4 Lessons in Creativity | Julie Burstein | TED Talks

431,055 views ・ 2012-11-12

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
0
0
7000
00:16
On my desk in my office, I keep a small clay pot
1
16278
4304
00:20
that I made in college. It's raku, which is a kind of pottery
2
20582
4463
00:25
that began in Japan centuries ago as a way of
3
25045
4507
00:29
making bowls for the Japanese tea ceremony.
4
29552
4047
00:33
This one is more than 400 years old.
5
33599
3265
00:36
Each one was pinched or carved out of a ball of clay,
6
36864
4464
00:41
and it was the imperfections that people cherished.
7
41328
4296
00:45
Everyday pots like this cup take eight to 10 hours to fire.
8
45624
8072
00:53
I just took this out of the kiln last week, and the kiln itself
9
53696
3109
00:56
takes another day or two to cool down, but raku
10
56805
4484
01:01
is really fast. You do it outside, and you take the kiln
11
61289
4803
01:06
up to temperature. In 15 minutes, it goes to 1,500 degrees,
12
66092
4555
01:10
and as soon as you see that the glaze has melted inside,
13
70647
3658
01:14
you can see that faint sheen, you turn the kiln off,
14
74305
2818
01:17
and you reach in with these long metal tongs,
15
77123
2587
01:19
you grab the pot, and in Japan, this red-hot pot
16
79710
4485
01:24
would be immediately immersed in a solution of green tea,
17
84195
4914
01:29
and you can imagine what that steam would smell like.
18
89109
3232
01:32
But here in the United States, we ramp up the drama
19
92341
3165
01:35
a little bit, and we drop our pots into sawdust,
20
95506
3665
01:39
which catches on fire, and you take a garbage pail,
21
99171
3024
01:42
and you put it on top, and smoke starts pouring out.
22
102195
4912
01:47
I would come home with my clothes reeking of woodsmoke.
23
107107
4880
01:51
I love raku because it allows me to play with the elements.
24
111987
5098
01:57
I can shape a pot out of clay and choose a glaze,
25
117085
4496
02:01
but then I have to let it go to the fire and the smoke,
26
121581
4304
02:05
and what's wonderful is the surprises that happen,
27
125885
2465
02:08
like this crackle pattern, because it's really stressful
28
128350
3273
02:11
on these pots. They go from 1,500 degrees
29
131623
2611
02:14
to room temperature in the space of just a minute.
30
134234
4079
02:18
Raku is a wonderful metaphor for the process of creativity.
31
138313
5951
02:24
I find in so many things that tension between
32
144264
3765
02:28
what I can control and what I have to let go
33
148029
3435
02:31
happens all the time, whether I'm creating a new radio show
34
151464
3794
02:35
or just at home negotiating with my teenage sons.
35
155258
5085
02:40
When I sat down to write a book about creativity,
36
160343
3974
02:44
I realized that the steps were reversed.
37
164317
2484
02:46
I had to let go at the very beginning, and I had to
38
166801
3649
02:50
immerse myself in the stories of hundreds of artists
39
170450
4604
02:55
and writers and musicians and filmmakers, and as I listened
40
175054
4475
02:59
to these stories, I realized that creativity
41
179529
5312
03:04
grows out of everyday experiences
42
184841
3328
03:08
more often than you might think, including
43
188169
3704
03:11
letting go.
44
191873
2920
03:14
It was supposed to break, but that's okay. (Laughter) (Laughs)
45
194793
3790
03:18
That's part of the letting go, is sometimes it happens
46
198583
2949
03:21
and sometimes it doesn't, because creativity also grows
47
201532
3405
03:24
from the broken places.
48
204937
2777
03:27
The best way to learn about anything
49
207714
2647
03:30
is through stories, and so I want to tell you a story
50
210361
4034
03:34
about work and play and about four aspects of life
51
214395
5182
03:39
that we need to embrace
52
219577
2396
03:41
in order for our own creativity to flourish.
53
221973
4068
03:46
The first embrace is something that we think,
54
226041
2016
03:48
"Oh, this is very easy," but it's actually getting harder,
55
228057
4206
03:52
and that's paying attention to the world around us.
