Amy Tan in her talk “Where does Creativity Hide?” attempts to dig deep into the process of creativity, going through her family history and childhood and into the era of chance and physics. She is also wondering where her creativity came from. Hence she is looking for clues to explain her creativity. The talk appeared in TED channel, and it took place in February 2008. She tries to educate people on the origins of creativity. Amy tan’s thoughts on creativity are entertaining and insightful hence her talks are fascinating. The novelist talks about how people are sometimes given skills, but the skills are not enough to enhance creativity. She begins her talk by explaining how creativity is turning an item that is nothing to something. It is also the worth of nothing and its effect in how we develop. Even though the creative process is universal, it can look different when you look at a variety of artists since it portrays itself in a unique manner to every individual in various sizes and shapes (Tan, (Firm), LLC., & Group., 2008) . Creativity can take its form through nurture or nature or even both in some cases. It can also be accelerated by frustration, near death experience or being different from other persons.
Amy Tan acknowledges that negative pressure or stress are sources of creativity to the most creative and artistic individuals. For a person like Van Gogh, Psychosis totally works well for him in the process of creativity and when it comes to producing beautiful paintings. When it comes to artists such as Sylvia Plath who had attempted suicide so many times before prospering and Proust and Styron, their creativity was highly influenced by depression. For them, the dark muses were hiding their creativity.
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According to Amy Tan, creativity remains unseen in every cranny and nook of life. She also had negative pressures when she was still young. Her brother and father died from brain tumours. Since she faced death so close to her when she was still a young girl raised queries that a girl her age would usually not ask. To her, one of the fundamental principles of creativity is to face a traumatic event as a child. She thinks that many of our scientists have been asking about the concept of trauma on creativity (Tan, talks/amy_tan_on_creativity/transcript?language=en, 2008) . It is a type of cosmology, and she has to create it for the Universe. Looking at creativity, she believes that it is the sense or the lack of ability to repress, her examining visually at organisations and practically anything in life. The terrible observer effect in which individuals look for something, and they are aware that things are happening at the same time and similarly looking at it in a different manner, and we are attempting to know what the story is really about. If we strive too hard, we will be able to only draft the about it, and we will not discover anything. Whatever we were to look for or what we hoped to get in a way will no longer be there. It is all about focus. Amy Tan says that all the things that appear to be jetsam in life usually go through the same query. The question is what will occur if those specific things become important and it seems like it happens all the time.
Amy Tan’s talk shows some of the stages of creativity. First, it demonstrates the stage of preparation where she refers to the nature area where people try to find if they have information about something from their brains. To Amy Tan, some individuals are born with this effect while for her, her mother would say that she got it from past lives. For other people, their stage of preparation may result from depression or psychosis which influence their creativity. When Tan was writing her final book, she had seizures, and as a result, the book she was writing appeared to be entirely different. She also says that she got hints sometimes which influenced her creativity. During her stage of preparation, she says that there are things which bring her information that will assist her in writing a book. For instance, when she was writing a story that required more details like location and history, she read another historical book which supplied her with the information she needed.
The talk also illuminates the stage of insight in creativity. Amy Tan says a near death experience helps to increase creativity. She also says that when she gets clues and hints, she immediately starts to write realising that they were there before (Gordon, 2014) . The signs provide insight for her. She also got insight when she visited a non-tourist location with her friends that was very mysterious, and she knew immediately that it had to be the setting of her book.
The topic of the talk relates to the concept of curiosity and imagination by telling us how the things surrounding us create creativity. Through inspiration and interest, one can create nothing out of something. Some points in the talk may benefit the society and apply to my personal experience. For instance, in the case of a traumatic event, one can utilise it to develop his creativity. In my experience, I sometimes visit a strange place where my creativity grows, and I start writing short stories.
References
Gordon, D. (2014, January 29). DamianGordon1/summary-of-amy-tan-talk . Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net: https://www.slideshare.net/DamianGordon1/summary-of-amy-tan-talk
Tan, A. (2008, February). talks/amy_tan_on_creativity/transcript?language=en . Retrieved from https://www.ted.com: https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_tan_on_creativity/transcript?language=en
Tan, A., (Firm), F. f., LLC., T. C., & Group., F. M. (2008, February). TEDTalks : Amy Tan - Where Does Creativity Hide? New York, United States of America.
