Rethinking Creativity

Reich shares Stravinsky's belief that real compositional freedom comes only from having to work within severly restrictive, self-imposed musical boundaries.

I'd came across this line from a Steve Reich's CD that was recently purchased from Border's Singapore, titled "Steve Reich/Bang on a Can's New York Counterpoint/ Eight Lines/ Four Organs". While this line would definitely not ring a bell to anyone, it have effectively brought me back to a month ago, when I was having this interesting, yet unconclusive argument over creativity with my friend.

The argument then wasn't exactly on music, but the basis is similar, for we were debating over the preference of two US-based cartoon series, South Park and the Simpsons. Both shows, we concurred are definitely works beyond just animations for entertainment sake. They are interesting forms of art that rely what the creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as well as Matt Goering wabted to convey. However, I prefer South Park to the Simpsons, for I felt that the creativeness shown is definitely one notch above the latter. My friend, however felt that the creativeness of South Park is a bit too obvious and even "vulgar", while the Simpsons isn't any less, if not more creative than South Park ever would be. His reasoning was that the creator for the Simpsons self-imposed restrictions by focusing on an average american family. No matter how far fetch the whole story could turn out to be, the messages are always subtly put across, and the sequences of events are often logical, if not as closed to the perceived typical entertainment logic. This really put South Park in shame, since anything and everything could just occur for the sake of making an appearance, like Mr Hanky, UFOs, genetically-modified mad turkeys, etc. etc. I wasn't convinced at that point of time, for I really felt that South Park was way cooler than the Simpsons, and I still think it does!

Anyway, just when the whole issue was almost totally out of mind and out of sight, the above-mentioned line in Reich's album writeup got me in a rare thinking mode again. What is this creativity that we oft speak about? Is creativity really about inventing or re-inventing new and unique concepts in any means? In other words, is it the South Park-kind of creativity, where anything and everything goes, as long as it's original? Or is creativity really about innovations and re-invention within certain limitaions, to provide new insights to things we already thought we knew all about? In other words, is it the Simpson-kind of subtle creativity, where we are constantly challenging stereotypes that we thought we'd seen the last of?

Up till now, I still haven't have an answer. However, I'm slanting towards the idea that probably both kind of creativity are just as valid, and it's probably just different ways that people are comfortable with. I'm of course a fan of anything outrageously new and unique (which explains why I'm even digging into minimalism music right now!), but I'm beginning to see things differently now. There's indeed certain value in people who keep on toiling on the same things, having the same limitations, and yet come out with things rather original everything, like Hot-Rod makers, computing geniuses, audiophiles and *gosh* Blink182!?!?

Err... I think that's a bit too much... Blink182 definitely still deserve a trashing! Think I'm not a complete convert afterall! :)