Creativity in Community

   Martin Buber's chapter "Education" in Between Man and Man was originally intended to address a conference which dealt with "the creative powers of a child" (p.83). The conference is an attempt to understand how educators can foster children's creativity, even when the quality of creativity comes from something indivisible and unpredictable. But as Buber later suggests, the passion to originate something or to create can be a potentially lonely enterprise if it is not met with some kind of mutual exchange or community. One of my favourite paragraphs from this chapter seems to sum it up well:

...as an originator man is solitary. He stands wholly without bonds in the echoing hall of his deeds. Nor can it help him to leave his solitariness that his achievement is received enthusiastically by the many. He does not know if it is accepted, if his sacrifice is accepted by the anonymous receiver. Only if someone grasps his hand not as a "creator" but as a fellow-creature lost in the world, to be his comrade or friend or lover beyond the arts, does he have an awareness and a share of mutuality. An education based only on the training of the instinct of origination would prepare a new human solitariness which would be the most painful of all. (p.87)

I like this quote because it seems to introduce a new element, communion or mutuality, which is not often figured into discussions on creativity. More often, I have heard creativity discussed in terms of individual achievement and inspiration. But it's interesting that I never came across any research on how the reception of a creative work affects the artist and her or his future creativity. Generally, there is a stereotype floating around that artists either work completely in isolation or work oblivious to the way others receive their work. But since most artistic work begins in the social background or milieu of the artist, it would perhaps make sense that artists would draw from others to receive their work and recognize it. It made me wonder, however, do people become artists for themselves or is there always an intended audience in a person's writings?

    I have often heard writers and musicians say something to the effect that their audience means little to them and their art. They defend this position by suggesting that looking inward rather than outward can keep the writer or musician true to her or himself. But when I look at the way I write, I find that the notion of writing for one's own sake is full of questions. One question I have is: is the self who came up with the idea to write yesterday the same as the self of today?

   I am afraid that my own personal answer to the above question is "no". When I am writing, I find that I am not tied long enough to a certain perspective on the work for a single identity of writer to appear. It is as though the process of writing itself evokes different writers within me, who unfold according to the work itself and how the vision of that work changes. To use a simple example: I might start a piece in a very frivolous mood of wanting to make myself laugh, but then later find some philosophic theme that I want to explore in the characters. I suddenly find I am losing frivolity and flipping into a different kind of writer identity as I start to discover new things in writing. Then there are points when the writing process slows down because I lose the original motivation to write, and may even need to find other motivations in order to finish the piece. But I think it shows that when one kind of writer fails to finish a task, other voices can step in to fill in the gaps or finish the overall story. I suppose that even within oneself the writer's voice works in community with others.

Buber, Martin ( 1965) Between Man and Man. New York: McMillan