Jackson