Creativity

Creativity

December 2023

CREATIVITY 

Red bushes,  Blue roses 

Harvinder Kaur clarifies what creativity  is all about and emboldens you to stir up  your creative juices by sharing a few tips  for taking the plunge 

What’s your first reaction when a  beautiful mug of tea slips from your  hand and shatters? Or when you  stare at titbits of scrap piled in the corner of a  veranda? What do you do with single earrings  left in your collection, the beloved pair lost?  How does your mind deal with the disjointed,  patchy, torn bits of things and life? Do you rush  to throw out what’s broken, wipe what’s spilt,  sweep away what doesn’t fit, and try restoring  order? 

DON’T!  

Welcome to the magic ingredients of the  creative mind. We accept the mess, embrace  the confusion, gather the brokenness, and  allow the forces of creativity to take over. In  this article, I’ll share my understanding of  creativity and how it has been unfolding in my  life and work.  

Creative? Who me? 

‘Creativity’ is a word often loosely used and  thrown around a lot. When I ask someone, “Are  you creative?” I often get the response “Oh no,  I can’t draw or dance or sing!” Is creativity  merely about singing, dancing, or painting?  

Let’s begin by clearing a common  misconception that creativity is just something  to do with the fine arts. There’s a difference  between skill mastery and creative expression.  Creativity means expressing or creating  something new or unique, whatever the skill or  work. You could be a creative cook coming up  with new and unique recipes or you could also  be a skilled artist who’s not creating anything  new but just reproducing. It’s not about the  kind of work but the way you do it. 

I am a poet and a writer. I also paint and  do photography, but perhaps I’m at my  creative best while creating unique teaching  and training programmes. Coming up with  interesting ways to teach seemingly mundane  things like grammar and spelling, as well as  writing and critical thinking. I totally loved  building a school in a unique way and infusing  it with a ‘creative’ spirit through innovative  methods. What does it mean to be creative  to you? Even if your job is boring and doesn’t  require any creativity, like entering data, is  there still hope? YES! 

Creativity is a natural human force, and we  all have it, naturally. Don’t believe it? Look at  any child playing. Watch children exploring  objects they haven’t been taught how to handle.  

Children are ingeneous in the way they play and imagine

A child’s imagination is phenomenal! It is the  seed source of creativity. Before our minds are  boxed in by instructions and dos and don’ts,  they are overflowing with creative energy.  Whatever happens to us as we ‘grow up’! 

Creativity as the Universal Force 

Creativity is a form of yoga when a connection  is made between the inner and the outer, the  microcosm and the macrocosm. It is a real life influencing force—not a vague, dreamy, distant  indulgence, even though the amorphous is a  dimension of creativity. It is to be lived daily,  tangibly, in real-time, in seemingly ordinary  lives. And it has surprising gifts, like a blue  rose on a red bush! 

Creativity is about creating something new  by combining two or more things or concepts  

that already exist. That’s why I’m calling it a  ‘yoga’ as it’s about union, about joining forces.  Even when it’s about abstractions, theories, and  art, there is a subtle confluence. The Wright  Brothers created the airplane by studying  existing gliders and data on aerodynamics.  Shakespeare created those wonderful plays,  but the stories in many of them were floating  around in one form or the other before passing  through his creative lens.  

Philosophers like Plato speak of a “world of  forms” where everything exists in subtle form  before being made manifest in this tangible  world. The psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung  leaned towards the theory held in Oriental  traditions about the collective unconscious. It  can be philosophised that we live surrounded  by a creative life force and much depends on  

Creativity is a form of yoga where you form a bridge between your inner and outer world. 

Creativity is about creating something new by  combining two or more things or concepts that  already exist. That’s why I’m calling it a ‘yoga’ as it’s  about union, about joining forces. Even when it’s  about abstractions, theories, and art, there is a subtle  confluence. 

our ability to plug into this, through our inner  being, efforts, and our vibrational level. In that  sense, every creator is a channel. 

Mapless exploration 

Creativity is flow and openness. It is not merely  a method, though methods could be a part of the  paradigm. It is an energy or force, as universal  as air. But a lot depends on your capacity to  absorb and hold. It is your courage that lets  you embrace the unformed, the amorphous, the  unborn that gives you the gift of the creative  experience. 

