Hallam's Journal

I've thought for some time that the whole notion of 'creativity' in the arts is really relatively recent, and basically totally vague and confused in the minds of people who rely on it to explain things like talent and inspiration. It seems to me that only God (or the universe, or what have you) gets to really create stuff. The most that humans ever get to do is sort of shuffle and rearrange things a bit. Now, of course, some of that rearranging can be done more or less imaginatively, and with more or less of substance, style, ingenuity, originality, etc. How one arrives at meaningful expression of ideas or feelings or experiences, and avoids the banal or hackneyed or merely incoherent is admittedly more than a little mysterious. But I think people tend to grab ahold of 'creativity' as kind of the flogiston of genius or of self-expression, not aware that it both fails to really explain anything, and serves to justify all manner of truly, fatally self-indulgent flailings carried on its name. Think of all the maundering performance art, interminable guitar feedback solos, wankish noodly jamming, and messy painting executed so the practitioners could "get in touch with" their "creativity".

I don't buy it. I think the real artists just get to work.