Cartography for the Land of Ideas, Talking Creativity with Maria Popova nea.gov
Excerpt
Creativity = Curiosity + Courage
Creativity is simply our ability to combine all the existing pieces in our head -- memories, ideas, knowledge, inspiration -- into incredible new things. It is completely contingent upon the depth, breadth, and diversity of these cognitive micro-resources -- the more pieces we have, and the more disciplines they span, the stronger, richer, more impactful our creative output will be.
In a way, it means to be intellectually restless. To consistently allow yourself to be uncomfortable, to be incompetent and, in the process, to learn. Mostly, a creative life is one of perpetual and indiscriminate curiosity about the world and its many facets. It's a kind of pattern-recognition that is only possible if one has a broad, cross-disciplinary view of culture, constantly probing how different pieces fit together. Just like man, no idea is an island. Creativity is cartography for the land of ideas -- mapping new, better routes for how things fit together in the broader context of culture and society.
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