The role of creativity in a work is simply to direct the effort. This, and not that, is what will make the work come to fruition. Naturally, a work in which the first does not shine will seem weak: but it is still a finished work, something that will never have the one who idealizes the role of creativity, believing it capable of materializing without boring work. One stimulates the brain and it points out paths: the legs, however, are the ones to follow them.
Category: Notes
Those Moments When the Mind Unleashes…
Those moments when the mind unleashes weeks of creative work in a single burst are indescribable. It is amazing how the ideas shine with clarity and quickly pile up into sentences that become pages, until the point where they cease not because they are exhausted, but so that the eyes can admire, in disbelief, how productive the work session was. Everything is impressive, from the spontaneity to the abundance of manifestation, which takes place without the spirit seeming to exert itself as usual, and consequently takes place and generates no fatigue. Some artists have said that such an experience resembles a state of semi-lucidity, whereas a force beyond one’s control seems to do the work. Perhaps semi-lucidity is not the most appropriate term, since at such moments there is a pulsating sense of epiphany, and the mind seems lucid and clear as it has never been. And then, rare as they are, it is to make the most of them, rejoicing for as long as they last, and knowing that they will not always be available…
The Representation of Reality
The representation of reality really does seem to be the essential literary exercise; that is, leaving aside aesthetic theories, simply turning experience or observation into literature. In time, the limits that reality itself offers become evident, and then the artist may choose to take a step forward. It is curious to note that the highest works often originate from this motivation: to achieve through art what reality does not allow. There seems to be, in artists taken by this obsession, a point in life when the reality is exhausted, or at the very least becomes insufficient. Hence, all previous training is employed to make mental creation a literary reality as patent as that motivated by direct experience. And to see that, in many cases, the former still manages to stand out.
What Is Most Dear and Worthy
For the artist, just as experiences are useful to him as they influence his work, it is wrong to judge their importance as one would do with an ordinary man. Whether art is seen as the representation of reality or the creation of an alternative reality, the artist will put into it what really matters to him, that which, transformed into art, represents to him what is most dear and worthy of this crystallization. Therefore, it will almost always be absurd to want to see as determinant in the artist something that his own work refuses to tell us.