It means going beyond maps. A map has the  routes fixed, the roads named, the paths chalked  out, and everything measured. Your destination  is pre-decided. Creativity involves walking  into the fog. Sometimes, blindfolded. It’s fun,  can be dangerous (if you do this literally),  and a little unnerving, especially if you are  used to following maps in life. The creative  life requires a degree of courage, especially if  you’re used to travelling along marked roads,  railway lines, and well-trodden paths. It’s not  about rebelling, it’s about exploring. It is not  

a rejection of existing paths but going beyond  them. There’s an uncertainty principle at work  here; you don’t know exactly where it’s going  to flow. 

So, when you embody or express the creative  energy, you don’t direct it. You let it direct you.  Now what does that mean in tangible, human  terms? It means you are ready to brainstorm,  to look into the unusual, funny, and even crazy  possibilities. It’s about blotches, the nebulous  and amorphous, at least in the beginning.  

I’ll give you a personal example. I recently  started exploring visual art (painting and  sketching) seriously. I’d always thought I had  the seed in me but never got the chance to  develop the visual artist in me in my growing  years or even as an adult. Till now. Like many  people, my life has been undergoing a massive  transition post-corona, a metamorphosis of  sorts (and it’s not over yet). Amidst the storm of  loss, death, and disease that swept through so  many lives, mine included, leading to change  I wasn’t anticipating, I had to gather broken  pieces together. That’s when I started taking  art classes. I didn’t take the route of learning  step by step. My colour explorations involved  simply playing with colour the way children do,  letting things unravel (or not). It was really the  expression of poetry through colour. Even form  didn’t matter. I had no purpose in the beginning  but to simply flow and love the process. Crazy  was fine.  

BUT THEN, SOMETHING CLICKED! 

Serendipity blessed me with a lovely gift in one  of the art experiments. Playing with leftover  coffee led to a unique perception. I began to see  shapes in what just seemed like messy blotches.  It was such an eye-opener, to be able to see unique  characters who could tell a story from a piece of  paper. A bit like a child pointing to a familiar  shape in the clouds. I kept experimenting and  developed this further. In fact, I have now made  it a part of an online course on Imaginative  Writing, which I’m teaching! Who could have  imagined that a pinch of coffee powder could  lead to such an amazing Eureka experience,  

where your entire creative vision can be taken to  the next level? 

Embracing the new 

As growth happens, our languages need to change,  and by language, I mean all forms of expression.  It’s not whether I speak Japanese or Hindi, French  or Tamil, or something else. It is also what form  my expression takes. Maybe I don’t want to use  words at all, so I pick up a paintbrush or charcoal  stick. I write, I paint, I create, I laugh, I rage, I  become silent. 

I’ve often been asked how or why I express myself  in so many different ways. Once my publisher  asked me why I write in varied genres, from  tiny poems, long poetic satires, and free-verse to  fiction and non-fiction, that too in more than one  language. Then there’s photography and painting.  Perhaps the most beautiful form is when I put  them together to create a medley of experiences  in the form of a mehfil, where people and hearts  connect through a synthesis of these expressions. 

Harvinder’s creative outpourings involving coffee and colour on paper 

How do varied languages for expressions come  to us? We are not always aware of the seeds  inside us. Sometimes it’s a soft gentle whisper  floating in dreams, other times it’s an itch that  makes you uncomfortable. Either way, a seed is a  calling from hidden depths. It asks for nurturing  and care. It has its season of blossoming, and  when the flowering happens, it takes your breath  away! 

We need to be sensitive to the call of faraway,  hidden spaces. They seem distant but are actually  inside us, beneath the skin of forgetfulness or  inattention. Opening to the unknown, daring to  explore, being vulnerable, ready to fall, accepting  that we will make mistakes, and walking on,  take us through the creativity portals. The rest is  practical details, methods, and how-to-do lists.  They come easily and readily once we’ve taken  the leap within. 

Things to do—or not to do 

Let me share a few practices and approaches  I use to fuel creativity. These are by no means  great methods, or exhaustive, but they have  been lived, tested, and tried out, and have given  a creative glow to my life. I am not concerned  about being ‘good’ but simply expanding,  exploring, and enjoying myself immensely in  the process. 

