Friday, August 8, 2008

Is This True?


I keep wondering about this passage from Lynda Barry's What It Is, one of the best books I've ever read on creativity:
The thinking part of you
is not the doing part of you
or the experiencing part of you
The thinking part of you can
tell you that a decision has
been made but it's not the
part of you which decides things
This is why thinking is not
the same as creating through
the thinking part of us seems
completely unaware of this

3 comments:

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

So, so true!

Kempisosha said...

Yes & no .... we are of course integral beings, so the "parts" of us do not work independently of each other. But the "thinking part" of us simply gathers data, which doesn't become "knowledge" until acted upon.

All knowledge is experiential. Watching children will tell you this. They don't sit around making stories and pictures in their heads- they walk around and tell them, or act them out. My oldest used to draw pictures in the air for me, and tell me what each thing in the picture was. Creativity demands action.

Anonymous God-blogger said...

Thank you!

So, Anastasia and Ken,

What does it mean to "make a decision"? Or, backing up a little, to struggle to try to make a decision, if some part of one has already decided?