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khora000 · 7 years ago

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Miss You, Dad.

1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark. We left the theater and my dad was pumped. As he often did, he took off running into the parking lot, signaling The Race to the Car and bellowing John Williams’ “The Raiders March.” [Unleash it!] My brother and I took off after him.

This song instantly became my dad’s rallying cry. He’d belt it while driving and while gardening. He’d bark it at the sleeping dog. He lung-blasted it into the bitter December cold in the parking lot of a Pittsburgh mall. I can still see him taking off in his down coat and hard-soled leather loafers. But unlike my reaction in the preceding years, I was no longer exhilarated and moved to chase. I was annoyed. Embarrassed. Angry. I was ten.

I don't know when he was diagnosed “manic depressive.” Perhaps before or during his first stay at Western Psych in Pittsburgh. He’d go there every seven years and stay for weeks, months. He was administered shock treatments. We’d visit him. I played checkers with the other patients. I gave him my beloved purple plastic Sony Boombox to listen to cassettes while he was there. Every seven years, there he’d go.

So is Music an asylum. It takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842

I didn’t understand what “manic depression” was, but I learned to recognize when my dad was manic. He was either elated with life or filled with fury. He wasn’t himself. And he wasn’t not-himself. Schechner’s state of performance. Not-me/not-not-me. But he wasn’t performing, was he? He couldn’t help himself.

My dad could be cruel when he was manic. He’d say the meanest things. My mother reminded my brother and me that Dad didn’t mean it. But I couldn’t fully believe this. But it had to be true. His behavior was involuntary. Bipolar.

Moral philosopher, Eric Hoffer:

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites—opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity—where energies flow smoothly in one direction—there will be much doing but no music."

Hoffer, Eric. Reflections on the human condition. Titusville, NJ: Hopewell Publications, 2006. Print.

Involuntary musical imagery. I.N.M.I. In its worst form? Earworms. It is maddening. It is brain betrayal. Over and over. And if I think about it for more than a second, I am terrified. To not be able to control my brain . . . . INMI.

But the fact is I already can’t. I remember when I was diagnosed with depression at 16. And I remember when I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and panic disorder at 28. Now 16 years later, I still can’t satisfactorily control my brain. You hear me. I bet you hear me.

But I still have my sociocultural wits about me. I don’t reel in any emotive direction longer than appropriate. I’m able to get my footing when I need to. The thought of not being able to perform well . . . . Well, it’s terrifying.

So I self-regulate with Self-Identified Sad Music. And I rely terribly on Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memory.

SISM and MEAM

The terminology is social scientific and plain-old scientific. It can be found in journals of Psychology, Biology, Neurology. It’s not a very artful language. As much as I love artful expressions, they are not enough to gratify my desire to understand my father and his relationship to music. My earliest memories are of my father and music.

1974: Tchaikovsky. Nutcracker Suite. The Russian Dance, The Arabian Dance.

In later years, he loved Willie Nelson and maintained a hearty adoration of Elvis. I can almost hear the car radio announcer inform us that Elvis was dead. I cannot forget my father’s silence as he pulled off the highway to listen to the report.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Seven years before my father died, he was diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia. We were told that he had about seven years to live. I read everything I could find on Google about Lewy Body dementia. And I understood very little. So many brain-part words. So many . . . lobes. And, all the while I read and read, my father’s brain—its very matter—deteriorated. There was nothing the specialists could do. And I ultimately stopped trying to understand. But I wish I hadn’t.

I wish I hadn’t because the brain matters. Understanding the complexity of performing the self and the performed self is not enough. And artful expressions about memory and music and “who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto” fall short in helping me understand how one can be “not-me and not-not-me” and not be performing. I want to learn how it happens that Anaïs Nin is right when she wrote,

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

Anaïs Nin, Winter of Artifice: Three Novelettes, 1939, page 99.

I agree with Valerie Pitts-Tyler and her “Neurocultures Manifesto”;

1. The brain is biocultural.

2. Neurocentrism is a limiting viewpoint.

3. Selves and subjects are always embodied [. . .] always biological as well as cultural, social, and personal.

4. The brain is matter.

5. The brain is not ahistorical, fixed, or atemporal.

6. Scientists cannot be left alone to do the job of understanding selves.

7. A lot is at stake in knowledge about the brain.

8. We should all participate in negotiating these tasks.

9. We should learn to be critical readers of brain scholarship.

10. We should not accept uncritical uses of neuroscience in our own disciplines.

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory […].

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Music, When Soft Voices Die”

From the Journal of Clinical Nursing:

Researchers indicate that the areas of the brain that respond to music are the last to deteriorate in dementia and suggest that music may be one form of communication that remains preserved in people with dementia who respond to music (Crystal et al. 1989).

Sung, Huei Chuan Christina, and Anne Marie Chang. “Use of Preferred Music to Decrease Agitated Behaviours in Older People with Dementia: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Clinical Nursing 14.9 (2005): 1133-1140.

