When we engage the creative mind, the object upon which we focus our energy seems to proliferate. For example, if we attempt to make a collection of green things, and we engage the creative mind for this task, we begin to see green everywhere.
Often we think we can engage the critical mind separately from the creative mind. We think that to be critical means to be negative. In fact, critical simply means discerning, or able to separate the observed object into parts. The critical mind turns out to be another version of the creative mind.
If we think of critical as negative, however, if we think our critical task is to observe and make a collection of problems to be corrected, then problems become the object of our creative mind masquerading as a critical mind. We then start to see problems everywhere. We become proficient at observing problems. We become one who is defined by the ability to observe a proliferation of problems. Because of this approach, the creative mind seems to shut down when the critical mind is engaged. In fact, the creative mind has only been engaged negatively, and because of this habit, when we set out to make our own work, to engage our creative mind deliberately, we experience paralysis because we have trained ourselves to observe only problems.
For now we will try an experiment. We will engage the critical mind to observe the moments in the work we are looking at that seem to us the most exceptional and inspiring—the miraculous moments. Maybe this approach will allow us to keep the creative mind deliberately engaged as we engage the critical mind. Maybe we will start to see miraculous moments everywhere. We will become one who is defined by the ability to observe a proliferation of miracles.
Rather than making a critical response to the work you are observing, make a creative response to it. Think of the creative response as your own work that would not have existed without the work you are responding to. Start with the most obvious miraculous (exceptional, inspiring, unusual, transcendent, or otherwise engaging) moment that you see in the work. What appears to you obvious may not appear obvious to anyone else.
You may have an association with that moment that makes the moment miraculous for you. You may echo the moment in your creative response, multiply it, work out from it in some other way. The moment may have been intentional or accidental. Instead of a moment, maybe you respond to a structural element, a visual element, a spatial element, or some other quality in the work observed.
If we can destabilize the boundaries between the critical and the creative, we may enrich them both, and discover a communal practice—one that relies on one another for inspiration and energy, both critically and creatively.
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