Everyday Creativity... and my Job Interview

So for my final blog entry I decided to write about something very important but seems to be very basic... and that is everyday creativity. In one of the articles we read, there is a boy who hits a girl with is car and then he has to creatively come up with what to do next. He is not a trained doctor or emt or anything but his common sense overrides. This got me thinking that maybe common sense could in itself be a sort of domain knowledge. That may be too far out there...

I also think that everytime I get dressed in the morning I am being creative. I am also creative in the things I buy when I am trying to match things up... you never want to be too matchy matchy. I also like some items that are a bit out there. I have crazy headbands that have giant feathers making it look like I have a big hat on my head, but a stylish nineteen forties hat at that! I have a golden leaf headband and one with two pink tuffeted flowers. And then on the total opposite end of things I like to wear boys clothes too, mainly shirts and sweaters.

OKay, totally changing the subject here.... I am going to be working at a camp this summer... It is a cort of "camp rock" camp for those who have seen the disney movie. It's a MADD camp. Music Art Drama and Design. I will over the Drama section and at the end of the camp everyone will perform or show their art work, etc. The school where I am working also puts on Camp Kaleidescope which is for evil genuis children. It's almost like a mad scientist camp. They do science experiments in the kitchen one day but then the next day they are writing poetry and doing other crazy activities. The second lady who was interviewing me asked me about college and classes I was taking and I told her about creativity and so on and so forth. So she asked me if I was to be in charge of the opt-out room (a place for kids to go if they did not want to participate in the activity of the hour) what would I do... what would I give the kids to make. SO I sat for a minute asked her if I had a budget and she said no. So I started ranting all sorts of ideas. One day I want everyone to paint their own little wooden boat (from Michaels they have mini sailboats) and then we could go out by the pool and have almost a ragatta. Maybe we could all make race cars and then go outside and make our own racecar track with chalk and race our cars. For girls I would have jewelry making things and we could make our own hair bows and cool funky headbands. Make your own puzzle, Paper dolls, play doh, etc. I just went on and on. The interviewer was very impressed with all of the things I could come up with and needless to say I got the job! She told me she has never had anyone come up with that many ideas, let alone good ideas on the spot. I was very pleased and think that this course has helped me to tap into all of my different domain knowledge areas and to be more creative myself.

Performance Creativity... LIVE Music Make Me Lose Control

I attended a concert Saturday night at the House of Blues-Parissh Room in New Orleans. The headliner was Copeland, an indie band from Florida. I have seen them play once before in a much bigger venue on a tour they were not the headliners for. It was such a huge difference in their performances. My friends and I were front row and this was the best show I had been to. I am starting to think that smaller venues are better for certain types of music. I know that even if I was in the back of the Parissh room, I still would have had the same "musical" experience as if I were in the front. It's possibly the visual stimulation that made the difference. The stage is extremly tiny... possibly only two feet high and ten to twelve feet wide. I prefer that because I felt as though I were on stage myself. Being that close, you can witness many choices made during live performance. There were three other groups who performed- Brooke Waggoner, Paper Route, and This Providence. During Brooke's performance, she hit a wrong key on the piano. You would never have been able to tell just by listening but because I saw her face and the way she quickly moved her hand to cover it up. The back up singer for Paper Route also played the guitar and harmonica simulatenously which was very impressive. The keyboardist and guitarist for This Providence kept going back and forth from instrument to instrument. Something went wrong with a distortion pedal and he quickly danced around, fixed the cord, and went back as if nothing had ever happened.

Smaller venues offeer a better connection with performer and audience. When the walls are not too far apart and instead of the music having to extend all the way out in a big venue, only to be absorbed by the walls. I feel in a small venue, the sound bounces off the walls and the audience can feel it run through them.

Something else I found to be interesting.... The keyboardist from This Providence (I mentioned him earlier) is not one of the "four members" a fan would see on the cd cover or posters. He goes on tour and sells their merch and only plays live. I wonder if this is because he just doesn't want the fame? I wonder to what extent and capacity does he engage in, if any, during the music making process. Maybe one of the four actually played all of the parts he plays on the cd and they just need someone to play it live? I also hear that Green Day has a guy like this, who goes on tour and plays in a corner the music one of the three members is unable to play since he is playing something else. I am not sure how truthful this is and am trying to google it.

math creativity

So I tutor kids at Murrah High School in geometry but mainly algebra 1. I was working with one boy on factoring and the quadratic formula. He got to a problem where he needed to do the formula but did it in a weird way. There is a plus/minus sign in between the number and the radical and he just didn't put it in there until the very end when he got his answer. I asked him why he did it that way and he told me that throwing it in there while having to work the problem confused him. He always got the correct asnwer so I let him keep doing it his own way. It reminded me of what we were talking about in class today... about school and creativity and the teacher knwoing when to let the student do their own thing and explore ways to get the answers. It was really cool to see it happen first hand. I want to be a teacher and I think experiences like this one will help me to know when to let a student do things there own way. I hate it when teachers are so strict about a procedure especially when there are multiple processes that will get you to the right answer. Teachers need to want to teach and be very open minded to new things. Teachers also need to allow time to actually explain a method rather than just throw random examples on the board. What good is it to keep building and building on the material you're teaching if no one understands the basic building blocks? Teachers do have pressure when it comes to standardized tests. I went to a public school where we were number one for a very long time and had the highest public school test scores. I was force fed so much material to ensure that I did well on the test. and I did do very well but that doesn't mean I actually understood what I was doing. Thankfully I had many excellent teachers years after that explained and made up for my lack of comprehension as to why something was the right answer.

