Well, an impeding conversation for a job profile that requires 'creativity over single-track thinking' got me thinking as to my own ability to create things from what is at hand. On one level, I felt that it was all subjective and I create as I go along. Then again, there are also exercises in sheer objectivity, as in the case of anything you make that is site-specific. I gave up on that train of thought and caught another. I remember how Salil used to point out that it (creativity) was something that just came through you. I agreed and have spent the last 20 years trying to be a better conduit for the ideas that came to my mind. Recently, I came across an early teen 'cool' movie of my memories; Footloose...Around the same evening, I came across NASA selling large size posters of outer space taken from Hubble, and so on. It was a cool idea and too bad, Indian Govt departments are not so savvy to 'cool products' but I kinda like the photo they used to advertise them. All big, red, inviting couch and all...
So I took them both, and of course, another pic of Lavanya's and tried to combine them. Now, of course, that you know the ingredients, you might not like the end result as much, but I know I managed to combine three disparate images into one homogeneous, flowing whole. Which is currently my desktop and giving me much peace at night. Which brings me back to my main personal point about cre8ivity, to me and quite a few, it is enough to have managed to do justice to the original idea in our mind. Sure, the world has various constraints that will make it interesting as you go along and even change eventual outcomes, but at the end of your labor, the utmost satisfaction is in having followed that line down to just like it was in your imagination. Oh, yes; extra points for finding the faint outline of the Jawa in the same image. So long and I'll be seeing you seeing my creativity at the opposite of 'large.'
