FEED THE MACHINE / RIDE THE ELEPHANT lol. Yeah. I just feed the machine. If I do

http://thebea.st/1j9f2zkCREATIVITY: FEED THE MACHINE / RIDE THE ELEPHANT

lol. Yeah. I just feed the machine. If I don’t, it makes my life hell. Sort of like Vaal in that Star Trek episode The Apple.

That ‘creative bit’ the article refers to, which I tend to think operates more like lucid dreaming, just doesn’t shut off unless I’m in social situations that are interesting. Or when, I try, very, very, very hard to step back and think purely objectively. And I can’t really sustain that level of effort very long.

The trick I found, was to make sure that obsessive creative impulse has a problem to lucid dream about. Otherwise the constant noise will drive you into exhaustion trying to fight it. Usually I sort of identify a problem and then some X hours, days or even months later I know the answer when it just pops into my head, and then have to go figure out WHY I know it.

I am very conscious of “Riding the Elephant”. What I think of as “me” is the rider. That machine is the elephant. I can beat it with a stick to steer it, but you know, it’s an elephant. It can do what it wants.

You can train people to think creatively. We’ve known how to do it for over a century now. But you can’t train people to be uncontrollably obsessively creative. And I think a lot of us might actually prefer to be normal instead. ‘Cause a lot of the time it sucks.