Communication Primer Videos Reflection

Each of the assigned videos is centered around the idea of creativity as metamorphosis. In “Tales of Creativity and Play,” Tim Brown outlines the way in which an idea comes about through play and can only then be refined. Meklit Hadero illuminates the ways in which we are surrounded by music and transform nature into human-made art in “The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds.” Paula Scher, meanwhile, sees the act of creation as “A Small, Defiant Act of Misbehaving” through which one liberates oneself from one’s confines by way of deviation, both from the cultural norm and from what one expects of oneself.

What made me really think was the truth I recognized in this commonality: rather than a mysterious force emerging from within, creativity is ability to transform the unnoticed everyday into a conspicuous source of light. This light was most apparent to me in Hadero’s talk, which is the one I would recommend to a friend. She buzzes with love for her craft and the world around her, which exists both as a well of possibilities and a work of art unto itself.

In the words of Hadero, “There is no end to the inspiration if we are listening.” It is through self-imposed isolation that we lose inspiration; to be an artist is to be a conduit. Art is not about “creating” in the sense of gutting oneself in a vacuum. We are not God making replicas of ‘ourself’ from nothing. We are parts of a collective whole recognizing each other through the pieces of ourselves and each other made manifest through expression. (Brown cited children and test subjects on psychedelics as two groups who are able to problem-solve uninhibited. What the two have in common is a softened ego.) I can tell I’ll remember the point Scher makes: It’s easy to defy the ‘other.’ “It’s hard to rebel against yourself.” To be apart is to be limited. And, like Brown says, limitations on expression stifle that expression. He stresses that editing while one works instead of after—or, the negation of necessary metamorphosis—is antithetical to making. Nothing will ever get done! The chronic inability to finish things is not quite a cycle, incapable of meeting back up with itself at the beginning and thus collapsing inward. The self is left unfinished. Through metamorphosing the world around us into art, we are able to get beyond the self and join the collective. Even if briefly.

Part 1

Part 1

Communication Primer

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