56
232263
3995
03:56
So many artists speak about needing to be open,
57
236258
4455
04:00
to embrace experience, and that's hard to do when
58
240713
3440
04:04
you have a lighted rectangle in your pocket that
59
244153
3618
04:07
takes all of your focus.
60
247771
3587
04:11
The filmmaker Mira Nair speaks about growing up
61
251358
4140
04:15
in a small town in India. Its name is Bhubaneswar,
62
255498
4605
04:20
and here's a picture of one of the temples in her town.
63
260103
3693
04:23
Mira Nair: In this little town, there were like 2,000 temples.
64
263796
2872
04:26
We played cricket all the time. We kind of grew up
65
266668
2856
04:29
in the rubble. The major thing that inspired me,
66
269524
3256
04:32
that led me on this path, that made me a filmmaker eventually,
67
272780
3648
04:36
was traveling folk theater that would come through the town
68
276428
3552
04:39
and I would go off and see these great battles
69
279980
3312
04:43
of good and evil by two people in a school field
70
283292
3416
04:46
with no props but with a lot of, you know,
71
286708
2536
04:49
passion, and hashish as well, and it was amazing.
72
289244
3695
04:52
You know, the folk tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana,
73
292939
2794
04:55
the two holy books, the epics that everything comes out of
74
295733
3495
04:59
in India, they say. After seeing that Jatra, the folk theater,
75
299228
3530
05:02
I knew I wanted to get on, you know, and perform.
76
302758
4990
05:07
Julie Burstein: Isn't that a wonderful story?
77
307748
1907
05:09
You can see the sort of break in the everyday.
78
309655
2420
05:12
There they are in the school fields, but it's good and evil,
79
312075
2719
05:14
and passion and hashish. And Mira Nair was a young girl
80
314794
5533
05:20
with thousands of other people watching this performance,
81
320327
3598
05:23
but she was ready. She was ready to open up
82
323925
2950
05:26
to what it sparked in her, and it led her,
83
326875
3129
05:30
as she said, down this path to become
84
330004
2615
05:32
an award-winning filmmaker.
85
332619
2803
05:35
So being open for that experience that might change you
86
335422
2821
05:38
is the first thing we need to embrace.
87
338243
2933
05:41
Artists also speak about how some of their most powerful work
88
341176
5779
05:46
comes out of the parts of life that are most difficult.
89
346955
4872
05:51
The novelist Richard Ford speaks about
90
351827
3654
05:55
a childhood challenge that continues to be something
91
355481
4042
05:59
he wrestles with today. He's severely dyslexic.
92
359523
4760
06:04
Richard Ford: I was slow to learn to read, went all the way
93
364283
2907
06:07
through school not really reading more than the minimum,
94
367190
3832
06:11
and still to this day can't read silently
95
371022
2528
06:13
much faster than I can read aloud,
96
373550
2848
06:16
but there were a lot of benefits to being dyslexic for me
97
376398
3776
06:20
because when I finally did reconcile myself to how slow
98
380174
3145
06:23
I was going to have to do it, then I think I came very slowly
99
383319
4495
06:27
into an appreciation of all of those qualities of language
100
387814
3532
06:31
and of sentences that are not just the cognitive
101
391346
2812
06:34
aspects of language: the syncopations, the sounds of words,
102
394158
3113
06:37
what words look like, where paragraphs break,
103
397271
1843
06:39
where lines break. I mean, I wasn't so badly dyslexic that
104
399114
3027
06:42
I was disabled from reading. I just had to do it
105
402141
2938
06:45
really slowly, and as I did, lingering on those sentences
106
405079
4543
06:49
as I had to linger, I fell heir to language's other qualities,
107
409622
4360
06:53
which I think has helped me write sentences.
108
413982
3264
06:57
JB: It's so powerful. Richard Ford, who's won the Pulitzer Prize,
109
417246
4080
07:01
says that dyslexia helped him write sentences.
110
421326
5152
07:06
He had to embrace this challenge, and I use that word
111
426478
2771
07:09
intentionally. He didn't have to overcome dyslexia.
