The purpose of creativity

A general point of agreement amongst highly productive creative artists is that inspiration is for amateurs. To be disciplined, to be available for the next big thought requires a routine and a willingness to get down to work. Underneath that means that a certain amount of work is not going to lead to a new creative output.

What is the purpose of creativity? I know that I sustain higher energy levels when I am tapping in to my creative work stream or pool or whatever it is that gives me new thoughts or the desire to express something in a new format. I simply feel I'm a whole being when my creative thoughts come together into realized work. I also feel more successful when I have chances for collaboration.

Recently there has been a lot of writing about collaboration in the business press. For many years mercantile processes involved either highly hierarchical (read uncreative) productivity or downright poor labor conditions to produce commodity related products. Are we now in an era where new concepts and services might only be possible if collaboration in support of creativity and innovation is the way forward? I hope so.

I would like to think that a framework of process that supports artistic creativity. Think of it as scaffolding when working on the construction of a new form. New forms are the products of creativity. I have found that a framework I developed for being able to dance and later to sing (starting with learning) has worked also for learning and producing in less traditional creative environments. I believe this is born out if we look at highly productive artists who switch media (check out performers who produce wonderful drawings or paintings). How does productivity in the plastic arts produce fine chefs? Does craftmanship play a role?

Craftmanship is only a part of the creative process, but beginning with that basis can be freeing when proper constraints are in place. Knowing how to produce a fine work, as a craftsman, provides keys for when to continue burnishing a piece and when to let the work stand. This relates back to the big middle where constraints can provide wonderful opportunities for new outlets.

More Thoughts from the Big Middle

After considering the vast opportunities that are part of life without many boundaries I find myself seeking structure and constraint. Artistically it is always simpler to produce a new piece when some definition of what drove the work or inspired the thinking has been identified. But is it always good to share the construct? Critics rush in where rules of engagement are known. There is no shortage of, 'but you didn't' when falling short of a difficult or murky goal.

Revisiting a subject is both enriching and painful when folding in learning from the first attempt and gatherings from the meta-structure. And the fifth attempt should yield yet a different lesson, but too much working the dough and you have a starter tough as nails and nasty tasting as a boot. I long to capture the lofty spirit without introducing bombast or silliness. Does that require just the right spice, word or dance step? Can I get my point across without being adept?

The beginning of the big middle seems full of space, light, adventure. Yet without my alethiometer or a compass of some sort I have visited the gardens of several potentates without learning the language of the land and certainly no taste of pomegranite was there for me. It turns out that when I have no expectations whatsoever I can learn nothing in return. Who expected that the opposite of close minded turns out to be mindless, or worse yet heartless?

As a practice within a private space I have set goals for many years. I'm not sure why I have a drive to do this, but some findings I can share are these. If you wish to set goals, you need to write them down or they are just fairy stories, entirely useless. Some of them had better be ridiculous, either fun or impossible or it is just drudgery or self-flagelation. Set a cycle for this (think periodic like monthly or yearly), if you just do it in some chaotic fashion you won't understand what they mean later.

And what I mean by later is the cool part. They are absolutely meaningless as goals all by themselves. Hurray, I'm free, goals are not part of the critics packpack. Where they actually help me is that first I set them out in some sort of written format and then I revisit them later. They all get noted in the same place so it is easy to see what I dreamt, how I thought it worked out a year later (in my case) and then over a longer time what those longer term thoughts meant to my earlier self.

The value of life in the Big Middle is that there is some wisdom available. The difficulty is that I am still working out what precious learnings have value and what tools will assist most is mining some wisdom.

Taking a Trip with the World Kitchen

If you haven't tried a class at Chicago's World Kitchen, you are missing out on more than food. I recently signed up for "Antojitos for Independencia" with the City's Executive Chef, Judith Hines. This day became extra special for me because I got to take an armchair 'trip' to Mexico.

