Philip Hii – guitarist

I’ve been thinking about creativity a great deal lately. Some of the impetus, I must say, have been provoked by the slew of publications I’ve found on the subject.

You don’t have to go far to find these publications. Thanks to google, all you have to do is type in ‘creativity’ in the search box, select ‘books,’ and you’ll see the whole gamut. Some of these books are over 400 pages long.

I actually have some of these books in my possession.

And I’m still waiting to dig into them. Somehow, the thought of having to wade through over 400 pages of scholarly discussion about creativity does not seem, in itself, to be a very creative thing to do so I’ve been avoiding it.

The question is, can creativity even be taught?

And that’s where I differ with these creativity experts.

For example, did anyone teach Bob Dylan to be creative? I’ve seen the documentary “Don’t look back.” He just sits with this typewriter and bang away at the keys. What’s driving him and providing him with all that creative energy?

Or Glenn Gould recording the Goldberg, singing and humming away, baring his soul to the world. Did someone teach him to come up with his unique and breathtaking interpretation of the work?

Or closer to home, if you’ve seen a young kid on the beach, making sand castles, or just playing with the sand. Did you see any creativity expert nearby telling him, “Here, sonny, this is how you make a sand castle”?

Creativity is an urge, a hunger, an obsession. It’s pure energy.

It can’t be taught just as you can’t teach someone to be hungry. All you can do is foster that energy, and give it an outlet.

I live in a city where people are constantly having to whitewash walls.

Now, I’m not condoning any acts of vandalism. Defacing public property and other people’s fences is not a fun matter for those having to clean it up.

But what drives young people to go out at night and spray paint public property? There’re many motivations, I suspect, but one of these has to be that creative energy bursting inside all these young hearts, just wanting to be expressed.

Although many of these expressions are just random territorial statements, some of them are incredibly beautiful.

Talking about graffiti, I’ve heard that graffiti is a serious crime in Singapore which is punishable with many strokes of the cane.

And I’ve also heard that Singapore is at the forefront in fostering creativity. They’ve recruited Edward de Bono and Andrei Aleinikov (two experts who I happen to have the greatest respect for) to help their citizens become more creative.

Now I wonder whether there’s any connection here.

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day to get the AOV (pdf only) at the special price of $5. After August 31, 2011, the price goes back to $8.

To purchase, please go to this link:

http://philiphii.com/purchase/pdf_only/

If you have already purchased it, many thanks!

So there I was again, in the heart of Borneo, browsing through another bookstore, this time in Sibu, my old hometown, when my eyes fell upon another book.

Encrusted in dust, this book looked like it’s been sitting there for the past three decades too, waiting for me to pick it up.

I really don’t know why it attracted my attention, certainly not because of the title, ‘How to Overcome Competition.’ But picked it up I did, and I started reading through it, and I was hooked. I loved the direct style of writing, it’s something I’ve been trying to cultivate so I bought the book.

Once home, I decided to google the author’s name, Herbert Casson, and what I found got me even more excited. A Canadian who lived mostly in England at the turn of the twentieth century, he started out as a minister and ended up an authority on business practices.

But that wasn’t what got me excited. It was his focus on the subject of efficiency. In fact, he started a journal named after that very subject and published a number of books on it.

Efficiency, of course, is a pet subject of mine. It is an integral part of virtuosity; much of virtuosity has to do with streamlining your task, refining it and making it as efficient as possible.

But what got me really excited was another book of his, entitled ‘Lectures on Efficiency’ which I found in digital format here:

http://ia700304.us.archive.org/15/items/lecturesoneffici00cassrich/lecturesoneffici00cassrich.pdf

On page 4, he divides work into two parts, details and principles. Here’s an excerpt of the text:

Here are the details and here are the principles. If a man learns the job himself and does not read books, or travel, or listen to lectures, he only knows the details. He does not know the principles at all. You learn details by what you do yourself; I could not teach you details. There are no two jobs alike, and so you must learn your own details.

But there is something else besides details in every Works, that is, GENERAL PRINCIPLES, which you cannot learn yourself, because it is a very different thing. There are the two halves of a circle. A Works is like an umbrella, the ribs are the principles, the cloth is the detail; it takes them both. If a man only knows details, he sees his job at the small end; if he only knows principles, he is a theorist and a dreamer, and he cannot do anything at all.

Well, you get the general idea.

But this explanation of principles is something right after my own heart. It’s practically the theme song of my life.

Ever since I was young, I’d always understood that there’re principles and there’re techniques. And principles have always been of more importance to me than techniques because they give rise to the latter.

When I saw a fast athlete run, I wanted to know the principles behind his speed. When I watched a small kungfu master beat a hulking boxing champ in a sparring match, I wanted to know what were the principles behind his strength too.

To me, it’s all about principles. because once you understand the principles, you can create any details (techniques) you want.

And the AOV is essentially a compilation of all the principles I discovered. To me, these principles are so fundamental, so crucial to good technique, I still wonder why nobody had ever thought of putting them together before.

What I read in the ‘Lectures’ by Herbert Casson was a complete validation of the rationale and purpose of the AOV.

So the next day, I went back to the bookstore again to see if there were other books by him. I did find another book, equally encrusted in dust and so old, it literally fell apart as I opened it. I bought it too, although I doubt I would be applying the principles in that book anytime soon. It’s called, ‘Window Display.’