Creative genius as a visiting spirit

working draft

In a speech at TED 2009, author Elizabeth Gilbert recommends that society re-embrace the pre-Renaissance belief that extraordinary creativity should be attributed more to a temporary visit by a capricious external spirit (genie, daemon or muse) than to the artist (18 minute video of her talk). While acknowledging the unscientific nature of this belief, she argues, nevertheless, that we should consider adopting it for the benefit of creative people and society as a whole. She believes that attributing a work of creative genius soley to the artist places a difficult and stifling psychological burden on such artists--it creates the expectation (by them and society) that they will now consistently perform or produce at this level...and that something must be wrong with them when they don't. She believes these expectations actually undermine the long-term creative output of these individuals and their value to society. Without coming to any conclusions about the veracity of this view, I decided to see if I could use it to generate some new ideas for my own work. When I run creativity workshops I like to cover the tables with unusual and playful toys (e.g., colorful building blocks, rubber balls), objects (e.g., rubber chickens), and books (e.g., weird inventions, unusual design). I do this to help the participants elicit their own playful spirit in the belief and experience that playfulness (especially in serious business settings) promotes creative thinking (e.g., more interesting and flexible mental associations). Maybe I should now consider using these toys to create some sort of fun "ritual" in which the group formally solicits or invites its creative muse to attend. A ritual rubber chicken sacrifice? Perhaps something a little more serious than that would be more appropriate. I could introduce a period of quiet meditation during which I ask the participants to clear their minds and open themselves up to being visited by a helpful creative muse or spirit. I have always been pleasantly surprised at how well people will go along with odd exercises like this during brainstorming sessions. If nothing else happens (i.e., no creative spirits show up), this activity would at least provide a nice break and opportunity to mentally and physically refresh the group. One of the most interesting and powerful activities I have come to rely on in my brainstorming work is a progressive-relaxation exercise coupled to a guided-imagination exercise. After completely relaxing and quieting the participants, I ask them to imagine themselves in some external situation or experience (e.g., projecting themselves into a consumer or brand experience that the workshop is focusing on). I have noticed that when I direct participants to imagine an encounter with other people or with the personified spirit of the brand, the exercise seems to create a lot of emotional involvement and insight. Of all the different brainstorming exercises and activities I have used over the years, this activity is probably the closest I come to working with "spirits." I think the next time I do a guided-imagination exercise I will combine it with the meditation idea discussed above and create an imaginary encounter with a creative genie...and see what happens. I am sure there are other ideas for how I might apply this provocative "visiting creative spirit" metaphor in my work. If you have any ideas about this, please feel free to share them in the comments below or to contact me by email.