I have taken several classes before, each one entirely different in theme from any other. Part of what makes courses there so very deluxe is that Judith and her team do all the kinds of work that make a restaurant hum, yet the students have the sense of truly learning about and producing the dishes that we then devour in spirited communion at the end, generally while talking with our mouths full. Each class begins with a detailed yet personal history covering aspects of the food on offer. The class size ranges from 20-25 people, and all the food stuffs, herbs and spices and any special presentation materials (for example the classic Mexican hats a proper indenpendence day presentation) are shared round the room. After a half hour of instruction and virtual travelog, we divide into teams and get down to work with our team of master chefs on hand to advise and give spot instruction on knife skills, the proper reduction consistency or how to present a finished dish with a flourish.

For this class, Judith spun a story smacking with details that were too outrageous for fiction. I found myself in a small town in central Mexico preparing for a wedding. First we heard about someone else's that ended in a kidnap. Perhaps the bride was not so eager to marry her intended and she arranged for another groom? Next our master chef walked us through the year I might spend in preparation for my own wedding.

To begin with I would carry around a book to family and friends to catalog what items of food would be brought the week prior to the big event. My expectations for largesse would be based on what I had provided for her event the previous year (a lesson to not to be stingy when giving gifts). Based on the year's crops and husbandry bounty, I might have quite a lot of food, or it might be more presentation and less caloric. No matter what there would be months of prep work and then a week of reviewing the final ingredients and determining the menu. In order to have those lovely, fluffy corn tortillas, first the corn will grow, then it will be picked and dried, hulled and ground, soaked and then finally cooked and prepared for our wedding feast. And that's only the beginning.

In Mexican cooking, nothing is ever cooked just once. After all the drama with the tortillas, there is what you put in them. I was lucky enough to be on the team that prepared the Taquitos with Chipotle Chicken and Potato (rolled like fat cigars and then deep fried!). Each item that goes into the taquitos is first rolled or pressed or dried, then roasted, then reduced in a sauce or sauteed. For the expectant bride, she is coached for a year, living with her future mother-in-law so her cooking will be identical and her husband will feel at home once they are wed.

For us as students, by the time we were ready to fry the fully prepped taquitos with delicious, beautifully spiced tomato with multiple chiles and gently mashed potatoes with yet different chiles we had 7 people working for an hour and a half (10 hours of labor). Mexican cooking is best as a group effort. We had a group with varying degrees of experience and with this complex recipe, we inevitably mixed up our chiles and worried about how thick the sauce should be. We went through pots and pans like crazy and our devoted staff kept a step ahead of us with rapid dish washing and kind supervision.

When the little 'cigars' were complete, Judith showed us how to arrange a large basket with an appealing display of multitudinous, crunchy taquitos sauced with orange, green and white to match the colors of the Mexican flag, for this was our independence day celebration, for Mexico 200 years in 2010. This was only one of eight dishes and two delicious fruit mojitos. As patrons of the celebrations, we tucked in with spirit, Mucho Gusto y Viva Mejico!

The Big Middle

When I use the title big middle, I wasn't so much thinking of my expanding waistline as the middle ground of life that offers so much opportunity with so little structure to priveleged persons after 30 and before 65, that chasm of space known as not young, not old (check out the Republican Young Guns who are 45-60 if you think I gest). What are we to do if we are mindful and hoping to add our mite to a chaotic space?

So many of my colleagues lead lives so hectic, so barren of an extra moment, that this question barely bounces off a distracted surface point. The concept of choice has been squeezed right out of daily habitude. I long not to be part of this cadre. I fear appearing at the finish line, a pin ball virtual citizen who's scuffed surface no longer reflects anything other than 300,000 miles and looking every minute of the trip. Or my opposite number who is chic and soignee, but mummified for lack of fresh air, but with perfect toes.

My usual saw, "show some discipline" is probably shiny at first view, but asking too much except for those already accustomed to that protocol. What I'm seeking is incremental change that can lead my lost self out of the dark forest of "can't make a decision" to "jeepers I wound up here by accident, but I think I like it."

A friend and I revisited concepts of stuckness today. He introduced me to this term (which made a debut in this blog quite some time ago). Now I find that Jonathan Franzen is using the term on his current new bookbuzzfrenzy. Franzen is a thoughtful writer I admire, I am intrigued to find he has thoughts on the topic. And he stirred my genuine admiration recently for saying that he (only recently) feels his own age (my words) and that this is a good thing.

