The term The Cutting Edge has bandied around the creating business for decades. What does it mean? The cutting edge may mean sharp. At the edge, one has gone as far as possible. There is no more. It is the definitive photograph in its genre, for example. The cutting edge is the flag bearer for the unique until it is replaced.

Or is the cutting edge a military term like avant garde. Is it about cutting someone else with a sharp sword? Is it about dueling? Is it about competition? Is it about cutting yourself? For some the cutting edge may inaccurately be identified by trends. The first person to discover HDR may have created a cutting edge image. Today HDR has become trendy. Trends will always breed mediocrity.

The cutting edge may also be measured by time. Creators know that the answers to creative problems are infinite. The answer is right as far as you’ve gone. Therefore the edge may have been extended, if the photographer had only a few more resources; more money, more time, more to synthesize.

Creators know that creating is a synthesizing process. The more one has to synthesize, the better one may be at coming up with an innovation. Creators believe in vacuum-cleaning the universe for stimuli. We put things together that have never been put together before to create something new.

I am rethinking where the edge is located. And I am seeing that it is not at the perimeter, but rather at the borders where things juxtapose or synthesize. In The Story of B by Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) writes:

…Borders are always tricky things, B Said at last. Feral children fascinate because they stand at the border of the animal world. Gorillas and Dolphins fascinate because they stand at the border of the human world. Even though they are lonely arbitrary consequences of the fact we use a decimal system, the borders between centuries and millenniums fascinate. Shakespeare’s fools fascinate because they live at the border of sanity and madness. The heroes of tragedy fascinate because they walk on the borders between triumph and defeat. The border between pre-human and human, between childhood and adulthood, between generations, between nations and peoples, between social and political paradigms — all of these are intensely fascinating… .

Where are the borders between art and science? Back in the sixties, I belonged to a cutting edge group called E.A.T. which is an acronym for Experiments in Art and Technology. E.A.T.’s sole purpose was to put artists and scientists together to collaborate. They were not particularly interested in the results. The process was the whole thing. Physicists, astrophysicists, astronomers, mechanical engineers, and others met with artists at Max’s Kansas City. Each spoke a different language. The artists’ language came from the right side of the brain. The scientists language often came from the left. These combined energies created innovations as scientists and artists danced on the borders of the two lobes.

Maybe the term to describe innovative work should be changed to borderline. Some of the most interesting artists have been borderline personalities; Kafka, Van Gogh, Janis Joplin, Bosch, Hemmingway, Kerouac, to name a few. Each was a master of the border dance.

Ansel Adams’ work sits at the borders between eroticism and naturalism. Picasso’s work often sits at the borders between adult mastery and childhood abandonment. Dali’s work sits on the borders of the familiar and the strange. Outsider art may sit at the borders of humor and hell or between Peter Pan and Dosteyevsky. Georgia O’Keefe’s oeuvre includes skyscrapers and mesas.

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At Least You Can Say, You Dug!

The following is an interview with the great writer Ray Bradbury. This excerpt is from Marilee Zdenek’s book The Right Brain Experience.

Zdenek: It may be devastating to people to start wishing they had done things differently or try to fix something when it’s old history. But to love the child that was and to let him be with his mistakes and all well, that seems mighty fine to me.

Bradbury: You must never compare yourself with your child or with any of the other writers around you. It is very damaging to your creative spirit. You can’t be anyone else. You’ll make your own little island and people will swim to it sooner or later. You may not have a big audience but just a few people will come ashore and say, Well done, eh? God, that’s gorgeous, just gorgeous.

Zdenek: But the freedom to be yourself has to come from the freedom to accept yourself as you are in the strengths and weaknesses.

Bradbury: Well, I learned early on just how wrong the world could be when it judged my loves. I can’t judge your loves. If you are going off to the Himalayas to write poetry, then do it. I’m never going to do it, I’m scared of heights! But bravo, eh? When I was nine I collected Buck Rogers and people made fun and I tore them up. A month later I burst into tears and I said to myself what’s wrong and the answer was Buck Rogers was gone forever and I was dying on my feet at the age of nine. So I don’t know what kind of a process I went through just an emotional purge when I said, Hell, I’m going back and collect Buck Roger again. And live again. And, I’m not going to listen to people anymore. So, from the age of nine I never listened. I stopped listening to people and their taste. They were always wrong for me. Right for themselves. But, I just went ahead and collected Buck Rogers.

Zdenek: Do you still have them?

