The Muses, Inspirations And Sparks Of Creativity
“Every time I hear anyone mentions “the Muses”, I always feel an irresistible urge to slap them right in the face. Writing is a job. Do your job.” The author of 225 different novels, many out of which were best-sellers in the U.S. — Nora Roberts — certainly was in the position to make such scornful remarks regarding her own colleagues.
According to Greek mythology, ruling the palace on top of Mt. Helicon alongside Apollo — the god of fine arts — are the goddesses who each represent a specific form of art such as music, literature, poetry, theatre, dancing or one of a handful of sciences. These goddesses are collectively called the Muses. Not only are the embodiment of the arts and the patrons of artists, the Muses are also credited for inspiring within humans with sparks of creativity, as they would whisper the clues in the ears of the mortal creators who were banging their heads against walls from a slump, so then a masterpiece would be born [1] .
Too bad, as romantic as it is, the Muses’ existence does not extend any further beyond mythologies.
However, the reference of “sparks of creativity”, on the other hand, are quite popular among creative professionals when they are asked on how they came up with new ideas. For Mozart, music pieces just showed up and completed themselves within his lively dreams, where the flow of idea kept blossoming in a way absolutely beyond his reasonable control [2] . The birth father of the ballet Swan lake — Tchaikovsky once said: “It simply lay down its roots with incredible vigor and speed, penetrating its root through the ground, and then just as quickly sprouts and thrives, and then finally flowers. That’s the only way I can describe how the process of creation works [3] .”
Or as Ray Bradbury, the author of the world-renown classic 451 Degree Fahrenheit, put it: “I couldn’t seem to get a lease on my Muse. It was her who did all the work [4] .” Within the sea of darkness that is the mind, the sparks of creativity suddenly appear and ignite the flame of creation. It seems that the sudden-born spark of creation serves as the jump start for literally everything else that happens after that within the process of creation. But if the case is just as these creators put it, then perhaps creation is something beyond our cognition and thus our capacity to control?
On the other side of the line, there are also people who called all that bullshit, and believed that creation is something completely controllable. A true creator, in their view, would never wait for or place himself at the mercy of insurgences of inspiration. Or at least they believed there was a secret to it, and it was to maintain a habit of working diligently and persistently. Franz Kafka — one of the most influential authors of the XX Century, used his time during the nights to do his writer’s work after returning from his full time work at the lawyer’s office, and thanks to managed to complete quite a large quantity of works [5] . Haruki Murakami and many other successful authors were also known to have adopted some very strict work schedules, instead of only writing when they “feel the groove”.
“Every time I hear anyone mentions “the Muses”, I always feel an irresistible urge to slap them right in the face. Writing is a job. Do your job [6] .” The author of 225 different novels, many out of which were best-sellers in the U.S. — Nora Roberts — certainly was in the position to make such scornful remarks regarding her own colleagues [7] .
So the question is, how can there exist such polarizations between the professionals’ secrets to success? Moments of geniuses or diligent work, miracle or humans’ tenacity, which is the true gateway to the realm of creation?
And here’s the answer that science had: It’s yes and no, for both side.
1. From inspiration to creation.
Inspiration, a concept familiar to most, could be roughly understood as a creative and brilliant idea that suddenly came to existence in one’s mind, making the person feel motivated to turn it into reality [8] . Not only in the fields of artistry, this concept also frequently presents in many other fields of studies such as anthropology, theology, education, management, engineering and psychology. Despite being a popular and multidisciplinary concept, the definitions of inspiration are oftentimes very abstract and ungraspable, while also bearing variations and divergence between the different fields of studies [9] .
So in order to resolve these issues, the two psychologists Todd M. Thrash and Andrew J. Elliot had come up with a depiction for inspiration in the form of a psychological structure with 3 major components: (1) Evocation — to describe how inspiration are born in a spontaneous and unintentional manner; (2) Transcendence, to describe how inspiration often bring ideas that transcend instinctive concerns, materialistic gains or limits of one’s own; as, as it’s an event that causes an individual to gain enlightenment and thus become able to perceive new possibilities and heights; and lastly, (3) Approach motivation — to describe how inspiration bring individuals the motivation to spread, reveal or realize the ideas/visions that they received from the source of inspiration [10] .
