“It is important for an artist to be able to ‘let go.’ The surrealists tried to
exploit this by putting themselves into a state where things just happened by
themselves. They had a sheet of white paper in front of them and they began
to write without thinking about what they wrote. They called it automatic
writing. The expression originally comes from spiritualism, where a medium
believed that a departed spirit was guiding the pen. But I thought we would
talk more about that kind of thing tomorrow.”
“I’d like that.”
“In one sense, the surrealist artist is also a medium, that is to say, a
means or a link. He is a medium of his own unconscious. But perhaps there is
an element of the unconscious in every creative process, for what do we ac-
tually mean by creativity?”
“I’ve no idea. Isn’t it when you create something?”
“Fair enough, and that happens in a delicate interplay between
imagination and reason. But all too frequently, reason throttles the
imagination, and that’s serious because without imagination, nothing really
new will ever be created. I believe imagination is like a Darwinian system.”
“I’m sorry, but that I didn’t get.”
“Well, Darwinism holds that nature’s mutants arise one after the other,
but only a few of them can be used. Only some of them get the right to live.”
“So?”
“That’s how it is when we have an inspiration and get masses of new
ideas. Thought-mutants occur in the consciousness one after the other, at
least if we refrain from censoring ourselves too much. But only some of these
thoughts can be used. Here, reason comes into its own.
It, too, has a vital function. When the day’s catch is laid on the table we
must not forget to be selective.”
“That’s not a bad comparison.”
“Imagine if everything that ‘strikes us’ were allowed to pass our lips! Not
to speak of jumping off our notepads out of our desk drawers! The world
would sink under the weight of casual impulses and no selection would have
taken place.”
“So it’s reason that chooses between all these ideas?”
“Yes, don’t you think so? Maybe the imagination creates what is new,
but the imagination does not make the actual selection. The imagination does
not ‘compose.’ A composition—and every work of art is one—is created in a
wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and
reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative
process. You have to turn the sheep loose before you can start to herd them.”
Alberto sat quite still, staring out of the window. While he sat there,
Sophie suddenly noticed a crowd of brightly colored Disney figures down by
the lake.
“There’s Goofy,” she exclaimed, “and Donald Duck and his nephews ...
Look, Alberto. There’s Mickey Mouse and . . .”
He turned toward her: “Yes, it’s very sad, child.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here we are being made the helpless victims of the major’s flock of
sheep. But it’s my own fault, of course. I was the one who started talking
about free association of ideas.”
“You certainly don’t have to blame yourself...”