Creativity: Making Connections, Part II

In my last blog, I talked about how to make creative connections. I want to pursue the idea of making

connections, seeing parallels and analogies and exploiting them, and I want to do so by focusing on the most basic fantastical connection that human race knows. It is ancient, found in the literature of most cultures of the world (I would even say all cultures). It is very present today. The thing to which I refer is making animals into characters—giving them human abilities and using them to illustrate vices, virtues, and numerous other attributes.

Examples are abundant—from Aesop to Huckleberry Hound—but I want to start with a poem by C. S. Lewis that maybe gets to the core of why this is so attractive to us and so much of a basic creative move. The poem is called “Impenitence.” In it, the speaker says he will not “repent” of his love of stories that involve talking animals, even though critics and intellectuals say they are not for adults and are silly and juvenile. The poem is too long to quote here in its entirety, but one section is particularly instructive. Lewis’s narrator says

                                               

                                    Look again. Look well at the beasts, the true ones.
                                    Can't you see?...cool primness of cats, or coney's
                                    Half indignant stare of amazement, mouse's
                                    Twinkling adroitness,

                                    Tipsy bear's rotundity, toad's complacence...
                                    Why! they all cry out to be used as symbols,
                                    Masks for Man, cartoons, parodies by Nature
                                    Formed to reveal us

                                    Each to each, not fiercely but in her gentlest
                                    Vein of household laughter . . .

Animals, he tells us, “cry out to be used as symbols.” We all recognize it. If we have pets, we’ve done just what the poem says. We’ve attributed human characteristics to animals. We’ve seen them as examples, archetypes of humans, and as “parodies of Nature / Formed to reveal us.”

The human race caught on to this early. Tribal cultures had their “trickster” stories of the fox or

coyote. Brer Rabbit (Brother Rabbit) is example of an African trickster figure brought to America by captives transported here from there who adapted the tales to our own culture. Native American tribes abounded in such trickster stories. Going further on, Aesop told animal fables in ancient Greece.

In the Middle Ages, there were “bestiaries,” books that taught moral lessons using the animal world (beasts). We still recite vestiges from those books:  the idea that an ostrich hides its head in the sand when afraid is from medieval bestiaries. Talking animals come to us today, whether it’s Scooby-Do (well, he doesn’t talk exactly), Buggs Bunny, or Sponge Bob.

From this, we glean that for creative, entertaining stories, human beings have always relied on analogy; that is, storytellers noticed similarities and use these similarities to create entertaining or enlightening tales. In a world where animals abounded and human beings had a great deal of contact with them, the connections were an obvious choice.

Donkeys were patient and stubborn; lions were ferocious; foxes were sly and crafty; horses were true-blue. Out of these similarities of animals to humans, stories were born. By connecting something outside the boundaries of human life with things inside human life, we could learn about ourselves. Maybe this is where imagination and creativity first came about. It’s still with us today.

We continued to use animal characters. But we can take it beyond this. I’ve noted how Neil Gaiman exploited the similarities between the homeless and supernatural beings in his novel Neverwhere. Though J. R. R. Tolkien adamantly insisted Lord of the Rings was not a political allegory, it seems plausible that the easy-going, food-loving citizens of England inspired hobbits; and the aggressive, rapacious, militaristic figures the British fought and World War I and World War II suggested the Evil Races of Middle Earth. He made the connections, at least to some extent, and used them to create one of the greatest stories of all time.

So notice the connections.

I’ll have one more blog on this subject and then go on to some other things related to creativity.

For some creative connections, check out my books.

Respond! I’d love to hear feedback on these ideas.

Let’s get connected on Facebook or Twitter.

The Most Creative Thing I've Read

Creativity is on the lips of writers, speakers, and bloggers today. Everyone wants to be creative. But

exactly what is creativity? In some upcoming blogs I will explore this question—which is a question to me as well (though I do have some theories or ideas on it). I want to suggest that creativity is hard to define but easy to recognize. A Supreme Court Justice in the United States once said of pornography, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” He was ridiculed for that statement—but, really, it’s true! And the same is true of creativity. Everyone is trying to formulate a definition of it. I don’t think I can do that, but I know it when I see it! It has a certain quality. It communicates something. It exudes an unmistakable aura. This is illustrated in the book I will say is the most creative thing I’ve ever read.

The most creative thing I have ever read is Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel, Neverwhere.

Neverwhere began as an assignment. The BBC commissioned Gaiman to write a TV series about homelessness. One would assume he would start by depicting the plight of the homeless—perhaps focus on a family that suddenly ended out on the streets and chronicle their struggle to survive and adjust. Perhaps, he could tell the story of a young woman or young man trying to survive in the hard world of the displaced. He didn’t take this approach at all. He found a way to present homelessness creatively.

If you’ve read Neverwhere, you know it is a fantasy novel. A young Londoner enters a magical realm called “London Below,” which exists in tandem with “London above,” which is the city as we know it. Orcs, elves, vampires, all manner of odd creatures live there. They live on the tops of buildings, in alleys, in abandoned buildings, and in the sewers. They barter. London below is also a dangerous place to live. Dressed in shabby, ill-fitting clothing, exchanging favors or items in the place of money, careful navigating their violent, uncertain world, the citizens of London below make their way.

Of course, they are very much like the homeless. Reading the book or seeing the film series, one

Character of Door

cannot miss the connection. Even the main character from London Below, Door, who comes from a higher-placed and wealthier “fiefdom,” dresses shabbily and barters. Her family’s home is filled with second-hand furniture. She is stalked by two killers who move easily in this violence-ridden netherworld.

Perhaps the most poignant passage is when the main character  muses on an ill-dressed, doting old man who lives in a train car. “Richard found himself imaging the earl sixty, eight, five hundred years ago:  a mighty warrior, a cunning strategist, a great lover of women, a fine friend, a terrifying foe. There was still the wreckage of that man in there somewhere. That was what was so terrible and so sad.” I cannot look upon a homeless man—especially one on whom the lifestyle has wrought damage—without thinking of what he (or she) might have once been before their circumstances took a tragic turn.

Old Bailey, from London Below

This is creativity A realistic story focusing on the homeless might have come across as sentimental or maudlin. But creating a fantasy world where homelessness can be represented and commented upon indirectly—this is creativity. A creative approach proves more effective and makes a deeper impression. If you read Neverwhere and catch the homeless analogy (it’s hard to miss) you will not forget it. You will be more aware of way the homeless live. You will feel more compassion for their plight. Creativity transforms and gives power to the image. Creativity reworks the raw material of story, making it something (as Hamlet said) “wondrous strange.”

You also see this transformation working in:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

the Genesis creation story

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

I will talk about each of these books and how they use creative technique.

 Get a copy of Strange Brew.

When a witch is in love with you,

the magic can get serious.