• When things spill and shatter I pause. I don’t  rush to wipe clean or sweep away immediately,  quietening the ‘out, damn spot, out!’ voice — literally and figuratively. I watch. The pattern,  the flow, the brokenness. It speaks. Like when  the glass jar holding yellow moong dal fell on the  black granite, the seeds scattering all over. They  looked so pretty, the seeds with their yellow  laughter. Or when the thick filter coffee stored  in the fridge spilt and spread like a dark secret  over the white plastic. 

• I make it a point to try to taste a new thing at  

least once a month, something my tastebuds are  not familiar with. It could be anything: a biscuit,  ice cream, chocolate, or I cook something  different from my regular dal, roti, sabzi. 

• I wear an outfit I haven’t worn for a very long  time. It makes you feel different. Or a colour I  don’t usually wear. It gives you a novel awareness  of your mind. 

• I hang around with kids without trying to be  a know-all adult. I play with them, discover,  explore, chat. It’s an unparalleled learning  experience. 

• I practise various creativity exercises (they are  not covered in this article). 

• Travel. Whenever, wherever possible, either  solo or in company. If you can’t go to a forest or  mountain or remote far-off land, take a different  route home or to the office or market. 

• Talk to different kinds of people, online and  offline. Talk to all the people you interact with  beyond the task or work, once in a while. The  auto or taxi driver, the vegetable vendor or  delivery boy, your boss or teacher (if you dare). 

• Have some kind of daily physical routine like  exercise, walking, dancing, or yoga. 

• Use your hands to build or create (typing  doesn’t count) like gardening, carpentry,  drawing, clay modelling, and embroidery. 

• Music. Listen, sing, or even play an instrument  if you can. Allow music to water your life and  watch a new season awaken. 

• Put together different things wherever you  can. 

May the Creative Spirit be with you!

Creativity Exercises 

Here are some specific ‘to-do’ exercises that  help the flow of creativity. These exercises  can be done solo, though they are much  more powerful and fun if done in a group. 

• Choose any object around you. Speak about  that object for one minute as fast as you possibly  can, without stopping or thinking too much. You  could look in the mirror if you like. And yes, it  could be nonsense. Nobody needs to hear you,  except perhaps your phone (yes, record it). After  one minute of random speech, think about this  object sensibly for a while. Now repeat the one minute speech about the same object, slowly  and rationally. 

• Choose a shape—circle, triangle, square,  amoeba, etc. Draw this with anything but your  dominant hand. If you are a right-handed  person, use your left hand (or vice versa). Also,  draw with your mouth and toes. Go on! 

• Make a collage using pics that depict  something from your childhood. 

• Draw a landscape. Colour everything with a  colour you would never use for that particular  feature. For instance, your sky could be red,  clouds blue, trees purple, and the river yellow.  You don’t have to be a great artist. Just have fun. 

• Spend a day noting only smells—foul or  fair, faint or intense. We don’t give enough  importance to smells, except when they are  strong. It will be an eye-opener. 

• Create an entirely new word using any or all  

the languages you know and explain its meaning.  • Imagine the last day of your life. Write a letter  to your future self. 

• Create a gibberish song and sing it (please  record it on your phone). 

• Close your eyes. Think of a familiar face. It  could be a friend, a member of your family, or  a well-known personality. You should know that  person’s face well. Draw it. It doesn’t matter if  you can’t draw well or at all. You could make a  cartoon or an emoji, but make sure you highlight  what you think are the main features. Now take a  look at that person’s face and compare. 

• Draw a tree. Hang different things on the  branches (anything except leaves, flowers, and  birds) You can’t repeat a thing; ten monkeys don’t  count. 

• Pick a random picture of a real person from  the internet about whom you know nothing and  write about that person. Use your imagination to  spice up the profile. After that, do some research  to find out facts about the person and compare  your notes. 

• Pick an object from around where you live,  your home, or your office. Write a letter to that  thing as if it were a real person. 

• Think of a person you want to say “I love you”  to. It need not be romantic. Say it in ten different  ways without using the word ‘love.’  

• Pick a movie you haven’t seen. Play a scene  in mute mode where people are talking. Write  dialogues of your own. You can compare them  with the original ones afterwards. 

Harvinder Kaur is a writer, poet, and educator. Her creative and impactful work  spanning over three decades includes teaching, creating unique training courses/workshops,  and building and running a school among other things. You can learn about her beautiful  online course on IMAGINATIVE WRITING and other works @ www.harvinderkaur.com