Creative Innovators: Maria Prophetissa

Maria Prophetissa was an alchemist who lived sometime in the 2nd or 3rd century CE in Egypt. In addition to writing treatises on the practice of alchemy, she invented lab equipment and distillation instruments, including a double boiler now called the bain-marie, or Mary's Bath:

The Axiom of Maria attributed to her states: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth." At face value, the maxim describes the alchemical process in the lab, but it has layers of meaning. Since alchemy was regarded as both a spiritual practice as well as an evolved form of metallurgy, alchemists spoke and wrote in highly symbolic and coded language. When the alchemist managed to change and transmute materials, it was believed that he or she evolved spiritually as well. C.G. Jung extended the psychological meaning of alchemy and interpreted her axion as a description of individuation by which an adult matures into a unique personality.

The bain-marie is used when there's a need to cook slowly and gently. The same can be said for the process of maturation and for creative projects. Too often we want to push ourselves to change or to finish something, but the soul needs to boil on the back burner for longer periods of time to develop its full "flavor." The two pots in the first picture also symbolize another alchemical axiom, "As above, so below," the union of the spiritual and the material neccessary for completion.

Creative Innovators: Julia Child

Julia Child is an icon.

She marched into the kitchen with the attitude that haute cuisine didn't have to be so darn mysterious and off-limits to the ordinary cook. Down-to-earth and warm, Julia always held a party in her kitchen. And we were all invited.

In her famous public television show, The French Chef, she did something innovative and unique: she demonstrated that the art of French cooking wasn't a snobbish affair, wasn't some arcane ritual—it was fun. Yet her ebullience wasn't a sign of a careless, uninformed approach. In addition to her experience living in France, she majored in history in college and knew France's history and culture.

And how she got to France was an interesting journey. During WWII, Julia worked for the Office of Strategic Services as a researcher for General "Wild Bill" Donovan and then was station in Sri Lanka. There she met another OSS employee, Paul Cushing Child, who impressed her with his wit and sophistication. After the war, Paul worked for the State Department and was assigned to France. The Childs lived in Paris where Julia, who always got into the spirit of the life around her, took up the challenge of learning French cooking, starting at the Le Cordon Bleu school.

Her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, hit the bestseller list in 1961 and is still in print today. The book's success plus the articles she published in newspapers and magazines led to the creation of her iconic show on Boston's WGBH. The French Chef was an instant hit. Not only did she show how easy cooking was, she was also totally and utterly herself and the audience loved her. No pretensions, no fuss, just roll up your sleeves, and get to it.*

In this segment from the show, she demonstrates how to make a flat French omelette. Dig that jerking pan technique, beats stabbing at it with a spatula. And she had a way with a whisk—I gotta strengthen my wrist muscles if I want to emulate that.

After Julia passed in 2004 (at the good age of 91), one of her kitchens was moved into the Smithsonian, where you can see it in the National Museum of American History.

So, whisk in hand, eggs at the ready, I say thanks Julia, merci!


*(Of course, I can't help but think of Dan Akroyd's impersonation of Child on Saturday Night Live. Save the livah! Apply pressure to the wound!)

Image: Elsa Dorfman, 1988, Creative Commons License 2.5

Movie Review: Byron

My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the 19th century's bad boy, a rock star before there was rock, and the embodiment of the Romantic archetype of the dark genius. His poetry was passionate and kinetic, swaggering across the page with ease.

Byron lived as he wrote, passionately, boldly, and extravagantly, with an "in thy face" attitude to polite British society. His writing didn't so much evoke a muse as it evokes a daimon, a darker, more Dionysian energy. Poems like "Manfred," "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," and to a more satirical/sardonic extent, "Don Juan," celebrated his archetype, the Byronic hero, a daring, doomed, reckless, dark-souled artist, rebelling against society, written. Byron, hyper-aware of people's reactions to him and his image as a poet, felt compelled to live up to that ideal in his personal life, gaining admirers and detractors alike.

To do justice to his life would require a longer miniseries or an epic film, which would cost a few dear ha' pennies, so Byron, a made-for-television BBC production, focuses on one of the scandals that made him into a notorious figure—the alleged relationship he had with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. (The true extent of their relationship has never been confirmed; like many famous people, much of Byron's life has morphed into legend.)

The movie's trajectory follows the writer's rise as the hot new poet on the scene after the publication of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" in 1812 and his subsequent social fall. His has a fling with the equally eccentric Lady Caroline Lamb and when that collapses, pays a visit to Augusta, whose husband is more interested in horseracing that in her. Byron comforts her and they go beyond kissin' cousins. He's happy, feeling he's met his kindred spirit, able to confess his most vulnerable and twisted thoughts to her. But Augusta realizes what's at stake. She suggests a marriage with Anne Milbanke, a progressive young woman who solves calculus equations for fun and believes she can save Byron from his wicked ways. After their inevitable divorce, Byron moves to Italy and Switzerland where he spends his time romancing women and complaining to fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelly. Attempting to redeem his life with meaningful activity, he returns to Greece, only to die of a fever while organizing a unit for the Greek war for independence.