112
429249
4113
07:13
He had to learn from it. He had to learn to hear the music
113
433362
3508
07:16
in language.
114
436870
3064
07:19
Artists also speak about how pushing up against
115
439934
4570
07:24
the limits of what they can do, sometimes pushing
116
444504
3394
07:27
into what they can't do, helps them focus
117
447898
3348
07:31
on finding their own voice.
118
451246
3239
07:34
The sculptor Richard Serra talks about how,
119
454485
4145
07:38
as a young artist, he thought he was a painter,
120
458630
2920
07:41
and he lived in Florence after graduate school.
121
461550
4279
07:45
While he was there, he traveled to Madrid,
122
465829
2569
07:48
where he went to the Prado to see this picture
123
468398
2714
07:51
by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.
124
471112
3760
07:54
It's from 1656, and it's called "Las Meninas,"
125
474872
5104
07:59
and it's the picture of a little princess
126
479976
2209
08:02
and her ladies-in-waiting, and if you look over
127
482185
3687
08:05
that little blonde princess's shoulder, you'll see a mirror,
128
485872
3376
08:09
and reflected in it are her parents, the King and Queen
129
489248
3297
08:12
of Spain, who would be standing where you might stand
130
492545
3405
08:15
to look at the picture.
131
495950
1775
08:17
As he often did, Velázquez put himself in this painting too.
132
497725
5067
08:22
He's standing on the left with his paintbrush in one hand
133
502792
4693
08:27
and his palette in the other.
134
507485
2404
08:29
Richard Serra: I was standing there looking at it,
135
509889
2028
08:31
and I realized that Velázquez was looking at me,
136
511917
2610
08:34
and I thought, "Oh. I'm the subject of the painting."
137
514527
3995
08:38
And I thought, "I'm not going to be able to do that painting."
138
518522
2252
08:40
I was to the point where I was using a stopwatch
139
520774
3201
08:43
and painting squares out of randomness,
140
523975
4438
08:48
and I wasn't getting anywhere. So I went back and dumped
141
528413
2018
08:50
all my paintings in the Arno, and I thought, I'm going to just start playing around.
142
530431
3230
08:53
JB: Richard Serra says that so nonchalantly, you might
143
533661
2832
08:56
have missed it. He went and saw this painting by a guy
144
536493
3608
09:00
who'd been dead for 300 years, and realized,
145
540101
3768
09:03
"I can't do that," and so Richard Serra went back
146
543869
3872
09:07
to his studio in Florence, picked up all of his work
147
547741
2831
09:10
up to that point, and threw it in a river.
148
550572
3803
09:14
Richard Serra let go of painting at that moment,
149
554375
3936
09:18
but he didn't let go of art. He moved to New York City,
150
558311
3526
09:21
and he put together a list of verbs
151
561837
2914
09:24
— to roll, to crease, to fold —
152
564751
3288
09:28
more than a hundred of them, and as he said,
153
568039
2696
09:30
he just started playing around. He did these things
154
570735
2037
09:32
to all kinds of material. He would take a huge sheet of lead
155
572772
3317
09:36
and roll it up and unroll it. He would do the same thing
156
576089
3798
09:39
to rubber, and when he got to the direction "to lift,"
157
579887
5176
09:45
he created this, which is in the Museum of Modern Art.
158
585063
5098
09:50
Richard Serra had to let go of painting
159
590161
2960
09:53
in order to embark on this playful exploration
160
593121
3440
09:56
that led him to the work that he's known for today:
161
596561
3270
09:59
huge curves of steel that require our time and motion
162
599831
5578
10:05
to experience. In sculpture,
163
605409
3737
10:09
Richard Serra is able to do what he couldn't do in painting.
164
609146
3271
10:12
He makes us the subject of his art.
165
612417
4496
10:16
So experience and challenge
166
616913
3936
10:20
and limitations are all things we need to embrace
167
620849
3660
10:24
for creativity to flourish.
168
624509
2596
10:27
There's a fourth embrace, and it's the hardest.
169
627105
3560
10:30
It's the embrace of loss,
170
630665
2360
10:33
the oldest and most constant of human experiences.