This structure is pretty much a focal point of all the different views and studies existing at the time. For example, even when the supernatural origins of inspiration (the Muses or the Revelation, a.k.a. the spiritual enlightenment/transmission of the god’s messages into people’s mind as often cited by religions) had already been refuted, they still were of value for illustrative purpose, as they depict how inspiration was type of motivation that could be spontaneously evoked, directing individuals toward working hard to achieve a certain goal. The Intrapsychic sources denote the development of inspiration as a product of the psychological processes that occur within our subconscious, unconscious or preconscious minds, which is to say that inspiration emerges in an unintentional manner. The environmental sources, such as the benchmarking between individuals within the society to strive toward better behaviors and role models, are by themselves the illustration for the transcendence nature of inspiration.
Thrash and Elliot even developed a tool called the Inspiration Scale, in which inspiration is considered a personality trait; meaning that different individuals will experience different levels of inspiration in their daily life. Based on this theoretical basis and other follow up studies, Thrash and his team had also found positive correlation between inspiration and creation [11] . For example, research participants had reported that they felt more creative when they got more inspired. Or, for the case of U.S. patent holders, the quantity of patents were positively correlated with the frequency of experiencing inspiration [12] .
Thrash’s theory in specific as well as all the attempts to crack the mystery of inspiration from psychology’s perspective are still in the beginning stage and still have lots of shortcomings to work on. But even then; through the studies of neuroscience discipline, we have now been able to somewhat confirm the positive influence of inspiration on the process of creation.
There also existed an experiment where the participants were asked to find solutions for some open problems, and inspiration will be provided in the form of verbal clues. The participants also received brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology throughout the experiment [13] . The clues were categorized into 3 types, namely the near stimuli, the far stimuli, and the control stimuli. For example, for the problem of designing a measuring cup (a cup with markings that mark different levels of volume, often used in laboratories) for the blind, the near stimuli would be clues that were closely similar to the final answer (Braille system, touch, beeps, sounds, sensors); while (pre programmed, detection, pressure, holed on multiple spots, casks) were far stimuli, which hardly had any connection with the answer; while control stimuli were simply the words already given in the question (cup, measure, for, the blind), that provided no additional information whatsoever.
In general, these inspirational stimuli motivated the participants to keep themselves working on new ideas for a longer time. Both near and far stimuli helped them to find more solutions than their counterparts who were provided with no stimuli. It could be that these clues forced the brain to activate the processes for semantics and analogy, which helped the participants to extract the ideas embedded in those clues and then apply them into solving the problem. What’s most notable was that by tracking the activities of the brains, the research team actually spotted how the problem solving nervous system was different when it was provided with clues than when it was not, and differences were also spotted between groups who were provided with near-, far- and control-stimuli.
Near stimuli would led to a type of thinking called “inspired internal search”, in which the areas of the brain related to understanding showed a much higher rate of activity, accompanied with the shift of focus internally to find the concepts already stored within memory. The MRI of the control group, on the other hand, showed the thinking state called “unsuccessful external search”, characterized by additional activity of brain areas related to visual processing and outward attention. Which meant that instead of looking for the solutions out of what they already knew and understood; the participants who were receiving the meaningless control clues instead sought externally in the environment for the solutions.
The most surprising finding, however, was that the far stimuli actually brought by within the participants the brain activity patterns similar to those from both other groups. So, in general, these results have shown that the introduction of inspirations/ideas can have positive influences on the activity of creating as a whole, as well as the different brain processes that we employed when thinking for a solution, even when in different directions.
2. Inspiration is not a miracle.
As previously analyzed, inspiration could play the role of a sparkle that lights up the torch of creation; however, that does not necessarily always happen.
