My new project: the mental orgasm.

Ny bok på gång om kreativitet. Den mest avgörande faktorn för att bli kreativ döljer sig i dina attityder. Till dig själv, till andra människor och till världen i övrigt. Av någon märklig anledning började jag skriva manuset på engelska, vilket var dumt eftersom jag nu tvingas vända tillbaks allt till svenska. Min tanke är att lägga ut några kapitel och se hur de resonerar med bloggpubliken. Här är det oredigerade första kapitlet. Än en gång, ursäkta engelskan. /P.

Creativity is nothing less than a mystery. It’s as profound and complex as life itself. So enigmatic, in fact, that the great artists themselves cannot agree on what it is. Still, the artists seem to fall into eight categories:

The tormented. The courageous. The lovers. The dreamers. The mad. The spiritual. The stumblers. And the juvenile.

The musician and artist David Byrne subscribes to the myth that creativity comes from torment. Actor David Duchovny seem to go along with this. According to David, creativity emanates from anxiety-evoked needs: The need to get something out. The need to get rid of something. Or to get in touch with something within.

Charles Frankel, the philosopher, explains why. He believes anxiety to be the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation, and everything that is the finest in human history.

Then we have the curageous.

The inventor of the polariod, Edwin Land have said that an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. And Erich Fromm, the famous psychoanalyst, seemed to be of the same conviction by claiming that creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

And then there are those who speak about love as the primary force of creativity.

“To fear love is to fear life”, said the great philosopher Bertrand Russel. “And those who fear life are already three part dead”. Not forgetting the finnish philosopher Esa Saarinen, who believed that creativity is the opposite of cynicism – which basically is love and hope. As Igor Stravinsky, the russian composer, suggested: “Love is the driving force behind creativity. Because in order to create”, he said, “there must be a dynamic source, and what source is greater than love?”

Now the dreamers. They feed on hope and courage. They are born optimists and believe in the power of dreams.

Walt Disney, for instance, was a dreamer at heart. He evoked hope in all of us when he proved to the world that if you can dream it, you can do it. But the greatest dreamer of them all must have been JFK. His words at the special joint session of congress 25 May, 1961 is forever ingraved in our memories:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal – before this decade is out – of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

Now that’s what I call a dreamer.

Then there are those who gravitate to the obscure and demented.

One is Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, who nailed the difference between a madman and himself: the madman thinks he is sane, while Dali said he knew he was mad.

George Bernard Shaw, the famous author, is another one. He advised us to fear the reasonable man. Why? Because the reasonable man adapts himself to the world while the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress, he reckoned, depends upon the unreasonable man.

As well as Frank Capra, the film director. He obviously followed his caution, simply by postulating that the more you reason, the less you create.

Of course there is a mystic dimension to creativity as well.

What if the creative potential in human beings is the image of God? At least, that’s how Mary Daly, the philosopher and theologian, pictured it.

And Michelangelo, the renaissance artist behind the famous David sculpture in Florens, claimed to have seen the angel in the marble and decided to carve until he set him free.

“Creativity is the act of putting two and two together to make five”, said Arthur Koestler, the author who wrote about holism – suggesting that everything in the world contains some sort of intentionality or a direction. Not to mention Albert Einstein, who was convinced that God answers when the solution is simple.

Did I mention the stumblers? They are living proof that mistakes, coincidences and chance (a.k.a serendipity) contribute to breakthrough thinking. More than most people think.

Take John Pemberton, for instance.

He was trying to invent an all purpose syrup that would cure whatever ails people. One gloomy day his assistant happened to spill carbonated water into the brew. Fortunately, they had a hunch about the brownish liquid: better trying before dismissing.

It tasted terrific.

And that was the mistake that eventually brought us Coca-Cola.

Mistakes, coincidences and chance are powerful stuff. That’s how penicillin got invented. And the x-ray. And vulcanized rubber, cellophane, safety glass, Scotchgard, Post-it notes, superglue, the popsicle, tea, cheese, the periodic system and cornflakes.

Finally we have those who regard creativity as no more than an innocent game.

Henri Matisse, the great impressionist painter, regarded creativity as looking at life with the eyes of a child. And the late Leo Burnett, one of the big boys on Madison Avenue (one of the real Mad Men), had a hunch about the secret of creativity:

“Curiosity about life in all of it’s aspects is the secret of great creative people”.

But Ray Bradbury went further. Way further.

The famous science fiction writer encouraged us to stop thinking. He believed that thinking is the chief enemy of creativity. Because it’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy.

So what do we learn from this?

Does this mean that we all should act as hopelessly childish, passionate, naïve and lion-hearted dreamers that stumbles through life, driven by anxiety and madness?

Why not?

It could be a fun trip.