{William Cerf's Creativity Journal
}
Just where is my Creativity??
Amy Tan’s TED talk was a delightful experience of walking with her on a short journey as she tried valiantly to squeeze everything into 18 minutes – she went over by almost three minutes. I got the impression from watching the video twice that her energy is not able to be put in a little box labeled – “Talk no more than 18 minutes!” (TEDXDirector)
My creativity might be hidden in my neurological quirks, I am after all on medication for anxiety and depression or maybe it is hidden in the trauma of my mother’s death when she was 39 and I was four. Tan mentioned survival creativity. Somehow, I can’t really remember how but I have survived for 66 years. Maybe my survival creativity will not change the world and maybe some people whose names I can’t spell would not call it creative. Life has been a quest to answer questions – Who am I? Why am I deaf? Why do I feel so out of place in the “normal” world? My paternal grandmother was the wise woman who nurtured me through the trauma of a household that did not know how to grieve and a father who was devastated by my mother’s death to the point of becoming an alcoholic. Grandmother believed in metaphysics and a kind of serendipity that was planned by some other force – a great mystery.
Finally, as I enter into the third semester of this Ph.D. program I am beginning to be less afraid of ambiguity. Amy Tan stated that there is uncertainty in everything and that is good. I will in due time finish a dissertation, which I hope will be just creative enough to make a tiny contribution to the field of emancipation. It is interesting to note that I am very interested in emancipation of people who live in what Dr. King called a “cruelly unjust society” (King 66 - 67). In the process I have been privileged to meet my beloved Union cohorts, a lovely serendipity that I had not expected when I entered the Kingsgate in January 2012. Who knows, maybe the purpose of the Ph.D. is to learn to be a scholar and a practitioner in the art and science of emancipation – of others and myself.
Work Cited
King, Jr. Martin Luther. The Trumpet of Conscience. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967. Print.
TEDXDirector. "Amy Tan - Where Does Creativity Hide?" 2008. http://t.co/mS9iMAfeZS via @youtube