Much has been written about the creative process since classical Greece. It is often accepted that it has three phases. The first requires dedication and effort. The future musician, writer, architect or scientist, like so many others, will have to complete prior knowledge, a task that may take days, months or years, depending on the case. After going through this phase, you are able to tackle the key moment, the lighting, where the idea emerges. And the third stage is again troublesome: the material implementation of this idea.
The first and third phase are usually feasible for every committed person. But between them lies the magic moment. The one who will make the difference between a craftsman and an artist, between an ordinary person and a genius. It’s the moment of inspiration. And that moment requires neither time nor effort, but light. What was Archimedes thinking as he floated in the Baths of Syracuse, shouting his famous Eureka as he ran naked and arms raised through the city streets? The mathematician Henri Poincaré explained how, after hard work in his office, without being able to solve the problem of the Fuchs functions, he went for a walk and suddenly, when he wasn’t thinking about it, he saw the solution. This story repeats itself: Isaac Newton is said to have been resting under an apple tree when he saw a fruit fall. This happy moment changed the course of science and mankind. What is the secret of this moment?
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I will tell a personal anecdote. At the time I was teaching projects at the Barcelona School of Architecture and one day a concerned student asked me for an audience. I’ve only got two weeks to hand in my thesis, she said through a broken voice and teary-eyed, and I can’t think of anything; Maybe that’s not my career, despite what I like. I see, I told him; I’ll give you some advice that you may not be able to follow. It’s spring, the weather is lovely, the summer heat is showing. Pack your briefcase without forgetting your bathing suit and one of your favorite novels, take a train to Sitges and settle into a seaside guesthouse. Forget the problem for the first week, enjoy it. The second, if everything goes as I hope, you will use it to draw your project. He looked at me silently with wide eyes. It’s amazing how many students trust their teachers enough to be able to accept seemingly crazy ideas, I thought. The last train leaves at eight, he told me. She turned and I watched after her, determined to put the plan into action. I forgot and two days later someone knocked on my office door. It was her. But you’re not in Sitges? I do not answer. I just came back. The day after my arrival, so yesterday, I was lying on the beach after a swim in the sun and the idea came to me. It felt so clear and complete that I filled my notebook with a multitude of hand-drawn sketches. Are here. Tonight I’ll start drawing the plans.
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But what is happening here? Something obvious. In the creative process, the first and third stages require intense work: time and effort. But the moment of inspiration, the crucial moment of revelation, demands the opposite: forgetting, relaxing, half asleep. Sometimes mathematics comes to our aid to explain situations that we think are magical. One day I discovered that the intersection of two curves, one convex representing judgment based on brain frequencies and the other concave representing imagination, intersect at the half-sleep point. And it is at this point that the mathematical product of the two curves, which represents creative capacity, shows a maximum. It corresponds to a brain frequency of about 10 cycles per second (the so-called alpha rhythm) and, as the curve shows, is the point of maximum creative efficiency, the state of inspiration. This is why Archimedes floated in the pool of the bath, this is why Newton rested under the apple tree, and this is why my pupil lay in the hot sand after bathing. Effort is futile here, on the contrary: we must flee from it as from an enemy, in order to plunge into laziness. This is the state in which ideas appear. her alone. Everyone keep quiet, the teacher said to the bullfighters.
The problem is that we don’t always have a hot spring, beach, or apple tree nearby, and the question is: in a world of haste and fear, is there a way to get the mind into that state? maximum creative efficiency? Can I use a simple technique to bring my organism into the low brain state that Archimedes was in when he called his Eureka? Dalí had his answer: After I’ve had my coffee and after dinner before going to sleep, I hold the teaspoon in my hand. If it hits the ground while falling, it wakes me up. The image that goes through my head at that moment is usually optimal. He devised this trap to catch ideas as thrush hunters set up their webs to catch them in flight. It is about achieving a partial separation of consciousness and ensuring that memory, which is not a static file but a kinetic one, is free to shuffle its own data. But there are other ways. Some were already known in ancient cultures without modern enlightened people having taken notice of them. For example, trust in the gods. Homer says in the Odyssey: No one taught me, a god planted some verses in my soul. In almost all ancient cultures, the gods are the supreme creators, the inventors of all things, and they emanate the creative ability that they bestow upon some mortals as gifts. Of course, all of these are just metaphors, but behind them is an explanation of the creative process. To understand the gods, one must first pay attention to an ancient and oriental technique: the vibration of the vocal cords. The sound we emit when we utter a word (meaning) is associated with an image (meaning) that reflexively occupies the mental screen of our consciousness. But when I manage to produce a meaningless sound – say om – my conscious attention goes to the corresponding image but cannot find it because there is none: om is a meaningless word. And what happens then? Well, something of utmost interest, because my conscience takes care of a blank screen and remains at an impasse. That means it leaves my kinetic memory free to generate images and ideas.
But what does that have to do with the gods? You see, prayer, which is understood in all civilizations as addressing the gods, follows exactly the same path. Because his words (Allah is mighty, God bless you, Maria, pray pro nobis) are mostly banal: meaningless vibration of the vocal cords, blank screen of consciousness, freedom of creative memory to create encounters between the data contained therein. So nothing mysterious. Prayer is nothing more than a simple and ancient technique to find solutions to human problems. And the fulfilled prayer affirms like Homer: God has enlightened me. Metaphors that explain with poetic language a simple and very real physiological process: our memory is capable of generating images and ideas when the pressure of consciousness is relaxed. And when we pray in a well designed temple – like so many Gothic churches – the result is even more tangible; Certain architecture is said to facilitate the favor of the gods. The temples are nothing but creativity labs, but the enlightened man has chosen to abandon them. Regrettable waste.
Methods for Epiphany
Other methods of achieving Epiphany do not require visiting the Temple. Jorge Luis Borges made his up impersonating another he called Almotasín. In this case, the liberation of conscience was to ditch the responsibility of writing and give free rein to his creative memory to give free rein to his events. Borges’ ploy – deflecting his own personality to a fictional author – helped me propose one of the most famous exercises of my students, this time engineering students, in the Theory of Invention course. It was called A Deviant Day. Often our routine is creativity’s biggest enemy and the trick was to get rid of ourselves. The exercise consisted of becoming an imaginary character for 24 hours. That day they did not go to their usual work, they dressed differently, they had breakfast and never tried menus, they rented a room and slept in another city, they changed their name and studied another profession. For most of the students it was a long day full of exciting adventures, encounters and unforeseen situations. It served to prove that the world we live in could be different, starting with ourselves, and the ideas that suddenly occur to the fictional character surprise the real me because they would be unthinkable under normal circumstances.
The eureka moment comes unexpectedly when we step outside of the routine. And the explanation is simple: we have a vague idea of what our memory is and how it works. According to the Oxford Dictionary, memory is a file from which we can extract data to display on the mental screen of consciousness (memory). But here the dictionary misses something crucial, because our memory is not a static archive like a library, but a kinetic one: its data is in constant motion, boiling like in a cauldron, colliding with each other and connecting themselves to create new images or new ideas generate (imagination). In my opinion, we can make an analogy with Albert Einstein’s kinetic theory of matter (the particles of any material body – molecules, atoms, subatomic particles – are in constant motion and their average speed determines their temperature) by proposing a kinetic theory of matter storage . Because data in memory, like particles, moves, collides and combines. And the amazing thing about this phenomenon is that it occurs autonomously; without needing the help of conscience, which acts only as a spectator and judge. We can therefore say that our memory has a temperature that is all the higher the greater the excitement of the data it contains. And the key that explains the creative process is that this excitement of memory is controlled like a thermostat by conscious activity. Consciousness and memory form a self-regulating, cybernetic system, like a horse and its rider. The engine of the process is memory, but it is driven by conscious activity, which acts by chilling memory’s combinatorial capacity. So if we want memory to generate ideas or images, consciousness must be toned down. This was the case when Archimedes was floating in the pond or when Poincaré was taking his walk. Like the string that pulls the kite, consciousness directs the process, but it must allow enough leeway for the joke to fly. For this reason, the methods of achieving creative efficiency propose using tricks of one kind or another to bring the cerebral frequency into an alpha state of relaxed awareness. Although we must remain alert because when consciousness decreases excessively, we fall asleep. And when the tension is completely removed, the kite flies uncontrollably, creating unpredictable images (dreams). The optimal creative state, therefore, is that of a slightly diminished awareness, allowing for an oscillating tug-of-war over memory. And the ways to do this work firstly on our physical organism and secondly on our brain frequencies. My friend Popon Basal, an accomplished cellist, told me that one day his teacher, the great Mstislav Rostropovich, revealed his little secret to him: he always carried a sprig of rosemary in his jacket pocket, and while secretly squinting and lovingly smiling, he was breathing his aroma deeply before giving the audience one of his memorable concerts.
Carlos García-Delgado (Calatayud, 1944) holds a doctorate in industrial engineering and is an architect. His latest book is El yo creativo (Arpa, 2022), for which he was a finalist for the Anagrama Essay Award.
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