I’ve never heard of Elizabeth Gilbert before.. but through a happy series of links, including Olga Nunes blog (someone else I’d never heard of before, but find myself so incredibly moved by) I came across this from the last TED talks:
This notion of creativity coming from without, as a “genius” that visits us when we work, isn’t completely irreconcilable to a humanist like myself.
Whether it’s writing, making music or even crafting code; we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. And it doesn’t matter if we call the well-spring of our creativity God, our cultural heritage or the people we connect to, it feels natural and rational to acknowledge an external source – a “genius” living in the walls of our lives.
I’m not religious in any sense – I’m firmly convinced that I just don’t know – but I can accept that I don’t own the ideas and forces that inform my creative life. The transformation of these forces into something new may be peculiar to me, but the source is elsewhere.
