A glimmer of a direction, this is it.

Sometimes one might think oneself creative in the act of creating something, othertimes, one might be creative without thinking about it. I think we would recognize the former as being somehow 'disingenuous/insincere' when compared to the latter, but maybe the latter is less 'cerebral/intelligent' when compared to the former.

First world artists who incorporate the 'naive' art of tribal or more ancient/exotic cultures into their work are sythesists, [edit] NO! synCRETists, a sort of creativity. I am thinking that some examples show us that if they grasp the right exotic culture at the right moment in history and inject it into our awareness with the proper influence, they resonate with the larger collective consciousness.

Picasso is an obvious and successful example of this, incorporating African motifs into his work at the turn of the 20th century, when the perception of the first world mainstream had a nascent awareness of the existence of Africans as actual people, and maybe more important as a people and culture that imaged various aspects of the human reality that were neatly kept in cupboards and only hinted at by the predominant European culture: overt imagery dealing with fertility, sensuality and passion.

So the African/tribal idol/mask imagesthat Picasso conveyed into the larger global cultural consciousness were like "active pharmaceutical ingredients" in his art, and the medium-- paints, colors, palette, subject material-- were like "excipients", the flavored syrup, the gel capsule.

Something of a belief, but also something for which there is clinical evidence, is that underneath it all, there is a shared commonality between every culture/people comprised of humans, who in turn have "realized" a synthesis in order to operate.

The Synthesis is one of perception and physical reality. You perceive and know that there are mechanics involved in perception which are ruled by physical realities. We perceive physical realities through these mechanics, and believe that we can perceive the workings of these mechanics, despite their involvement in our perceiving of them, through scientific endeavor. This belief seems reasonable enough, I do not challenge this belief but merely state it is a belief. Repeated application of scientific methodologies has yielded results that support it which is why we believe it.

So as we apply our perceptions to the understanding of reality, we exercise reality, dwell in reality, and alter reality. How cautious should we be in this, how bold? We are very bold, really. We slap things together and cause noise and light and heat and sparks. On a personal level, our perceptions of pain, fear or discomfort might indicate that we are being too bold, but we often ignore or surpress these perceptions in pursuit of a higher understanding or fulfilling experience. We tell stories, we make them up and tell them, insinuating these into other's memories. We make noises, making them up because it is interesting or amusing to us.

Today I read about someone who takes a foreign instrument with an unusually tuned scale (to our ears) and incorporates this with more usual Western instruments. This is interesting, an interesting synthesis/formula.
Is it smart? It takes some smarts to research these things, to know of them, to know their values and mechanisms and methods.

Do you have to be smart to be creative?

No. Because being smart is a thinking thing, and we stated earlier that you can be creative without thinking about it. So...

so...
so what if rather than trying to be smart, we forgo being smart when trying to be creative. we be simple. we be stupid. Stupid.

What if.. what if we Place Ourselves in the moment of Stupidity. The locking oneself out of the house. The forgetting of one's car keys. The losing a glove, a sock. The forgetting the words to a song, or the name of a person in front of one's face. The moments one dreads, then laughs about later. The times one is roundly ridiculed for, derided for, scorned and vilified for.

This is a universal human commonality. These are universal human commonalities, the Simple, the Stupid. The unwitting, the senseless-yet-it-is-there, it happens. Horrible horrible things happen, life changing, reality altering things happen, due to The Stupid. Great things, clear things, happy things happen, due to The Simple: "It all happened because of one simple thing...".

I had an experience I will tell you about. Long ago, when I lived on my own, for a brief time I lived in a shared house, essentially renting a room. There was a boy who was a relative of the woman who owned the house, he was 10-12 or so and he emotionally/mentally challenged, and he would come there from time to time. He was very mentally disorganized and wild, had to be badgered into behaving controllably. He didn't really speak, she could understand what he would indicate and he would listen to what she said, but it was like the connections were very brief. He would race up the stairs, and down the stairs, but seemed kind of antsy like he was doing something wrong no matter what he was doing, sort of a pure energy kind of being.

One day something happened outside after he got home from school and some kids were mean to him or something, and he was upset and the lady was upset (she was either his mom or his aunt, it wasn't clear). She told him to come and sit on the couch, watch TV, which I happened to be doing just before I had to go to work-- I worked in the afternoon then.

He sat down next to me on the couch. I think I said something to him, "Hi, how are you?" or something. He kind of leaned against me there and then kind of took hold of my arm, like he was scared or sad, and he leaned his face against my arm. Truth be told, he was normally a kind of irritating presence, all that wild energy, but I felt sorry for him and so I thought I should say some reassuring sorts of things to calm him down.

So he was holding my arm with both his hands, and kind of resting his mouth on my forearm while I was watching TV. I had to get up to go to work, so I started to move.

He dug his fingernails into my arm. I looked down at his face, and he was looking up at me with a look of sheer malevolence on his face. I was really taken aback, it was like the whites of his eyes were red. I looked into his eyes and there was no connection, he was just locked into this hateful face mode, and he was not going to let go of my arm, and he was looking at me like he wanted to kill me.

So here I thought I was consoling a little scared kid, but instead there was this daemonic creature locked onto my arm, and now *I* was scared.

I tried to pry him loose, using not just a little bit of strength, no luck. He kind of made a growling sound, as if to say "No way, this is my arm. I found it".

Finally, I called for his aunt/mom, "He won't let go!". She snapped some orders at him and he came out of it, running over to her and then up the stairs in his furtive manner.

Now that I think about it, he was probably treated very poorly, maybe even horribly abused. He was utterly stupid, and simple, but he existed and he was human, and for that brief time he was more powerful than I, so smart and complex.