John Cleese on Creativity (27/10/2013)

Looking on the Facebook page of one of my favorite reviewers the Nostalgia Critic, I noticed he had posted a video involving one of my favourite comedic actors John Cleese from Monty Python (fig 1) talking about creativity. Fascinated by his discussion, I decided to write down some notes that you can read below. 

• Creativity has nothing to do with intelligence, rather with background and surroundings/environment. 
• You have to be in a certain mood in order for your creativity to flow, thus certain individuals work better under different circumstances. For example, some work best when under pressure, whereas others go off on tangents to relax and therefore can more easily reassess their situations (as was the case with Hitchcock).
• If you are stuck in the 'closed' mood then you are not going to come up with anything. However, you can change this by getting hold of five things/factors.
1. Space - If you're under pressure then you're in a closed mood. Thus place yourself somewhere that has peace and quiet.
2. Time - Create the space above, you should then designate a specific moment or time for when that space is your space. Thus nothing can disrupt your train of thought as it is your space and time to shine, or in other words your recess, your play time, your oasis of quiet. This is especially important to do as it is easier to worry about trivial things that need to be done, than things you want to do that may not seem so important. Thus make sure that everything you need is ready in advance so as not to be distracted by other things in your life. He recommended you give yourself an hour and a half, as that way you should have a good hour left to bring your idea to life after spending the first half an hour thinking. However, you should only do these session once a week, otherwise you can run dry on ideas, and by leaving it for a week you can easily come back to it.     
3. Time - Although already brought up, this section of time is more about how to use your oasis of quiet more effectively. An example he gave described him trying to be funnier than one of his colleagues on Monty Phython by spending longer on a gag he was stuck on in order to be more original. Therefore, by playing with the problem for longer other possibilities became apparent, because he was prepared to tolerate dis-comfort and anxiety when encountering a problem. When we are annoyed we tend to make quicker decisions that are often the wrong ones and thus we ruin our creativity. If we can learn to tolerate these feelings then we can spend more time getting our ideas right and more like what we intended. "When does this decision have to be made?" This is an important question to ask yourself, as then you can spend more time making sure your idea comes our perfectly. Afterall, if you have, say to next Tuesday to come up with something, but are being rushed, then of course the idea isn't going to be as good. Thus, by spending time thinking an original idea will come to you as you have given your brain the time it needed.  
4. Confidence -When in your oasis be confident! This is your time to play after all, what happens if you do one thing over another? You will only find out by trying and therefore you shouldn't think an idea fail or is wrong, only that you gave something else a try! Afterall, this is your time to be yourself, to be free, not think of what others may presume, and more importantly... be confident! "You can't be spontaneous within reason" as Alan Watts puts it best. Nothing is wrong in your oasis. 
5. Humour - Humour is an essential part of play and creativity, thus this is the quickest route to get us from the closed mood to the open mood. Therefore, by seeing the funny side of things and laughing you become happier and more relaxed, thus making you more inclined to work creatively. "Therefore, when you set up a space time oasis giggle all you want" - John Cleese

• In general try and keep your mind on track, not completely, but just enough for it to rest nicely in place and not wander off.  
• By being with others you can exchange ideas you would have never of thought of before. However, make sure the people you are talking to are people you like and not ones you dislike, otherwise you will get uncomfortable. Also, never say "no" or "I don't like" as that will bring them and their creativity down. Instead, always be positive and build on what they say with words such as "It would be even better with" or "I don't quite understand that, could you explain it again please?". Thus making the group's creativity far more open and friendly. This makes sense to me as recently my friends and I stayed up to two in the morning coming up with ideas for an original fantasy world and were so engrossed in our task and imaginations that we didn't feel tired.
• Like a joke, by separating two meanings we can bring them together in a different context to make something new, creative and hopefully fun, otherwise known as 'Intermediate Impossibles'. This also makes sense to me, as whenever me and a group have used only a couple of words to create a new game idea our ideas have always been more creative, as we have had to work outside our usual thinking and normality to bring them to life. Thus making the process more original and fun. After all, as John Cleese says, "when you're playing, nothing is wrong".

Thanks to his passion for the subject and his great use of comedy at the end to racap on everything he had talked about, I feel as if I have learnt a lot and understand what he was trying to get across. Therefore, anyone else interested in the fascinating subject of creativity needs to watch the video which I have linked in my Harvard Referencing below.  

Fig 1:

Harvard Referencing: 

• Fig 1: Reid, J (2010) John Cleese vs. the Volcano: And He Wins ($ort of) [Online Image].
  Available at:http://uk.eonline.com/news/176917/john-cleese-vs-the-volcano-and-he-wins-ort-of (Accessed: 27/10/2013). 
• YouTube (2013) John Cleese on Creativity [Online Video]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ (Accessed: 27/10/2013).