Overall, the performances are excellent. Johnny Lee Miller takes on the role with high energy, giving life to Byron's alternating moods of charisma, humor, insecurity, sincere passion for life, vanity, and self-pity. The poet's genius inspired and charmed people but also made him a tyrant. The movie doesn't flinch when it comes to the high-handed ways he treats the people in his life, namely his wife and his long-suffering manservant, Fletcher. Byron frequently lashed out—and either you feel for his struggle to overcome his darkness or you wish he'd get over it already. Convinced he's bad to the bone, Byron acts out, flouts convention, and says he doesn't care. Yet despite his mockery, he feels vulnerable and lost, longing to find a meaningful role in life, to be something more than a debauched exile.

One quibble I had with the film: I wish it had spent more time chronicling his relationships with other writers. During that gloomy "Year Without a Summer," Byron, his doctor John Polidori, and Percy and Mary Shelly stayed in their Swiss villa and competed to see who could write the spookiest tale. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, which started the vampire genre, and Mary came up with a little tale called Frankenstein. (The Vampyre was attributed to Byron, but his authorship or c-authorship with Polidori hasn't been confirmed.)

Studying Byron's life and poetry raises interesting questions about creativity and how to go about expressing it. Did his contrarian, devil-may-care attitude enhance his creativity or eventually hold him back from further growth? Would he have felt happier had he found a more secure position in life—or would he then have felt less inspired to write? The Romantic conception of the artist—boundary-breaking, ruled by passion, often tragic—remains with us to this day but is it the only viable model from which to create? And how does the artist cope when he stumbles into that vulnerable gap between self-image and reality?

No easy answers there. Some follow their heads, others follow their hearts, still others their impulses. Byron followed his to a dark star that burned out in Greece. He probably would have done the same again if given a second chance.

Hit the Scroll, Jack: The Kerouac First Draft Method

Writers employ all manners of tricks to invoke and keep the muse at their side, especially through the first draft when it's time to pour all of those pent-up ideas. One of the more interesting ways of first-drafting I've come across is Jack Kerouac's approach to writing the Beat classic On the Road.

Legend has it he inserted a foot scroll into his typewriter and then banged out the manuscript in some kind of speed-induced, Dionysian frenzy while Snyder played the bongos and chain-smoking Beat kiddos snapped their fingers in glum glee.

Well, not quite.

Kerouac took painstaking notes in a series of notebooks for the novel, laying down the ground work for several years. But he did tape together sheets of tracing paper into a 120 foot scroll which he fed into the typewriter and typed and typed and typed, fueled only by coffee and a desire to render his own coast to coast ethnography.

I admire his focus, because sometimes it's too, too easy to get distracted while picking up another sheet of paper or opening another Word document. Thoughts like, eh, time to check the stocks or should I clean out the fridge? dart in and before you know it, you're tossing out cruddy old salad dressing bottles and sweating over Bear Stearns. And off the muse goes, back to Olympus or the bowling alley or Shangri-La because it's a lot more peaceful in those places.

Treating a Word document like a scroll is a brilliant way to beat those first draft blues—just bang it out, baby. Of course, no first draft, even Kerouac's, is ever that great, so he revised On the Road—up to six drafts. But at least he had something to revise in their first place. You can fix something that's written but you can't fix a blank page.

Since 2004, the On the Road scroll has been on tour and might be coming to a library near you.

Poetry in Translation: Auf diesem Hügel

Writer Bettina von Arnim was both a muse and a creator of the Romantic movement. Filled with boundless energy, in love with Love, she was the era's fairy queen, a unique spirit who lived her life as a great Romantic and creative adventure.

As a writer, poet, musician, and illustrator, she dedicated her talents to her work and to promoting the work of contemporaries Beethoven, Brahms, and Goethe. She crushed on Goethe, exchanged letters with him, and worked to arrange a meeting between Goethe and Beethoven, believing with all her Romantic heart it would result in an art that would take the world by storm. (Actually, the poet and composer didn't get a long too well and never met again.)

She also contributed her expertise in folk music and composition to the collection of the folk tales and poetry in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, one of early collection of stories that sparked an in folklore in the 19th century, which in turn led to the Grimm Brothers' collection.

