Capturing Lightning – A Novel Approach to Harnessing Creativity
By: William Tiley
Creativity
Creativity is a funny thing. Even after years of playing bass guitar in numerous bands and projects, the nature of creativity has remained fairly elusive, like an intangible force that has to be captured like lightning in a bottle. Even my own creative output felt like the manifestation of sudden moments of inspiration drawn from the ether rather than a controlled and manageable process. Against this backdrop, I decided that after years of being a sideman or part of a band, it was time to try taking centre stage and making an album of my own music.
This undertaking did not start well. Fitting in time to make music and experiment around my work and family commitments was challenging, and progress on this possibly misguided project was very unstructured and chaotic. I’d find myself brimming with inspiration on a train on a Saturday morning but without the time to get the ideas down until the following Wednesday when the spark had disappeared into the void, forever forgotten. Similarly, creating multiple parts of a song at once was a new challenge that I had not faced before. As a bassist, I would listen and react to what other musicians were doing, but had never needed to write chord progressions, melodies and rhythms for guitars, synths and drums. I was floundering.
It was around this time that I came across the book Building a Second Brain (Forte, 2022). The book primarily positions itself in the fields of knowledge management and productivity, based on using technological resources to develop and maintain a system of digital notes that, over time, form this ‘second brain’. Now, I’ll admit that I am somewhat of a sceptic regarding productivity hacks and maximising my work output–I firmly reserve the right to be intentionally unproductive when I so desire! However, the book did raise some interesting points regarding the nature of creativity which have greatly streamlined the process of making an album.
Capturing creativity
Forte outlines a system where all ideas are noted and filed digitally, enabling them to be retrieved at any time when needed. In my case, this was done through the standard iOS Notes application. So, I started taking notes. Rough ideas for potential research projects at work, interesting looking places to eat, instructions for various flatpack furniture items, recipes that caught my attention, it all went into the Notes app. And yes, this has proven useful–I have embarked on research projects, expanded my culinary repertoire, and successfully reassembled various things around the house thanks to my second brain.
It was, however, an anecdote in the book that changed how I view creativity. At the start of Chapter 5, Forte discusses the creative processes of celebrated dance choreographer Twyla Thorpe. When commencing a project, Thorpe always begins with a large, empty box. Over time, she slowly builds up a collection of things that inspire her in relation to that particular project. Scraps from magazines, photos, objects, handwritten memos, it all ends up in the box. Then, from this accumulated collection of inspirational sparks, Thorpe then develops the dance routines for which she is so celebrated.
Forte proposes that rather than a physical box, this can now be done digitally with the added advantage that technology allows you to carry a practically unlimited number of boxes with you at any one time. This sounded like what I needed for my own creative endeavour. A virtual box, or series of boxes, where I could collect scraps of information that can be reprocessed when time allowed. Those moments of inspiration on the train on a Saturday could be instantly noted, and when Wednesday rolled around, it would be ready and waiting for me.
So I started creating and filling ‘boxes’ with ideas. Each song idea has its own note, with a general ‘Miscellaneous’ note housing all the scraps that have yet to coalesce into a coherent song idea. These notes are inherently chaotic–short voice memos of possible melodies, scraps of lyrics, a reminder to look back at the 2.06 mark of the song ‘Celestial Greens’ by Vels Trio, a note to try and recreate the syncopated drum patterns caused by music from a boat echoing off the mountains as I walked along a Cambodian beach… However, slowly but surely, things are coming together. I have somehow managed to structure the previously erratic nature of my own creativity and retain ideas for long enough to transform them into songs.
This also led me to question my concepts of creativity itself. Creativity is not a divine, mysterious art, but a consequence of gathering, processing and recombining information. Creativity is the ability to retain different inspiring ideas and concepts, create links between them, and use that collage of concepts to create something whole. Of course, simply having a series of notes on my phone isn’t going to turn me into Thom Yorke overnight–this simply shifts the concept of creative genius away from an intangible blessing and towards a knack for connecting and enacting ideas in a way that nobody else can emulate. In fact, as chronic recyclers of ideas, Radiohead really embody this gathering of concepts until the song can finally be realised–songs like True Love Waits (first performed in 1995, yet only released on an album in 2016) and High and Dry (performed with Yorke’s pre-Radiohead university band in the late 80s, yet not formally released until 1995) show that even critically acclaimed musicians may take years to gather the right combination of ideas to complete the song satisfactorily.
Despite my hopes and dreams as a teenager, more of my time and energy these days is spent as a language teacher than as a musician. So, it was almost inevitable that these realisations on the nature of creativity would somehow end up informing my approaches at work. This change in my own understanding of creativity has not only demystified the process for myself but suggests that it can be structured and replicated in educational contexts. The question is, how.
Facilitating creativity
As far as I can see, there are two important parts to facilitating creativity. One key part in this is, naturally, some kind of creative outlet. While recording an album may not translate well to a language learning environment, presentations, creative writing, drama and design have often been used by educators to help make the learning environment more engaging and give students opportunities to express themselves. In some cases, educators have also used song writing, dance and visual art as outlets for student creativity. This is even codified into teaching practice–with ‘create’ constituting the highest category on the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the importance for creative outlets is therefore a key part of various language learning approaches such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).
The success of these creative projects, however, is determined by the second part to facilitating creativity–fostering the creative process. As educators, we aspire to spark inspiration and interest in our students, so perhaps we should also aim to provide students with the tools and opportunities to capture these sparks. This is where my recent demystification of creativity comes into play–how can we encourage our students to gather and synthesise moments of inspiration? One way to go about this could be to employ the ideas outlined above–to encourage our students to create ‘boxes’ of inspiration that pertain to their studies.
This bears considerable similarity with the traditional concept of note taking in class, an advantage that could be leveraged in education as students are likely to be actively taking notes already. However, in addition to this academic process of curating knowledge, we can also encourage our students to be curators of their own inspirations. Language education is particularly suited to this, as students can explore their interests through the medium of their target language, be that sport, music, food, culture, history, or anything else. By encouraging students to engage and record what inspires them and providing outlets for students to process these inspirations, we can make the learning environment more personalised to each student, giving them ownership of their own studies and freedom to develop language skills in a way that is truly motivating.
Embracing this curational approach to creativity and inspiration seems like it could have a transformational effect on educational practice. This may even help our students realise their own potential as creative artists outside of language education too. Meanwhile, I will keep working away on my album. Who knows, maybe one day I will even end up finishing it…
Reference
- Forte, T. (2022). Building a second brain. Atria Books.
William Tiley is a lecturer at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University and occasional bass guitarist, originally from Bristol, UK. His research interests include CLIL, creativity in learning and arts integration in language curricula.