As ever, a delicious Squish conversation was had yesterday evening in the company of random, interesting people. In collaboration with the Omaha Creative Institute, SquishTalks produced another conversational forum. Among the numerous twists and turns of the evening’s discourse, we toured the conundrum of creativity’s genesis. We talked about the importance of empathy, from both a spectator’s perspective, through interaction with creative expressions, and the energy imbued into the creative expression by this communal engagement. We also problem’s like writer’s block and the capriciousness of creativity.
This got me thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert and her remarkable TED talk, which you can view here. Gilbert talks about more recent concepts around the generation of creativity as an internal process, commonly manifesting suffering and anguish, which she asks us to reconsider in favor of external factors. Gilbert calls upon ancient ideas around daemons, geniuses and muses and asks us how we can begin to relate to that concept of external inspiration.
One thing we did agree on was that conversation was itself, in a way, an opportunity for each of us individually to find inspiration from something (someone) external. Where are you finding your creativity?