Later, she married poet Achim von Arnim (whose poem "Ritt im Mondschein" I translated earlier). They had seven children and Bettina continued to write and correspond with other famous creatives, such as Liszt, Schuman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In fact, Bettina was so active in the arts scene and so eager to be noticed that it's even been speculated that she was Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved," although it was more likely she introduced Beethoven to the possible Beloved, Antonie Brentano, her sister-in-law.

I chose the following poem/lyric "Auf diesem Hügel überseh ich meine Welt" for its Romantic spirit and gentle rhythms as an example of her excellent ear and ability to give the written word a music feel.

Auf diesem Hügel überseh ich meine Welt!
Hinab ins Tal, mit Rasen sanft begleitet,
Vom Weg durchzogen, der hinüber leitet,
Das weiße Haus inmitten aufgestellt,
Was ist's, worin sich hier der Sinn gefällt?

Auf diesem Hügel überseh ich meine Welt!
Erstieg ich auch der Länder steilste Höhen,
Von wo ich könnt die Schiffe fahren sehen
Und Städte fern und nah von Bergen stolz umstellt,
Nichts ist's, was mir den Blick gefesselt hält.

Auf diesem Hügel überseh ich meine Welt!
Und könnt ich Paradiese überschauen,
Ich sehnte mich zurück nach jenen Auen,
Wo Deines Daches Zinne meinem Blick sich stellt,
Denn der allein umgrenzet meine Welt.

On this hill, I look over my world!
Down into valley, accompanied by a meadow
Gently divided by a path down to
The white house placed in the middle
What is it that holds my attention?

On this hill, I look over my world!
I climbed up the area's steepest peaks
From which I could see the ships set sail
And towns far and near, proudly surrounded by mountains
But there's nothing that holds my gaze.

On this hill, I look over my world!
And if I could see paradise
I would yearn for those meadows
Where my gaze lands on your rooftop
For that alone borders my world.

After her husband's death, Bettina continued to write and publish, becoming a muse again for a younger generation who campaigned for reform and unification in the German confederation. She dared to suggest to the King of Prussia that some reforms were necessary and the king listened—he too, fell under the enchantment of enthusiasm she could create, energy necessary for creative vision.

Romancing the Red Planet

A few years ago, I went to see author Ray Bradbury speak, a real treat because he was the writing hero and inspiration of my childhood. His novel-in-short-stories The Martian Chronicles sparked my own desire to paint worlds with words and subtle wisdom.

In his Martian stories, the red planet is a place of unfolding dreams and nightmares, a reflection of human hopes and fears and the home of an ancient civilization of shape-shifters bewildered by humans and their chaotic emotions. The romance of Mars as symbol and real land draws humans out, inspiring them, challenging them, changing them. And the collection ends on an elegiac note with "There Will Comes Soft Rains" and "The Million Year Picnic" in which the dark side of human nature has taken over Earth and Mars becomes a refuge. I think this closing section lifts The Martian Chronicles from science fiction/fantasy to a work of vision and poetry.

As a symbol, Mars touches the human need for something beautiful, strange, or inspiring to believe in, to ignite passion, something that draws us outside our mundane worries into a bigger perspective where ideas flash like sparking comets and our spirits are tested for their mettle.

And Bradbury, as a speaker, doesn't disappoint. If you don't leave one of his talks in love with writing and the necessary passion it takes to be a good writer, than you weren't listening.

"Write from your passions, what feeds your imagination," he said. "When I was a kid, I loved dinosaurs! And King Tut! So I write about dinosaurs! And King Tut! If you're not writing about your passions, you're not writing! Use the library! Best resource ever! Read good books! And when you don't feel like writing, then stop and go swimming! Writing isn't a chore, it's something you love, damnit!"

Bless that shouting man, he's right.

As I noted in a previous post, passion is the fuel that keeps creativity and the desire to solve problems burning steadily. I thought about passion again while watching the news reports last night about the Phoenix Mars Lander. The engineers were enthusiastic, crowding around to talk to the reporters about the years of planning, working, and testing. In this age of disinterest, it's refreshing to see people who love their work and are motivated by imagination and passion to accomplish a huge project.

I like to think of the re-emergence of space exploration in the news was a small but potent rebirth of imagination, a desire to dream beyond the mundane and to engage in big projects that move us forward. The red planet as a symbol romances us again, asking us to explore our possibilities, our challenges, and our future.

photo: wikimedia/NASA

Book Review: Ficciones

Ficcionesis a slim volume of short stories by the 20th century Argentine author, poet, and translator Jorge Luis Borges, a good introduction to the author's unique style of writing. Most of the stories are only a few pages long, but despite their brevity—or because of it—they push the boundaries of literary fiction into something wild, complex, and challenging.

