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Hughes Chapter Five, Seven, & Eight :

The germination of ideas reminded me of Richard Dadd’s painting The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke. After nine years he still considered the painting unfinished. In this section it seemed like the idea is, you can’t put a time frame on creativity. The section also indicated that creativity exists in the person and it cannot be disentangled from the creative person to the creative product. That is agreeable subject matter.

I love Nietzche, but it’s no wonder he had problems with the ladies with that mustache. DAAAANG. His words on inspiration are inspiration itself. Though he denounces god, and some people may not be able to see past his opinions on the matter, but he was really a brilliant guy. He described his experiences with inspiration on page 63, when he said, “Everything occurs quite without volition, as if an eruption of freedom, independence, power, and divinity.”
What a wonderful guy.

Plato makes me laugh that inspiration is a possessed state. Is it a form of possession? Is it? I think of possession as something intense and the word holds a heavy meaning. Part of the definition of possession is madness… hmm…. And there have been plenty of mad artistic creative folk. Hmmmm…. So Plato had an interesting perspective on inspiration at a very early age in history.

Synesthesia is an interesting concept to say the least. Mozart claimed he could see his composition like a fine finished painting or beautiful statue. Beethoven could see the image of his musical work in front of him from every angle. It’s interesting because most people probably don’t experience this let alone relate sounds to colors.

“Society is hostile to change, and revolutions are normally unwelcome,” is maybe one of the best statements out of this book. Society doesn’t want change while the creative world is partially based on change and evolution of ideas. It’s only natural for the two to collide.

I heart Andy Warhol. He is simply neato. His use of color and repetition is brilliant among the many aspects of that man. I like the quote in the beginning of the book when he says, “People call me a mirror. And if a mirror looks into a mirror what does it see?” On page 89, Post modern art is described as only reflecting itself. It does not reflect a transcendent reality. Well put.

Childhood as an altered state is an interesting perspective. I’ve learned as the brain develops in a child that at certain ages their children are capable of learning and understanding things. Hughes said that since children can slip and out of current reality and a fantasy reality.

Winnie the Pooh and shamans… there is supporting evidence to back it up, but is it a coincidence? Alice in Wonderland is a trippy book/movie in general. Very creative concepts and understandably more adult oriented, but a little creepy Lewis Carroll was very fond of children except for boys.


Pearce Chapter Eight & Nine

In chapter eight at the beginning, Pearce’s “clearing in the forest” metaphor is clever, but somewhat cryptic.

One awesome thing Pearce said relating to that idea is, “The range of our possible actions has been so enormously widened by our conceptual powers – imagination, conception, and speculation – that ‘no inherited repertoire could fit the contingencies’ of our world.”

Pearce’s reasons for the failure of psychology is great. He is correct to say that psychology does not deal with the psyche. As well as many psychologists only manipulate things they could manipulate, the worm, the rat, the dog. Off hand, the rat refers to B.F. Skinner and the dog refers to Pavlov and his salivating dog. It is true though, psychologists cannot manipulate one’s psyche as easily as the animals are manipulated.

He is also ballsy with his statements on God and Jesus. In chapter eight, Pearce refers to god as “the projection called God” and basically speaks for Jesus and Don Juan, which is pretty ballsy. Most people don’t even talk about this stuff as not to offend anyone. It seems like he is speaking on behalf of Don Juan and Jesus, as if he knew what they thought and believed.