Creativity in Context
And it makes me realize a whole lot of things. First of all, we work within boundaries all the time. Constraints make us creative.
Let me start with with a negative (but, well, positive) example:
Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption? Talk about an example of creativity within constraints... Not just attempted prison escapes, I talked awhile back about the movie Jakob the Liar which was, again, about creativity within constraints. Oh, not art in the same sense that we think of visual or musical art. But creativity nonetheless.
And it got me thinking about our Creator - establishing certain constraints on the creation and then making it so. Gravity will work like this. Love will work like this. Fish will swim like this. Why is it so hard to accept that there are rules or limitations or boundaries to this reality? I mean, I know we like to push against them, but that doesn't make them any less true. And just like an artist who says the painting will be this big, the film will be in black and white, the model train will fly, God has said here are the boundaries. They simply ARE.
And, like any true artist, sometimes God will break those rules. Once the sun stood still. The waters of the Red Sea parted, a storm was stilled, a man who was dead for four days* walked out of the tomb to his sisters' waiting arms and even though death was the established consequence for sin, God still made a way for us to avoid that, too**.
We are never more creative than when we have limitations. Given infinite time, resources, unlimited possibilities, most of us get overwhelmed by the sheer...well, possibilities...
Like the blank page for the writer. Writer's block is an absence of limitation. I stare at a blank page and there's nothing to define it, nothing to give it shape, nothing to tell me what it will become...
Because everything needs a context, a framework... Yes, I can simply play random chords on my guitar (and sometimes I do) but, the truth is, some just don't fit with others - G, D, C2 and Eb just don't sound nice together normally. Yeah, there might be a time to throw an Eb in a song in G - but that would be a certain context, a given limitation, right? I wouldn't normally expect to hear a song played following this chord progression: A B C D E F G... I mean, that's possible, and given a certain set of circumstances...or, if you will, self imposed limitations by the songwriter, you might see that... but, well, yuk...
I saw a book cover once that had a picture of what looked like Robert E. Lee holding an AK-47 called Guns of the South. I immediately knew a couple things - it was going to be about the Civil War - it was not going to be historically accurate***. Even breaking some rules (the confederate army gets 20th century firepower, for example), there were still lots of limitations - still set in the 1860s, still certain characters who have to make an appearance - Stonewall Jackson et. al., right? I mean, it's about the Civil War, so there are certain parameters that simply have to be met - even Science Fiction set during the Civil War... And in doing so, the book was actually more creative than if it was, say, George Washington, Robert E. Lee and Dwight Eisenhower sit down and discuss strategy for the upcoming Operation Desert Storm... (which could still be a viable plot but, meh...)
And maybe all this is much ado about nothing.
*After four days, the Bible says Lazarus stinketh!
**Though, God didn't break the rules to do that so much as creatively work within the framework of the rules in a way that nobody expected...
***It's a genre called Alternate History - or, well, this is actually more technically science fiction since, if I remember correctly, time travel was involved...
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