Sunday, February 22, 2015

Philosophy of Creativity - John Cleese

John Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
In this talk from the 2009 Creativity World Forum in Germany Cleese states that creativity is not a skill or an aptitude, it is a “childlike mood” which is difficult to acquire but not impossible. “We get our ideas from what I’m going to call for a moment our unconscious — the part of our mind that goes on working, for example, when we’re asleep. So what I’m saying is that if you get into the right mood, then your mode of thinking will become much more creative. But if you’re racing around all day, ticking things off a list, looking at your watch, making phone calls and generally just keeping all the balls in the air, you are not going to have any creative ideas.”
So we need to create “oasis” among the stress of every day life where our creative mind can safely come out and play, and these oasis need to be guarded by boundaries of space and boundaries of time.
-- Read 4 LESSONS IN CREATIVITY FROM JOHN CLEESE
-- Listen to Cleese's 1991 Lecture On Creativity



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