171
633025
4290
10:37
In order to create, we have to stand in that space
172
637315
2823
10:40
between what we see in the world and what we hope for,
173
640138
3800
10:43
looking squarely at rejection, at heartbreak,
174
643938
4807
10:48
at war, at death.
175
648745
2574
10:51
That's a tough space to stand in.
176
651319
2390
10:53
The educator Parker Palmer calls it "the tragic gap,"
177
653709
5389
10:59
tragic not because it's sad but because it's inevitable,
178
659098
3967
11:03
and my friend Dick Nodel likes to say,
179
663065
3040
11:06
"You can hold that tension like a violin string
180
666105
2944
11:09
and make something beautiful."
181
669049
3436
11:12
That tension resonates in the work of the photographer
182
672485
3138
11:15
Joel Meyerowitz, who at the beginning of his career was
183
675623
3210
11:18
known for his street photography, for capturing a moment
184
678833
3240
11:22
on the street, and also for his beautiful photographs
185
682073
3682
11:25
of landscapes -- of Tuscany, of Cape Cod,
186
685755
3684
11:29
of light.
187
689439
2682
11:32
Joel is a New Yorker, and his studio for many years
188
692121
3269
11:35
was in Chelsea, with a straight view downtown
189
695390
3998
11:39
to the World Trade Center, and he photographed
190
699388
2915
11:42
those buildings in every sort of light.
191
702303
4333
11:46
You know where this story goes.
192
706636
3650
11:50
On 9/11, Joel wasn't in New York. He was out of town,
193
710286
2488
11:52
but he raced back to the city, and raced down to the site
194
712774
4599
11:57
of the destruction.
195
717373
2125
11:59
Joel Meyerowitz: And like all the other passersby,
196
719498
2179
12:01
I stood outside the chain link fence on Chambers
197
721677
2900
12:04
and Greenwich, and all I could see was the smoke
198
724577
2198
12:06
and a little bit of rubble, and I raised my camera
199
726775
3670
12:10
to take a peek, just to see if there was something to see,
200
730445
3000
12:13
and some cop, a lady cop, hit me on my shoulder,
201
733445
4344
12:17
and said, "Hey, no pictures!"
202
737789
2440
12:20
And it was such a blow that it woke me up,
203
740229
3224
12:23
in the way that it was meant to be, I guess.
204
743453
4056
12:27
And when I asked her why no pictures, she said,
205
747509
2043
12:29
"It's a crime scene. No photographs allowed."
206
749552
3091
12:32
And I asked her, "What would happen if I was a member
207
752643
1469
12:34
of the press?" And she told me,
208
754112
2204
12:36
"Oh, look back there," and back a block was the press corps
209
756316
4094
12:40
tied up in a little penned-in area,
210
760410
3810
12:44
and I said, "Well, when do they go in?"
211
764220
1521
12:45
and she said, "Probably never."
212
765741
2482
12:48
And as I walked away from that, I had this crystallization,
213
768223
4491
12:52
probably from the blow, because it was an insult in a way.
214
772714
2794
12:55
I thought, "Oh, if there's no pictures,
215
775508
2175
12:57
then there'll be no record. We need a record."
216
777683
3506
13:01
And I thought, "I'm gonna make that record.
217
781189
1870
13:03
I'll find a way to get in, because I don't want to
218
783059
2287
13:05
see this history disappear."
219
785346
1868
13:07
JB: He did. He pulled in every favor he could,
220
787214
4243
13:11
and got a pass into the World Trade Center site,
221
791457
2513
13:13
where he photographed for nine months almost every day.
222
793970
4232
13:18
Looking at these photographs today brings back
223
798202
2944
13:21
the smell of smoke that lingered on my clothes
224
801146
2905
13:24
when I went home to my family at night.
225
804051
1997
13:26
My office was just a few blocks away.
226
806048
3418
13:29
But some of these photographs are beautiful,
227
809466
3616
13:33
and we wondered, was it difficult for Joel Meyerowitz
228
813082
3115
13:36
to make such beauty out of such devastation?