Is it enough to be mindful but often inept and to accept our position in the continuum that is our own tiny dot of time on the planet? I suspect it's at least a place for me to begin if I am to improve.

Another Cooking Faraddidle

I have given more thought to what made me cook; like to cook, feel connected as I cooked, compelled to cook, feel comforted by cooking, understand the science of cooking and so many other emotions (plus how often can you employ a semi-colon in a food thought?). Cooking has always been a safe haven and a joy in giving to others. For me it has roots in nourishing, providing an 'experience' especially when poor and travel is confined to walking someplace not too far away. It is armchair travel with recipes read and experiments tried, drag out those clothes that mimic the cuisine.

In addition to the early work with my mother and gran, another vivid memory of cooking is rooted in my first real apartment with roomates in college. I shared a large apartment with two chaps both of whom loved to cook but knew less of ingredients, prep or presentation than I (though they both took professional jobs and went on to be successful chefs). They were both very game to host parties and try new dishes. It helped that we lived in a wild part of Minneapolis and had neighbors who were all older and more experienced in life than we, they brought every sort of good drink and story to help us out.

One (now) funny consequence of our joy in the kitchen was a lack of serious oversight. I plunged a filet knife into my finger resulting in buckets 'o' blood. I found myself telephoning my mother, 500 hundred inconvenient miles away, for consultation (go to the emergency room of course, she is rooted in practicality). The boys were likely more horrified and confused at the blood-fest than I. My collapse into shock and duh was rather less the issue, it was a disgusting mess, let's not make more. We just hadn't planned on a serious wound and had no supplies on hand. I am now the proud owner of a scar, no loss of finger motion and I keep my knives sharp and lots of bandage material on hand.

When I think of several phone calls at strange hours in those days, they always involved, "can you tell me how to make X" which included chocolate mousse for 200, what to do with 50 pounds of leftover Y, "I have buttermilk, kale and some sort of Indian spice that tastes vaguely like licorice, any thoughts?." Alas, today all I have is a mobile phone and I turn it off at night. Think of what I am missing.

Ode to my mother - Mother's Day 2010

When I was 8 after incessant begging, my mother made a weekday evening our 'cooking night'. This quest on my part to learn to cook and present a perfect meal most likely stemmed from a wish to take credit for this worthy pursuit. My father's mother was the consummate baker and presented cookies and cakse for very occasion. I apprenticed on her kitchen floor with my own eggwhites beaten to a pulp at the tender age of four or five to keep me from being underfoot. Julia Child was igniting America's interest in French cooking at the same time as macrobiotic and other sorts of health food were entering the mainstream. Our next door neighbor had the first 'health food store' nearby and she was raking in the bucks.

The weekly ritual would start with a proper shopping list of ingredients ensuring a successful evening's prep. We would walk or bicycle to Mr. G's, our local food emporium or perhaps the Co-Op if items exotic were required; exotic in those days including such basics as fresh garlic or ground lamb. Everything seemed to involve butter or cream or bacon to deliver that perfect thing known now as mouth feel.

In later years I paid my way with catering, working in cafes and for an exciting if terrifying 6 months a true position as line chef at a fancy French hotel (the chef threw his favorite knife when angered, though never at staff to be fair). I still find the act of prepping food, getting the proper mise en place, my most relaxing and indulge in that craft even when cooking just for myself (all those little containers to wash are nothing). I find I am most popular with friends for quietly stepping into that task, they think I do it for them.

This year was most fulfilling as my mom and I tried multiple versions of french toast. Who knew that croissants with all their lovely butter make dandy specimens. They crunch, they turn an adorable golden color, they go beautifully with maple syrup or with just picked strawberries tossed with powdered sugar. Don't forget to dip something in chocolate.

Uncle Vanya in Russian

It turns out that performances in the original language actually do have advantages to offer that range well beyond the meaning of the words without benefit of translation. Having just seen Theatre Maly's gorgeous production of Uncle Vanya, in Russian with an audience that seemed largely Russian speaking and Russian heart-feeling I am a convert, even though my Russian is non-existent.

I wish I could offer a richness of 'what I had in mind' but sadly not. Any thoughts?