Bradbury: I have them all! And Tarzan and Prince Valiant and my love of dinosaurs and because of my love of dinosaurs when I was five, when I was twelve, when I was nineteen, when I was thirty, I got the job of writing Moby Dick for the screen. Because that’s a great prehistoric beast there. And my love shown through my short stories. John Huston read one of my stories about a dinosaur in love with a lighthouse, and that’s how I got the job of writing Moby Dick. He recognized the ghost of Melville, even though I’d never read Melville, the ghost that came out of my work there the ghost of the Bible, the ghost of Mr. Shakespeare that haunted my bones since I read the Bible and Shakespeare and fell in love with the poetry.

So it’s just living day to day, one after another and just trusting all your passions that later accumulate on eighteen different levels. A good example is someone like the archeologist Schliemann. Homer spoke to him in his sleep and in his waking hours. And Homer said to Schliemann when he was a boy of ten, eleven or twelve or so: Troy exists. It really exists, even though everyone else says it doesn’t exist. Don’t listen to them! And Schliemann, wise intuitive boy said, I believe blind Homer, I’m not going to listen to you guys. Someday I’m going to get a spade and I’m gonna dig and I’m gonna find Troy. I’ll be the one who discovers Troy three thousand years later. And all you dummies get out of the way. And he went when he was fifty-five or sixty, I think, with his wife, and he dug a few miles north of where Homer said to dig and, by God, not only was Troy there, but nine levels of the city of Troy. Nine different kinds of Troy. And when he left, thirty more Troys were discovered. Not only were the doubters wrong, they were wrong thirty-nine times! So there’s your metaphor for creativity. There’s a Troy in you that needs to be dug up. Don’t listen to anyone. Go do it. And if you don’t find anything there, at least you could say you dug.

Zdenek: And there’s a great joy in doing of it.

Bradbury: Damned right!

Zdenek: Do you keep any transitional objects around when you work, any particular things from your childhood that stir special memories?

Bradbury: Oh yeah. In the basement at home I’m surrounded by books and toys and paintings and maps from the age of three on up. And then in my office the Smithsonian people stuck their heads in my office four years ago, looked around and said, You’re hired. And I said, Why? And they said, It looks like our basement. So I’ve got all this junk and I have to tread a path through it. You see, I’d figured I didn’t ever want to have an office, I wanted a nest. And, its got to be packed ‘round with images of all the things I’ve loved, so I’m totally comfortable in there. A giant love nest. I always promise to clean it up someday, but it hasn’t been cleaned in years because I’ve got things on the floor everywhere.

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The Heartstorming Philosophy

Ian Summers

Like most of you, I think of myself as a damned good problem solver. In fact, that’s how I earned my living as a creative director for a couple of decades. As a consultant, I traveled the country helping clients maximize their creative potential via creative problem solving. I was well rewarded as a problem solver, however I felt something was missing. Then something changed. I discovered that creating and problem solving are the antithesis of each other. In problem solving, energy usually flows from the outside. Someone presents you with a problem; a client for example. Depending upon the complexities of the problem, alternative solutions are created, one is chosen, and if there is enough energy produced the solution is implemented. The problem is replaced with a solution. So problem solving is about making something go away — the problem.

Problem solving has often been confused with creating. In fact, many workshops have been developed to teach creative problem solving. And they usually are about solving someone else’s dreams. They promise to unleash your creativity, as if it was a monster that needs to be tied back up when you’re through with it. These dated methods reinforce the erroneous concept that creating is a shadowy activity. I believe creating is joyous and celebratory.

Don’t Unleash The Monster!

Creating is about manifesting. Its energies come from within. I define creating as causing what you love or what matters to you to come into being. Heartsorming is a process — a journey — that helps creators identify what they love and to empower themselves to bring those loves into being. It is an adventure. Heartstorming uses your own loves and dreams to produce an abundant source of energy resulting in creative growth.

Imagine rediscovering the love you already are. Imagine being out of your mind and into your heart. Imagine knowing what you love and finding ways to integrate it with your life’s mission. Imagine a heart based career producing prosperity and abundance. Imagine making a difference. Imagine learning new ways to deal with growth, change and risk. Imagine manifesting your loves in the world every day. Imagine…

Imagine Being Out of Your Mind

Creating is a process that originates in your body. Heartstorming helps people to drop from the place of judgment and into the body — the place of feelings. It is not that judgment isn’t important. It is. However, it comes later in the process. Good judgment helps to choose which ideas to manifest and problem solving will help you to bring your concept into being. If creating and judging go on simultaneously, it is like driving the car with the brake and the accelerator on at the same time. Movement is impeded. New ideas are blocked from emerging.

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