229
816197
4342
13:40
JM: Well, you know, ugly, I mean, powerful
230
820539
3366
13:43
and tragic and horrific and everything, but
231
823905
3371
13:47
it was also as, in nature, an enormous event
232
827276
4296
13:51
that was transformed after the fact into this residue,
233
831572
5166
13:56
and like many other ruins
234
836738
1816
13:58
— you go to the ruins of the Colosseum or the ruins of a cathedral someplace —
235
838554
3849
14:02
and they take on a new meaning when you watch the weather.
236
842403
4637
14:07
I mean, there were afternoons I was down there,
237
847040
1873
14:08
and the light goes pink and there's a mist in the air
238
848913
3650
14:12
and you're standing in the rubble, and I found myself
239
852563
4031
14:16
recognizing both the inherent beauty of nature
240
856594
3884
14:20
and the fact that nature, as time,
241
860478
2754
14:23
is erasing this wound.
242
863232
3395
14:26
Time is unstoppable, and it transforms the event.
243
866627
3834
14:30
It gets further and further away from the day,
244
870461
2329
14:32
and light and seasons temper it in some way,
245
872790
4355
14:37
and it's not that I'm a romantic. I'm really a realist.
246
877145
4144
14:41
The reality is, there's the Woolworth Building
247
881289
3484
14:44
in a veil of smoke from the site, but it's now like a scrim
248
884773
5828
14:50
across a theater, and it's turning pink,
249
890601
3944
14:54
you know, and down below there are hoses spraying,
250
894545
3103
14:57
and the lights have come on for the evening, and the water
251
897648
3009
15:00
is turning acid green because the sodium lamps are on,
252
900657
4028
15:04
and I'm thinking, "My God, who could dream this up?"
253
904685
2177
15:06
But the fact is, I'm there, it looks like that,
254
906862
4201
15:11
you have to take a picture.
255
911063
1894
15:12
JB: You have to take a picture. That sense of urgency,
256
912957
3193
15:16
of the need to get to work, is so powerful in Joel's story.
257
916150
5800
15:21
When I saw Joel Meyerowitz recently, I told him how much
258
921950
3353
15:25
I admired his passionate obstinacy, his determination
259
925303
3785
15:29
to push through all the bureaucratic red tape to get to work,
260
929088
4583
15:33
and he laughed, and he said, "I'm stubborn,
261
933671
2176
15:35
but I think what's more important
262
935847
2404
15:38
is my passionate optimism."
263
938251
3461
15:41
The first time I told these stories, a man in the audience
264
941712
2803
15:44
raised his hand and said, "All these artists talk about
265
944515
3490
15:48
their work, not their art, which has got me thinking about
266
948005
4738
15:52
my work and where the creativity is there,
267
952743
2668
15:55
and I'm not an artist." He's right. We all wrestle
268
955411
4628
16:00
with experience and challenge, limits and loss.
269
960039
4616
16:04
Creativity is essential to all of us,
270
964655
2251
16:06
whether we're scientists or teachers,
271
966906
2653
16:09
parents or entrepreneurs.
272
969559
4359
16:13
I want to leave you with another
273
973918
2177
16:16
image of a Japanese tea bowl. This one
274
976095
3094
16:19
is at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C.
275
979189
2970
16:22
It's more than a hundred years old and you can still see
276
982159
2536
16:24
the fingermarks where the potter pinched it.
277
984695
3643
16:28
But as you can also see, this one did break
278
988338
2917
16:31
at some point in its hundred years.
279
991255
2720
16:33
But the person who put it back together,
280
993975
2760
16:36
instead of hiding the cracks,
281
996735
2564
16:39
decided to emphasize them, using gold lacquer to repair it.
282
999299
5716
16:45
This bowl is more beautiful now, having been broken,
283
1005015
4444
16:49
than it was when it was first made,
284
1009459
3012
16:52
and we can look at those cracks, because
285
1012471
2230
16:54
they tell the story that we all live,
286
1014701
2365
16:57
of the cycle of creation and destruction,
287
1017066
3677
17:00
of control and letting go, of picking up the pieces
288
1020743
4927
17:05
and making something new.
289
1025670
1999
17:07
Thank you. (Applause)
290
1027669
4554
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7