Cohen/ Creative Edge

[Adam Blatner]

Pedantic commentary---please ignore unless you feel like exercising your mind a bit..  AB = my comments 
Andrew Cohen writes: The Creative Edge

Truly creative people are always pushing the edge. 
   AB: "Always?" I like much of what Cohen gets at and at the same time bristle with his hyperbole, words like "always," "has to be" "very"
 Makes the whole enterprise seem more effort-filled, striving with every fibre of your total being, that sort of talk... 

AC..If you see very talented musicians lost in spontaneous improvisation, they'll often tell you that in that state something comes over them. There's a certain place they describe out of which all authentic creativity springs—a mysterious point between the present and future, where a deeper current is flowing. This place is alive with the thrill of the unknown, full of risk and insecurity. It's the very point where something comes from nothing.
    AB: Moreno made a similar point in his Theatre of Spontaneity book... he even named this "certain place"  as "metapraxie."

AC In order to create something new, a risk has to be taken, a leap beyond the known. And the thrill of that creative leap is a very impersonal human experience. Great artists, writers, musicians, scientists, engineers, athletes and many others all experience this same thrill. We find that we feel most alive, most liberated, when we're expressing our own creativity, pushing the edge in the right way for the right reasons. This potential for creativity seems to be an inherent part of the human capacity. The creative process is an evolutionary process.
     AB: agree, but often the risk is gentle, the leap small. and the impersonality may not be "very," but only slightly. He has a point, but these "most" words make it seem to me that only great folks do this stuff, while I want to emphasize that even a little opening, the simplest spontaneity game or imagination exercise can be fun, too. 

AC  When you experience the creative impulse awakening in your self, it's no different than the original impulse that became the whole universe. It's nothing less that the Big Bang itself, working in you and through you. That's why it is always so thrilling.
       AB: Well, I find it thrilling even when I don't need to elaborate the myth to include the whole universe. That kind of grandiosity is a bit of a turn-off; yet there's a germ of truth here, too---that's why Moreno was so excited: He intuitively sensed that the catharsis of a newborn baby warming up to life, cathartically crying with the change of state, also partook of what Moreno called the Godhead. But I'm not ready to say "...it's no different than..." --- maybe it is different in some ways. This is the problem of confusing immanence (i.e., the flow of divinity through life) and transcendence (i.e. the other-ness of divinity). Moreno was great in part because he appreciated immanence more than many in his generation; he was limited because he did not appreciate transcendence as well.

   AC: Now, it is one thing to take the risk to leap beyond the known in music, art, writing—in any kind of temporary process where we are creating something. But in an evolutionary context, we want to aspire to a relationship to life itself that would be constantly creative. I'm not just talking about creativity with a canvas or with a musical instrument. I'm talking about creativity with our own souls. It's much more challenging.
    AB: agree, and yes, this is Moreno. Ed, do you want to email Andrew and tell him about Moreno? 

    AC:  There's no time out.
         AB: Heartily disagree. This is that effortful hyperbole I object to. Take it easy, you do this every night when you sleep. Time out. all of life has a rhythm of engagement and relaxing. 
          
   AC ... '' You can't put the brush or the instrument down and go back to your safe, secure, ordinary life. Living like this requires a radical letting go and a kind of care that few people dare to even consider.
     AB: .. And the problem with this kind of extremity-talk is that it feeds magical thinking, becoming "special," and cult-like mentality, in my opinion. It isn't necessary. 

   aC:  It means perpetually living right on the cutting edge of the life process—where the flowering of spirit as evolution is occurring in every moment. It's ultimate creativity of self in a total response to life.
        AB: I don't buy that it's necessary, and more, I don't buy that those few who deceive themselves into thinking that they are living with this high degree of focus and commitment are all that much more productive or happy than those who don't....

   Well, I hope you'll forgive my curmudgeonly comments, but there's an edge to new age jargon that I really think is misleading. It's awkward because in many ways I'm in sympathy with many of their ideas and goals, but not others. I have a similar problem with psychoanalysis and even maybe some of Moreno's writings. Ah, it's tough to be "in-between." But that itself is a creative edge. 
             Open to your comments. Warmly, Adam
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