Creative Genius

I've been reading a great book lately: Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie. I would say that after 11 years, the book is getting a little dated, but some ideas are just a little too sticky to go out of vogue.

One of the first stories in the book is about the author's visits to elementary schools where he displays his steel sculptures and talks art with the kids. Predictably, as the groups of kids get older, the less enthusiastic they become about discussing their own creative genius. To illustrate the point, I was taking a walk this past Sunday around a nearby lake. A young girl and her mother were walking just ahead and discussing the various ideas for sandcastles and sand-sculptures they could make when they got to the beach. The mother's ideas were primarily based on castles, moats, mermaids, etc. The young girl had a different idea: A half unicorn, half duck sculpture. She reasoned that she really liked ducks and really liked unicorns - so why not put the two together (Duckicorn or Uniduck?)!? Awesome.

Obviously, not every off-the-wall idea will work and certainly there is some comfort in having grown ups act in predictable patterns. But this draws out the distinction between being "normal" and being ORIGINAL, which is what we're really driving for when we want to unlock our creative genius.

One of the more powerful ideas here was about validation:

My guess is that there was a time - perhaps when you were very young - when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you.
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But there is still hope. You are an adult now. As an adult, you can chose to become your own authority figure.

I get a huge kick out of that idea. Authorize and validate your own genius!