I hope my father was able to hear music until he died. I hope he had pleasant Involuntary Musical Imagery and comforting Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories. I hope I do—we all do—in the end.

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marcusssanderson · 6 years ago

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60 Creativity Quotes About Expressing Your Real Self

Our latest collection of creativity quotes on Everyday Power Blog. Enjoy!

Creativity can be defined as the ability to use our imagination and unique ideas to make something. It is a habit of life that comes in many different forms.

Creativity is one of the most important traits we possess as human beings. It is because of creativity that we are able to achieve success in life. When we come across challenges and obstacles, it’s our creativity that allows us to see the opportunities hidden in them.

Every one of us is creative. In fact, we are all born creative and use our innovativeness and imagination to negotiate life. But due to self-doubt and other limiting thoughts, we sometimes find it difficult to express who we truly are.

When you feel like you’re stuck and that you’re not good enough, reading some words of inspiration can get your creative juices flowing again.

Here are some powerful creativity quotes that will awaken your imagination and inspire you to be true to yourself and your dreams.

Creativity Quotes About Expressing Your Real Self

1.) “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

2.) “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” ~Erich Fromm

3.) “Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.” ~ Julia Cameron

4.) “Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

5.) “Creativity comes from trust. trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” – Rita Mae Brown

6.) “I’m experimental by nature… always exploring my creativity. – Christina Aguilera

7.) “If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” – Pablo Picasso

8.) “The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.” – Twyla Tharp

9.) “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

10.) “Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.” – Dee Hock

Creativity quotes to awaken your imagination

11.) “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.” – Dorothy Parker

12.) “Creative isn’t the way I think, it’s the way I like to live.” – Paul Sandip

13.) “Creativity requires input, and that’s what research is. You’re gathering material with which to build.” – Gene Luen Yang

14.) “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

15.) “Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas” – Donatella Versace

16.) “The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation.” – Bob Iger

17.) ““Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso

18.) “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.” – William Plomer

19.) “Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.” – Eric Hoffer

20.) “Creativity is nothing but a mind set free.” –Torrie T. Asai

Creativity quotes to inspire you to be true to yourself

21.) “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.” ~Pablo Picasso

22.) “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” ~Scott Adams

23.) “The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.” – Deepak Chopra

24.) “Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

25.) “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” – Rollo May

26.) “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”– Vincent van Gogh

27.) “Creativity is nothing but the way to solve new problems.” – Diana Santos

28.) “Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition.” – Ed Mc Cabe

29.) ” Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.” – Martin Luther King

30.) “You don’t have to be ‘a creative’ to be creative.” –Droby Ben-Menachem

Creativity quotes to motivate and inspire you

31.) “Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.” ~Mason Cooley

32.) “Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing.” ~Edward de Bono

33.) “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs

34.) “Creativity is a drug I cannot live without” – Cecil B. DeMille

35.) “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will” – George Bernard Shaw

36.) “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” – Brené Brown

37.) “The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” – Henry David Thoreau

38.) “Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”– Bruce Garrabrandt

39.) “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” – Arthur Clarke

40.) “Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience.” – Masaru Ibuka

Creativity quotes that will inspire you to look at things differently

41.) “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” ~Albert Einstein

42.) “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook

43.) “Creativity is breaking out of established patterns to look at things in a different way.” ~Edward de Bono

44.) “The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist.” – Ananda Coomaraswamy

45.) “Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” ~Charles Mingus

46.) “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” – Albert Einstein

47.) “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club” – Jack London

48.) “Solitude is creativity’s best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.” – Naomi Judd

49.) “If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.”– John Cleese

50.) “The best way to predict the future is to create it” –Abraham Lincoln

Other inspirational creativity quotes

51.) “To be creative means to be in love with life.” ~Osho

52.) “The field of creativity that exists within each individual is freed by moving out of ideas of wrong-doing or right doing.” – Angeles Arrien

53.) “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

54.) “Your soul is infinitely creative. It is alive and expansive in nature. It is curious and playful, changing with the tides of time.” – Debbie Ford

55.) “Almost all creativity requires purposeful play.” – Abraham Maslow

56.) “Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.” – Victor Pinchuk

57.) “Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world.”- Brene Brown

58.) “My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift.” – J. Tillman

59.) “I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity.” – Gilda Radner

60.) “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”– Henry David Thoreau

Which of these creativity quotes was your favorite?

Creativity is crucial if you want to succeed in life. Although many people may not realize it, all of us are born with massive creativity. It’s upon you to cultivate it so you can discover the endless opportunities around you.

We all have a wellspring of creative energy within us. Hopefully, these quotes have inspired you to live better and to be true to yourself and your visions.

Did you enjoy these creativity quotes? Which of the quotes was your favorite? We would love to hear all about it in the comment section below. Also, don’t forget to share with your friends and loved ones.

The post 60 Creativity Quotes About Expressing Your Real Self appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

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