bits & pieces

I don’t have much time to blog, but I thought I’d sneak a quick note. I’ve added ronincyberpunk to my list of blogs of note. Other than being named after a masterless samurai, being a fellow Eagle Scout, and working in a theme park, Ronin keeps a pretty interesting blog. Check it out.

If I have time tonight I’ll put up a new MP3, survey and some more quotes. But the way things are going that might not occur until tomorrow.

follow up on the post on God and Creativity

heather posted the following comment after my God and Creativity post:

So… would those with more creative types of minds be closer to “God”? Some people out there just aren’t creative… are they less divine?

Interesting point, but I’d have to disagree with the notion that some people are not creative. I’ve yet to find someone who isn’t creative in some aspect of their lives. Or rather who doesn’t have the potential to be creative. Creativity is a very broad experience. Last night was a great example. An old martial arts friend is leaving town and so as part of saying goodbye, we had a huge open class/sparring night. Most of the people there were not necessarily what you would consider creative. Or at least in the traditional artistic sense. However once each of them started moving and fighting there were flashes of brilliance and creativity that were inspiring. Those moments were not that much different from Artie Shaw’s moments of brilliant creativity on the clarinet (though I don’t want to suggest that we were on a common level when it came to mastery of our chosen instruments). This also relates back to the theory of Optimal Experience that Csikszentmihalyi puts forth in books like Flow: moments when you are in a state of flow/rhythm/balance internally and with your surroundings. I can’t think of a better description of a pseudo divine state than that.

Of course, if a person chooses not to embrace their creative aspects then they are potentially cutting themselves off from this type of experience. And there are people, who for reasons I can’t understand, do choose to do that.

in other news

– I finally got a flying scissors take down off yesterday. Thanks to Aaron for being such a great sparring partner! Now if I could have gotten the roll-over-the-other-person’s-back-sacrifice-throw I tried I would have been ready for my career as a low budget action star.

– Theater: Uggg… just found out that our set designer will not be able to oversee the set construction. Crap! I don’t have time to find someone else. I knew things were going too well there.