Grammy Award-winner Jan Karlin is a violist, producer, educator and cultural entrepreneur. Ms Karlin is the founding executive director of the L.A. International New Music Festival, Summer Festival at The Huntingdon, and Southwest Chamber Music. She has produced the largest cultural exchange and music festival in history between the U.S. and Vietnam in 2010, supported by the U.S. Department of State.
One of the many things that becomes clear after extensive travelling, and living and working in Asia for years, is that you cannot understand the teachings of Confucius without a thorough knowledge of the many unique Asian cultures that he influenced. Similar to learning about the teachings of Confucius, one must learn about and experience creativity.
Creativity is at the root of human achievement and although most, often experience it through the arts, creativity touches every area of our lives. Surveys of the technology and business, and cultural sectors indicated that creativity is the most essential skill for navigating an increasingly complex world. Our greatest innovators agree about the importance of creativity.
In 1996, Steve Jobs explained that Creativity is connecting things. Creative people just see something, and it seems obvious to them after a while. They are able to link their experiences and synthesise new things. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better the design they will produce.
Creativity is defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules or patterns, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, as originality or imagination. It is currently the buzzword in offices or on campuses, in academic courses and in arts institution boardrooms, and at the root of scientific studies, beautiful artworks, trips to Mars, and Hollywood blockbusters! However, today, the lines between art and entertainment, both of which rely on creativity as their inspiration, have been blurred. Whereas art makes you think, entertainment keeps you from thinking. A major factor in steering one away from artistic experiences and contributing to the decline in the audience’s ability to identify the quality of creative ideas driven by more than profit, is marketing. Art and entertainment are both needed but one should be able to distinguish between the two. However developing creative skills or the aforementioned discernments is difficult in educational environments that mostly stress the bottom line and graduation rates. We study the results but not the process.
A creative thinker is concerned with new ideas but needs inspiration and thorough knowledge of their field as the cornerstone of their creative process. A creative person pushes the envelope, tries new things and figures out their own personal puzzle. Picasso sketched daily to find solutions for his paintings; Beethoven explored different solutions through piano sonatas and string quartets, and Monet painted the same cathedral in Rouen numerous times, to capture every shade of light. They all needed extensive technique to build their creative skills.
A shared trait of creative people is curiosity and interest in new ideas. An analogy could be drawn between meditation and how one develops new skills overtime. When learning to meditate, at the beginning one is concerned with posture, right frame of mind and maintaining focus. As one’s practise develops overtime, it becomes easier. After trying to sit for five minutes at the beginning, one suddenly becomes aware that 20 minutes is passed, and a one-hour meditation is possible. As with all challenges in life practise makes better, not perfect, but the lasting effort to improve is worth it. §
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World Goodwill Newsletter 2022 #3 - In Search of a New Culture