Gettin' Intrinsic

I am finding myself to be more intrinsically motivated when it comes to papers and projects and just things overall. I am not sure if I am just becoming more aware of my motivation to do things because we talk about it a lot in class or if I am just becoming more motivated with my life and the things I am doing. I've learned about intrinsic motivation before but have not discussed it until now in regards to creativity. I think it's probably not only am I becoming more aware but I am taking the more "creative" route in my classes. Instead of sticking to the same old boring college essay even though I am given a choice to do that or something else, I am choosing to do something I actually want to do.

It's kind of like back when I did competitive cheerleading..... As a team we picked our music because it was important to the coaches that not only do we like the routine but that we liked the music as well because we would be listening to that same mix for months to come and we would have to dance to it and everything. And we won't give our best performance to music we hate and routine we don't like.

But even with essays... I am picking topics I want to write about. We read Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" in my interp. class and I am going to write my paper on how Britney Spears is a hunger artist using her new cd's lyrics as support. I also find myself wanting to work on my Dante project and while I am taking a break from other things, I work on that project. And with the porject for this class, I love to observe people when they paint and it is very fascinating to me. I google my project whenever I am online.

I certainly do my best work when I am intrinsically motivated. I am usually worried about the grade but I feel like with the more work I put in and the serious thought behind all of my ideas the grade will just fall into place. I also find that I am not putting much emphasis on the grade at all. Which is helping me to keep m mind clear and really focus on the task at hand.

creative things happening

so I have started on my project for this class and the way people are going about painting is very cool. It's like I'm giving them the same materials and essentially they are painting but their techniques are all completely different. As I observe them it's really cool to see them stumble upon that they can mix or if that is the first thing they do. Favorite colors are certainly playing a big role. And I am seeing some mood correlation. I am excited to see where all of this goes. I have thought about how maybe music in the background would also effect how someone paints and if it directly affects their emotions.

I think I have started recognizing my own creative talents recently. I feel I am starting to get a better understanding for how I come up with ideas. I need to know of the assignment (if its for school) in advance. Like If I am going to have to write a paper on a novel or something, I need to have the assignment before I actually begin reading the novel. It's kind of like what they tell you to do on standardized tests. Read the questions before you read this story. This was those questions or ideas may spark something in your mind. I need to know the assignment in advance this way I can let the thoughts float around in the back of my head until BAM! I have an idea.

creative projects... something I actually want to work on!

Okay. so my teacher is letting us come up with our own project ideas and it can be about anything we are going over in class. (I have the same teacher for two classes). In previous blog entries, I mentioned the Inferno and well that it was what we have our project on. We can do anything. At first I was going to write just a normal college essay but have been trying to come up with a good creative idea and something I would actually want to do and work on. I want to be intrinsically motivated and see the end result not for the grade but for the project. Well I was in my Interpretation class and she assigned a new paper topic that is due after spring break and I came up with an idea I love love love! We read Franz Kafka's A Hunger Artist and I am going to write my paper on how Britney Spears is a hunger artist. Well while free writing on this paper and running with this crazy and out there idea I came up with an idea for my other class' project. I am going to make a deconstructed book. I'm basically going to buy an old used copy of the Inferno and "deconstruct it" or maybe even "reconstruct it".... I am going to illustrate the different scenes using pop up images, paint, symbols. I am even going to glue chucks of pages together and then cut circles going deeper and deeper into the book as if as you are flipping through you are going through all of the circles of hell. It's hard to describe and that is as best I could. I love being able to do my own thing and not have to follow rules set by someone else. I am very much a rule maker and that makes it easier for me to break or bend my own rules. There was certainly an incubation period for my Dante project idea. Those thoughts have been floating around in my brain forever and it wasn't until I was working on a different project that the idea came to me. Some creativity may be able to be triggered initially but some takes time.

a light bulb went off but maybe this isn't a good idea/comparison

okay so this may be totally random and out there but... we were discussing in class the other day about the importance of decision making and I am reading Dante's Divine Comedy in another class and started making all of these random comparisons.

so yeah. decision making!
It's definitely important in the creative process because one decision will lead to another and making wrong decisions is fine because if you never try you'll never know. It's trial and error but as long as you pick something and stick to it you will benefit from it. I linked the importance of decision making to the Inferno because right when Dante and Virgil are about the enter hell there are the souls of those floating around behind a banner. They lived their life with "no blame and with no praise." Heaven cast them out and hell would not take them in. They never committed. They never took a stand. They never made a decision and never took any risks. Decision making is a powerful tool and is essential in the creative process. Nothing will ever be good or bad if you can't make up your mind. It's hard to be in the middle. Dante didn't half decide to write the Divine Comedy. You have to commit wholeheartedly to something and it is either going to be seen as a "heavenly" piece of work or a "what the hell was he/she thinking?" kind of work. If there was no decision process and deciding factor, than chances are that nothing was created because nothing was ever built upon the initial thought. The creation is nothing more than building blocks of ideas glued together by a firm decision. If the glue isn't strong and durable and if you don't put enough, then the blocks and ideas will fall apart.