Murakami insists that, when he's not writing, he is an absolutely ordinary man — his creativity, he says, is a "black box" to which he has no conscious access.
"This project is interesting because it is based on ordinary people's creativity and imagination.
But the resilience and creativity of ordinary Egyptians, who are clearly ready to fight for the freedom they have tasted, are an inspiration to Arabs everywhere.It will not be a straightforward journey.
Re "Poetry for Everyday Life," by David Brooks (column, April 12), about the "pervasiveness of metaphorical thinking": Certainly, metaphor is a valuable literary device, and to recognize beauty and creativity in ordinary speech is laudable.
Part of this is about according dignity to the everyday creativity of ordinary lives; in political terms, its corollary could be to angle policy away from how institutions grandly "provide" arts and culture to the masses, and to think about how citizens exist in a cultural ecology in which their own expressive gestures take on new importance.
Today most of cognitive science scholars converge on conceiving creativity an ordinary specific cognition function.
It should be pointed out, however, that a nonconformist lifestyle is not essential to creativity; indeed, many creative individuals lead quite ordinary lives, expressing their autonomy mainly in their unconventional ideas and work.
One study by Schredl and Erlacher (15) suggested that about 8% of all dreams by "ordinary" people stimulate waking life creativity.
Pruyser, from the Menninger Clinic, makes an interesting observation that the achievement of humor is probably one of the greatest forms of creativity within reach of ordinary people who do not possess other conspicuous talents (Pruyser 1987).
The installationlike set instead honors something both creators admire in African creativity, the ability to recycle ordinary materials into beauty.