Borges plays with words and ideas, mixing, stirring, and baking them like a magician-chef until they rise up in strange new shapes to nourish a part of the brain you didn't know existed until now. And yet they retain an elusive quality—his worlds are beautiful and strange to behold, ideas and phrases remain with you, and yet you can never quite inhabit a Borges world. His stories push the boundaries of language and the imagination and are not concerned about realistic situations or relationships.

Take for example, the two strange worlds and one mysterious organization of "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Tlön exists in an encyclopedia and might be the creation of the Orbis Tertius society. The author's fictional alter ego (a favorite motif) goes in search of maybe real Uqbar and imaginary Tlön, learning its complex languge.

In "The Circular Ruins," a wizard retires to an abandoned temple where he attempts to dream a person into being. Borges uses the story to explore the ways an idea can manifest in the physical plane and the fine line between reality and dream.

"The Lottery in Babylon" presents a society in which people's lives are delegated through the luck of the draw through a lottery run by a mysterious Company, and explores the contradiction/paradox between deliberate choice and luck.

And then there's the famous library in "The Library of Babel." Imagine the universe as a series of hexagonal room, each containing a set number of books, most of which contain gibberish. And yet, rumor has it, that in other rooms there are books that make sense, that contain valuable information, and the librarian spend their lives looking for them.

These descriptions are just the beginning—each story is so complex I'd have to write long, long posts on each and I'd rather enjoy the stories like dreams instead of analyzing them to pieces. Ficciones, because of Borges' love of the abstract and conceptual, isn't an easy read, but it's a rewarding read. I'm on my third re-read and I admit, sometimes my eyes glaze over at the complexity, but then I keep going, fascinated at how someone could come up with this stuff. His stories are a testament to how unique writers can be, how far we can push our imaginations to touch something sublime.

Picture: Borges in a hotel lobby, 1969

The Fourth Dimension of Creativity

So what qualities do you need to be a successful creative/entrepreneur?

The usual three we assign to creative success are talent, hard work, and drive. These are touted in all how-to books, seminars, and workshops. We quote from Edison that genius is more perspiration than inspiration, we praise the ones who sleep next to their computers and subsist on nerves and coffee, we say of others, well, they're just driven.

But we can have talent yet never express it. We can work our fingers to the proverbial bone and yet feel like we've barely gone forward. And sometimes drives get stuck in one gear.

What enables us to break into that fourth dimension? Not logic, not more sweat, not pushing ourselves beyond capacity, but something emotional and intuitive: passion. Passion so strong that it almost feels autonomous, something that wells up from a deeper source than everyday life.

But this passion is a slow-burning force. Not one that sweeps like an out of control forest fire, or one that sputters out at the slightest draft. The passion we need is a sustained, ongoing, well-tended passion that burns like a quiet candle flame.

Without passion, we won't have the courage to develop talent. Without passion, we won't have the energy to work for long periods without much outward encouragement or signs of recognition. Without passion, drives don't develop beyond survival.

Sustained passion gives meaning and authenticity to our projects. Passion also gives us the courage to overcome the inevitable challenges that stand in the way of completion. Passion lifts the drive for survival into the drive to create meaning.

And in that fourth dimension, we find our best selves and in turn inspire others to find their best selves.

Photo source: Matthew Bowden, Digitally Refreshing

3 Ways to Enhance Your Creativity

A quicklist of ways to put a spark back into your creative life:

1.) Cultivate a sense of wonder.

We live in an amazing world but too often the daily grind or the compulsion to overanalyze pull us away from noticing the abundance and wonder around us. Take a minute and consider the perfection of nature and our own ingenuity. Notice how perfectly dew sits on a blade of grass, or if you like your inspiration grand, admire a structure like Rouen Cathedral.

2.) Say "yes" to something you usually say "no" to.

We know our like and dislikes, but sometimes we say "no" to something out of habit or assumptions. I'm not talking about extreme sports but small things like opening ourselves up to new foods, music, and sensations and becoming engaged with them.

An example from my experience: I usually don't wear fragrances and perfume because heavy scents often trigger headaches. But once, in a funky boutique, I found a bottle of a sandalwood-based scent that was so unique and different that I had to try it. This scent became an olfactory muse for me because one sniff conjured up images of stories from the Thousand and One Nights and the Mahabharata, images from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and journeys down the Silk Road. A real storytelling genie in a bottle!

3.) Learn a new language.

Of course I say this as a writer, but learning a new language, even in the adult years, has a way of creating new synapses and breaking thoughts out of old ruts. Our brains are more malleable and flexible then we realize and while we may not learn a language fluently, the process of learning builds the brain's "muscles" and expands our understanding of how people communicate.

And all three of these tips have one thing in common: the put our minds into a state of focus and relaxed concentration, states essential to sustained creative output.