The Physicality of the Creative Process

The physicality of creation is not a concept in which I have explored, yet I found myself considering the possibility after reading these three essays. Einstein described how physical his process of thinking was; how he did not see words in his thoughts, but thoughts came to him with more actions. "Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will" (Einstein 33). I struggled with what it was exactly that Einstein was saying. How does one think in action then put into words secondarily?

Housman goes onto discuss the meaning behind words chosen and the structuring of British Romantic poetry. Though I'm not a huge fan of British Romantic poetry, Housman's essay was helpful in that it helped me to piece together the physicality of the process of poetry. Housman states in his essay: "Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual" (Housman 90). There is an action to the production of poetry. Not only does the mind need to be engaged to create, but the body needs to be engaged as well, at least, in a certain sense. It reminded me of a story I shared with a friend who was writing a book on creativity: I usually received my greatest ideas when I was working out or when I was driving. When my body was engaged in an activity, inspiration would strike. It freed the mind to wander into realms that consciously it wouldn't dare, which brings me to Prince's essay on dreams.

Prince discusses the automation of dreams and hypnosis, which for me, exercise was. "In other words all happened as if there was a deeper underlying process which did the composing and from this process certain thoughts without logical order emerged to form a subconscious stream and after the composing was done the words of the verse emerged as coconscious images as they were to be written" (Prince 215). Walking on a treadmill was my hypnosis, and it allowed my mind to go into the subconscious and process the thoughts that were there; in order for me to pull them from the depths of obscurity and breathe life into the unthought.

Prior to writing this, I didn't believe there was physicality involved in creation, but as I write, I think about the creative times I have had, and how they have all precipitated from some form of activity. Einstein engaged in mental activity in which his thoughts processed into conscious language. Housman described how physical activity engaged the poet into inspiration. Prince described hypnosis as a means of recovering a dream. All are forms of physicality. Such as now, my mind is engaged in listening to the Chronicles of Narnia sound track and the images it is calling to my mind, all while I am connecting the threads that bind Einstein, Housman and Prince together. There is a great deal of physicality in creativity. I have been blind to my own action. I see the light!

Einstein, Albert. "Letter to Jacques Hadamard." The Creative Process. Brewster Ghiselin, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985

Housman, A.E. "The Name and Nature of Poetry." The Creative Process. Brewster Ghiselin, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985

Prince, Morton. "Subconscious intelligence Underlying Dreams." The Creative Process. Brewster Ghiselin, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985