According to Thrash’s theory, inspiration consisted of 2 separated processes, starting with the activity of being inspired (inspired by = evocation + transcendence), which is the process a person, by having a new idea introduced to him (evocation), becomes able to see a new potential (transcendence). However, the recognition of the new potential does not necessarily always get followed up by the process of expanding on inspiration (inspired to = approach motivation), which means for the person to find the motivation to pursue the realization of the said potential. As a simple example, when we come across a magnificent natural landscape, we could get extremely attracted and moved by that beauty; but that does not necessarily inspire us to draw a picture, take a photo or make a poem on the said scenery [14] .
The motivation to turn the idea into reality can be an issue. The factor of technique/skill requirement for the realization of the idea is another. We have a matchstick and want to light up a bonfire; but then if we don’t have the tinder, or the firewood we have is wet, or we don’t even know how to light up a matchstick properly in the first place, then a bonfire go anywhere closer to existence than our imagination. Inspiration can lay the foundation that is the ideas; but it is what follows that creates actual results. Only when the idea gets successfully converted into a quantifiable reality, would we actually be able to know how good that idea was, and to comprehensively assess its creativity.
For example, one of the most popular theories on creativity is the 4-staged model coined by Graham Wallas, which included the 4 stages of preparation), incubation, illumination/insight and verification [15] .
The first step — ‘Preparation’ — requires the individuals to arm themselves with necessary fundamental knowledge and techniques. For example, a painter would need to master the knowledge on colors and composition, and a musician would first need to know how to read the music sheet. For the 2nd step, the separate ideas that are floating in the mind would collide against each other, and then merge to form a new idea. As the new idea is born, it would also be the time for you to proceed to step 3 — illumination/insight — as you try to gain that on the idea you’ve gained. And the last step is to work on, verify, refine and finally apply the idea into reality.
In which, the illumination/insight step in this model shares great similarity with the defining characteristics of inspiration as described by Thrash’s theories, which is the realization of a potential through a received idea, before getting motivated to act to turn the idea into reality. When assessing inspiration as an element in this 4-stage model, generally you could see that it is neither the only nor the ultimate element that leads to results, as our analysis so far suggests. Moreover, in terms of order, inspiration also needs preceding stages, namely preparation and incubation, for itself to be formulated base on the existing ideas.
Thrash’s studies showed that in the process of creation, inspiration was something that came second, a reaction of the individual when creative ideas were already in place. Inspiration would then just play the role of a mediating state where the ideas get realized more clearly and thus form a stepping stone for the creative process to reach its final results [16] . This seemed to contradict the common belief that inspiration gave birth to an idea, but would match with the multiple stage model of the creative process. As we mentioned in our articles about how geniuses’ minds work in creative thinking [17] , the ideas often come in the most unexpected moments, when the cognition becomes hazy or enter a resting state — which matches the description of the ‘incubation’ stage. In that state of unconsciousness, the knowledge, skills, opinions… which have been accumulated in the preceding ‘preparation’ stage would be linked together to form new ideas [18] .
So, in other world, the creative professionals from the ‘improvisational’ team was right when they said that creative ideas were formed in an unconscious state which we could not gain full control of, and that inspiration played a crucial role in the general course of creation. However, they seemed to have overvalued inspiration: It was neither the only nor the most important factor in creation. Because creation also requires accumulation of knowledge and the works that follow to turn the ideas into reality.
In this sense, the creators who believed creation was the fruits of a process of diligent work was right. The incubation would not happen without preparation. The learning and accumulation of knowledge and skills as well as the exposure with the problems are prerequisites, as they define the amount of resources that we actually have available for the brain to work out a solution (the amount of knowledge, skill, etc.), as well as how the way how we use those resource (which knowledge should be used) during the later stage of incubation. And therefore, diligence and constancy in working as well as in accumulating knowledge and skills are also a necessary condition for the propulsion of new ideas. What’s more, following a well-planned work schedule is also a good solution to curb procrastination and thus force yourself to work on the final steps of creation.
Our final words on this? “The Muses’ whispers are only for those who are prepared. The goddesses won’t be whispering the secret of quantum physics into the ears of those who’re ignorant of physics.
But then make a camp on your work desk either, because you may end up missing the Muses’ whispers if you don’t give yourself some space to loosen up.
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