Can We Create an Earthquake?
Last week I enjoyed a telephone conversation so much I felt I gained a phone friend. And it’s with the very special Lauren Volkmer of ARTZ (Artists for Alzheimer’s). In this rambling introduction to ourselves we used and then repeated various images to agree that there is something very special happening around creativity and aging and creativity and dementia; it has to be a phenomenom of earthshaking proportions. So many wonderful people are working in so many wonderful ways that have deep connections – and Lauren and I agreed we were part of this. But is it a tidal wave or an earthquake? But does it matter as long as it keeps happening?
But the tidal wave seemed to flow through this week’s newspapers here in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first was Monday in that voicebox of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal. There was an article on pyscho-oncology which piqued my interest: “A New View, After Diagnosis“. It is about making life meaningful in the face of fear, in the face of mortality. And from what I read, being creative is, for many people, part of what helps. In my book, creative living in the face of cancer is creative aging at its best.
Another whisper of making meaning is the ad for a set of lectures by James Hollis, Jungian Analyst and Author. He’ll be here at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant Friday July 17th and Saturday July 18th for Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and What Matters Most. I haven’t found a description of these programs but I’ve already fallen in love with their titles.
The next piece that reverberates for me is in Meet the Artist in GoTriad section of The News & Record. It’s on Robert ‘Bob’ Postma and he is a living and breathing tidal wave of…creativity, creative aging, community creation, and everything of great meaning. I’ve got to meet this man!
The important question
The neatly dressed woman stood quietly, waiting patiently, until almost all the other glad-handers had gone. I’d just finished a breezily-entertaining (and I hope enlightening) presentation on brain fitness and we all had enjoyed ourselves. She approached and I turned. She asked the important question: “How do we get people to try?” Try painting, she said, because painting was the greatest mental challenge she’d ever had and ever enjoyed. But if we can’t get people to try then they’ll never be able to succeed.
Great question. And I have valid fragments of an answer but no truth. How do we get people to try? Try something new. Try something challenging. Try something hard. How?
Myths About Age, Art and Genius?
David Galenson writes that “many innovations spring not from their creators’ innate talent, but from their years of accumulated knowledge” (in “5 Myths about Art, Age and Genius”). That makes Galenson an advocate of creative aging in many ways since he contrasts, favorably I might add, the work of young geniuses and old masters. It seems he is thinking along the lines of Gene Cohen and his definition of creativity:
Creative Expression=(Mass of Knowledge)(Internal Life Experience*External Life Experience)
And for those of us who don’t remember algebra, Cohen explains:
When we look at all the elements and influences regarding creativity, what seems to matter most are sufficient knowledge or mastery of an area; motivation and perspiration or the willingness to do; some intangible that are part of the human condition, such as intuition and insight; and the capacity to be inspired (The Creative Age, page 38).
So Galenson’s comment “keep that in mind when you head to an art museum” may be true in even more ways than he knows.
leave a comment