Auditory Stimuli For Creativity

 

 

"You have to be able to float through your environment with your antennae up, like a butterfly, and just let things ping your antennae." - Sterling Lanier

Creativity can be instigated by auditory stimuli:  a song or musical piece; the soft sudden sound of a leaf landing on the forest floor; thunder or staccato of rain; a bird song peeling back the edges of night so daw can be revealed; a mother’s voice; laughter of playing children; a woman’s sob.  Some sounds are so beautiful they hurt, they fill us with joy, they transcend language.  Auditory stimuli enriches us, sharpens our awareness of the world around us, rouses us from lethargy.  A sound can send us to our art desk, in utter thrall, to create something that is sparked in us. 

Creativity can be spoken to in many mediums.  Artists are sent to their creative stations to try to express the feeling a sound can give them.  Some have learned to use apps that are sound bytes (waves, storms, rain, birds singing, etc.)  My mother taught us early, the beautiful stories to music).  She would put classical 75 records on ad ask us to tell her the story the music tells us.  I believe she conditioned me early to be sensitive to music, to hear the story of “Walk Through Vienna Woods”. 

Repetitive sounds instigate creativity.  Nature has organic repetitive sounds that we can expose ourselves to in order to spark creativity.  The world, our home, our room, is swirling with sounds we have learned not to pay attention to because the world is so chaotic and loud. 

What sounds drive your creativity?  Mine is definitely music.  It drives my mind, body, heart and soul.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.21.23

 

Creativity: Soul Speak

 

 

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
― Pearl S. Buck

There is nothing magic or inherited about creativity.  It is a process.  It means you are practicing your soul speak.  It starts with one pencil mark, one pen line, on stroke of a brush, one glob of glue, one splotch of color… but it starts and from a deep space in the soul comes wisdom, memory, experiences, thoughts, feelings, hopes drams.  This is the sacred altar of creativity. 

I biological aspects, creativity is said to reside in the frontal cortex where short term memory is stored for working and thinking.  Creativity can be described as four types.  Deliberate cognitive creativity is a mental process that relies on existing knowledge and we ae aware of this knowledge.  Deliberate and emotional is creativity that can be used to create new ideas.  There is spontaneous and cognitive creativity that means that we simply self-generate thoughts that come from sensations and experiences we have had and are not controlled by anything that stimulates us from the outside. (spontaneous) meaning it just comes on its own.  Then there is spontaneous emotional creativity where we naturally have a plan I mind and we work through that plan for a final project.  These four types of creative thinking are what we sometimes refer to as our “Muse”.  With all this in mind, (literally) ,creative thinking makes us a more interesting personality who enjoys solving problems.

Being creative comes from our need to have some kind of control in life because of life’s uncertainties.  Creative people have a need to “fix” things.  Thus it is that, when there is no great life problems, our brain will dream up artistic ways of solving a chosen problem with the four types of creative thinking.  We place a blank substrate in front of ourselves and due to a challenge given or simply the blank substarte gives rise to creative thought to solve the blank canvas problem.

It is said that religion was created to solve the problem of our fear f unknown certainties of life (and death).  We attempt to solve our emotional problems, in creative ways.  Art being a way to express, sometimes, what we cannot explain or give language to.  That is when big life problems need to be solved and we are driven to solve such like solving the problem of aching teeth.  We are driven to solve it.  The smaller problem of solving a blank substrate is a much smaller solution we desire to make sense of.  Creativity is used in most life situations.  Artists choose to solve artistic problems.  This is where creativity steps in and sometimes we refer to what solves it as our “muse’ taking over.  We had a need, and have, to solve things and that process used to do so is called creativity (creative thinking of the four types).

This is heavy stuff, but I have a “need” to try to put into words how “something” takes over and creates an image in my head, or my hand and tool simply begins to make marks and the process of making art happens and follows through to a finished product.  I sometimes call my art-making “Soul Speak” because I feel like making art is soul work.

How do you explain creative thought?

©Carol Desjarlais 5.20.23

 

Where have all the butterflies gone?

 

 

“At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words ‘fuck off’ much more frequently,”
- Helen Mirren

When we get excited, afraid, or nervous, you can get a fluttery feeling, a prickly feeling, in your stomach area. Sometimes, especially in romantic situations, we call them “butterflies in the stomach”.  In reality, this feeling is part of our beginnings and our fight, freeze, or flight responses.

Early human beings had to be ready to do one of the three, often, as there were big predators ready to attack or eat us.  Our hearts would speed up.  Our muscles would tense up ready to do battle.  Our blood pressure would race upwards.  Adrenaline and cortisol would be released and blood leaves spaces it was supposed to be in …like stomach and muscles, and we could run like the wind while a thousand thousand fluttering things spasm in our belly.  It is a hangover from our earliest times as human being.

It is all different levels of fear that causes the feelings.  We fear abandonment, being eaten alive, and all the other fears we have today, that have nothing to do with racing away from a sabre-toothed tiger. 

Some get butterflies from romance, yes.  But, for me, that is long past.  If butterflies do happen, in our crone age, I cannot know. I have not felt them since before my soulmate died. And, if they do come, it is over something that brings a sense of awe, like beautiful scenery, a gorgeous flower, getting to see a grandchild or great-grandchild, having my family come to visit.  Life does offer one or two but... there they are and there they go.

If you get them for any other reason, and they come often, immediately find something that will abate the anxiety.  Tell igoogle to play a favorite song and dance it off, grab a sweater and go for a walk to use up the extra adrenaline.  Find something to squeeze, like a stress ball, or get a spinner and spin.  In other words, find something to distract you.  I am really good at sudden bursts of housecleaning when anxiety hits like that.

We do not have sabre-toothed tigers wandering around out to get us.  Most fears are not logical in our body responses.  Yes, there are times we need to lift an automobile off another human being, but when adrenaline is released, it has been known to affect some kind of superhuman strength, in those rare situations.  Finding things that soothe anxiety that are good for body, mind and soul, means that we ought not to spend long times with low physical activity.  Adrenaline is a hormone and the body naturally releases some at will.  We are more apt to feel the butterfly sensation for no clear reason other than that. 

If you are going to feel butterflies, I hope it is for the romance reasons.  Enjoy those kinds of butterflies.  The become few and far between.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.19.23