Unfinished Business - Creativity appears in the In-Between
How mystery sparks creativity in Art & Spirituality
Right before his most important competitions, Usain Bolt plays video games. He deliberately leaves the final game unfinished so his brain will make him think of that instead of the built-up tension for the Olympic final. This creative tension refocuses his inner attention, distracting him from worries and protecting Bolt from overthinking. Transporting him from a game flow to a runners’ high.
Unfulfilled tasks persist in the mind. Creative sparks need voltage.
Unfulfilled tasks & open questions persist in our minds. As humans, we seek clarity. And this need for closure keeps bringing back open problems & uncertain topics into our awareness. We remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. This so-called Zeigarnik effect plays a significant role in how we engage in creative task solving but also in how we perceive art, such as movies or novels.
If we have a problem and we need to solve it, until we do, we feel a kind of internal agitation, a tension that makes us just plain uncomfortable. “And we want to get rid of that discomfort. To do so, we take a decision. Not because we're sure it's the best decision, but because taking it will make us feel better.” [John Cleese]
This urge for clarity, triggers us so that we feel the need to discuss provoking movies, analyze, and deconstruct them. Until all vagueness & ambiguity, all aliveness is sterilized.
“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. It’s not very interesting, and the frog dies in the process.”
Clarity gives peace, it calms our subconscious because we tell our intuition that there is nothing further to process. Nothing to worry about and nothing to explore anymore. Closure enables peace of mind.
In contrast, if we resist our urge for complete closure through analysis, we can maintain our inspiration from art. Our minds will still try to squeeze our impressions. Even if we take a shower, a nap, or a walk in the park. Our minds will still have some threads playing and searching for patterns.
In Zen Buddhism, teachers give their pupils riddles that are objectively unsolvable - the infamous so-called “Koans”. And exactly in their paradoxical nature lies their power.
An example could be: What is the difference between a cat?
“only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide”
- Foerster
In contrast, the question, "What is 125 * 456?" is not a puzzle awaiting subjective interpretation; it possesses a concrete and calculable answer, albeit one that may require a few minutes of calculation. The objective nature of the question precludes any subjective decision-making, as the solution is bound by mathematical principles.
Paradoxical Zen Koans are particularly effective precisely because they defy straightforward resolution. The absence of a logical solution makes them impervious to conventional analysis or calculation. Our mind cannot find peace by calculating or analytical argumentation. And because Koans are not designed to be answered objectively, they allow for endless subjective exploration. The answer to a Koan, does not give us information about the Koan itself but about the person answering it.
Zen Koans create a crisis for our subconscious mind. A struggle that leads us away from “Knowing“, away from security. Koans pose inquiries not with the expectation of discovering a definitive solution but rather to provoke a profound and creative sense of despair.
Koans are designed to break old habits, to break old dusty paths. They are designed to keep our intuitive inquiry active. They are a virus planted on purpose. A paradoxical idea that will eat your resources, and invest your whole being because your mind will want to solve it anyhow. “Somewhere must be the solution.“ This deep searching penetrates our deepest subconscious layers.
…and at some point. After diving through many layers, after seeking patterns that could fit the strange riddle. Our intuition reaches coherence. It connects enough patterns that it can reach a deep associative earthquake of eureka moments expressed by our whole body & mind. Some Zen Koans are solved by a heartfelt intense laugh, some are “solved“ by a scream, a hit or even a meaningful gaze to the Zen Master. In any case, if they are authentic solutions, if the Zen pupil doesn’t cheat, the solution will be a deep expression.
Similarly to Koans, art like movies or masterful paintings often defies neat categorization or definitive answers. And exactly in this vagueness therein lies the power of art. Because like in Koans, masterful art pieces require deep inquiry.
"There is no art without ambiguity."
- Frauke Berndt
Interpreting art destroys the experience of art. We can only be possessed by unfulfilled dreams. Closure & planning kill the sparks. If you want to keep an idea alive, you need to keep it mysterious.
Courage to despair
MacKinnon found that the most creative people always played with a problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it, because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem.
Well, the most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer. And so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.
“[The artist] must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy. Many lesser poets have it only in their youth; some even of the greatest lose it in middle life. Wordsworth lost the courage to despair and with it his poetic power. But more often the dynamic tensions are so powerful that they destroy the man before he reaches maturity.”
- Humphrey Trevelyan
In studies on creativity, individuals with high need-for-closure ratings had low creativity scores. Those low in need-for-closure more frequently produced novel solutions that motivated and inspired others in their groups, and the outcomes of the projects in which they participated were rated as correspondingly more productive.
Unfinished Business - Life appears in the In-Between
Ghosts appear in the in-between. Spirits of the dead linger until their unfinished business is settled. Unfinished Business. In the same way, by letting yourself become possessed by a creative problem, by an unfinished problem your subconscious becomes enchanted. Creative Pattern Recognition and wild associations will haunt you if you allow the voltage of mystery to take over your soul.
“You are only conscious of the things for that you don't have an optimal algorithm yet.”
Perceptions where “Is” is unequal to “Should” and which are not automated are the fuel for creative endeavors.
The seed of life requires the dark soil of mystery. The creative spark requires the voltage between “Is“ and “Should“. An unsolved business, a creative ambivalence. Our Pop culture seems to have an intuition about that. Besides ghost stories, one more recent example is Mr.Meeseeeks from Rick & Morty. Where Rick invents the so-called “Meeseeks Box:” a gadget capable of summoning blue humanoids all named "Mr. Meeseeks", that live until executing the task they’re given and then vanish.
“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know.”
-Polish Poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska