A Gracious Spark of ‘Creativitry’

Taiwanese Playwright Stan Lai talks about art, AI, intention and introspection

Writing about creativity and the means by which we travel from nothing to something can sometimes be perilous, like jumping off a cliff with neither an intention of landing nor an idea how to do it. We have faith that our vision of that most subjective experience can be clearly delineated for those who want to follow our path. Unfortunately, the marketplace is always flooded with interchangeable texts swaddled in promises and good intentions. Follow this path, understand these rules, and you too will be able to build your own masterpiece, your own monument to a lineage of vision, persistence, and single-mindedness. Just don’t expose the innards of your ultimate statement. Don’t expect your baby to run a marathon when it can’t even stand on its own two feet.

This is what separates Stan Lai’s Creativitry from the rest of the pack. It’s equal parts humble, profound, intensely serious and extremely catholic in its cultural references. As he notes in the preface, this is a fully rewritten variation of the 2006/2007 Chinese language book Chuangyixue, published in Taipei and Beijing. That a text like this could sell over a million copies in Asia reflects as much on the informed readership as it does on the temperament of contemporary worldwide readership. How will we see it today, in a world that elevates “content creators” over artists toiling alone in their garrets?

Lai spells it out very clearly in an epigraph that precedes Part One. Regarding the book’s title, he notes that “Creativitry” doesn’t exist as a word. Nothing creative exists until it does. Lai’s mission here is to discuss how we master, practice, and understand the creative process, like artistry or chemistry or sorcery. Take the abstract magic out of creativity, approach it like a skills training program from which anybody can graduate if they apply themselves, and what was once seen as magic and impossible to achieve suddenly materializes as achievable.

It’s best to see this book as a series of questions to consider: Can we learn creativity? Is there an anatomy to inspiration? What’s the connection between creativity and wisdom? Can a concrete method be separated from a reliance on madness as a source of creativity? Through it all, including some detailed maps and geometric Venn diagrams involving how method, art, life, and wisdom connect with our natural barriers, Creativitry is a perfect balance of the profound with the accessible. Lai assures us we can follow our creative paths, but don’t force a journey if it isn’t there. Or, in a more clear piece of advice:

“If it isn’t there, or isn’t right, why do it?”

Stan Lai’s bona fides are certainly impressive. He’s won the top drama awards in Taiwan, He’s been called by Robert Brustein “the major contemporary Asian playwright of his time…” and with over 40 celebrated plays to his credit in a career of over 40 years, he’s tackled the big themes of love, loss, identity, philosophy and everything in between. Sampan had the opportunity to speak with Lai about the big themes in Creativitry, its brilliant mix of profundity and humor, and how the lessons native English speaking readers can learn can be helpful in these uncertain times.

Sampan: Early in this book you ask the reader if we can really slow down the act of creativity that comes as a consequence of inspiration and see how it works. It’s a refreshingly secular way of seeing the creative process. Everyone from William Blake’s claims of being driven by visions to Bob Dylan’s flirtations with transubstantiation and sacrificing his soul to serve as a channel to his songs seem to be more legend than authentic. Thankfully you don’t assess artists and their process in this book but I was wondering how you see Blake and Dylan. Are they victims of how we painted them or were they just great merchandisers of an image?

Lai: I would call them unknowing accomplices in the making of a myth.

The popular concept is that great creative inspiration comes from divine sources, and is only for geniuses. I cannot ascertain whether Blake was visited by God, or what kind of pact Dylan supposedly made with the powers that be, because I am not them. What makes it more difficult to analyze is what exactly are these powers? Could they possibly be something from within the artist? I do know that when you accomplish something amazing, incredible – epic – you might stand back, look at it, and say, “Wow, how did I do that? It couldn’t have been me.” This can be true for an amazing one-handed football catch in the corner of the end zone, or a grand slam homer in the bottom of the ninth. How did I do that? Obviously someone else greater than myself did it for me. True?

In Creativitry I spend quite a few pages debunking this myth. At least from my point of view, I find that creative inspiration for any large or small project can be traced to files that are stored within oneself. The amazing thing is that we have what might be called an app that extracts these files, if we may, during the moment of inspiration, to create a new file, which is the creative project. I know that’s how it works for me. Currently I am in Shanghai rehearsing a revival of my 5½ hour play “AGO.” Last night I found myself watching in the audience and going, “Wow, that’s quite a neat line. How did I write that?” And “how did I know how to structure it in this way?” At the same time, I am still adding and subtracting things as we rehearse, and I added a short scene with two main characters feeding ducks by a pond. I thought it was intensely moving. So where did that come from? I can ascertain with certainty, from myself. And if we strive to be creative, we have to believe this to be true. Otherwise, as I say in Creativitry, if inspiration is something that comes from without, external, then to attain it is just as random as if you were waiting for snow.

Sampan: When you wrote, “The moment of inspiration I experienced was not an infusion, but an extraction,” you did not hesitate to take ownership of your vision. Would it be too much to say you weren’t intimidated by it? A few lines later, you wrote, “In a story someone had a dream; in that dream someone told a story.” How did that puzzle format factor into your work? What part does it play in your theory of creativity?

Lai: Not at all intimidated. To me, inspiration comes gracefully, never violently, no matter how large a package it comes in. Small bursts of inspiration bring smiles to my face. Enormous ones like the one you are referring to bring a wow, and a feeling that I must stand up to the challenge of bringing this enormous inspiration into the world. Inspiration is only the start, and creativity is mostly about all of the difficulties that come after. The quote you refer to was written down by me 10 years earlier, when I was at an art exhibition, consuming a painting by Brueghel. The words I wrote were like a simultaneous translation of what I was seeing visually, transformed into a story.

Sampan: You write that in your case inspiration was about identifying, extracting, and combining previously unrelated elements that were stored somewhere else in your mind. This brings to mind ideas like cultural appropriation in folk and blues music. For some, there’s a thin line between appropriation, emulation, tributes, and reconfiguration. Dig deeper and it makes the reader think about the very notion of originality. How did you discover these heretofore unknown elements in your mind? Are the greatest creations burdened by the legend of their predecessors?

Lai: Steve Jobs’ famous line is “Creativity is just connecting things.” This is very true, but what things? Things that you know, things that you see. You cannot connect things that you do not know about or have never seen or heard before. That is why I believe that creativity comes from within, from the files you have built within your mind and the things you see and feel every day. When things simply combine in your mind, there should be no question of appropriation or plagiarism. It’s just something that your mind is doing without any premeditated appropriation. We may accuse such an artist of appropriation or plagiarism after the fact. And you are very correct when you say that digging deeper, we should question the notion of originality. As I say in the book, newness is truly overrated. If I had the choice between being new or being great, I would always choose being great. The same goes if I had the choice between attending a performance that was very new or very great, I would always go for the great.

Whether or not you are burdened by the legend of your predecessors is a very personal question. I have written plays where I consciously am paying homage to predecessors. The last scene of my play “AGO” was written with Chekhov very much in mind. The whole concept of “Descent” certainly comes from an association with “Waiting for Godot.” Sometimes I don’t realize where the influence is coming from until much later, even in performance. Oftentimes, and I’m sure you’ll find this to be funny, I find myself ripping myself off, taking lines or situations from previous plays of mine. Maybe it’s hard not to do that if you’ve written over 40 plays.

In “AGO,” there is a line questioning how many stories does humankind have? 36? Seven? There are theories that there are only six basic stories of humanity. I leave the audience with the possibility that there is only one story to be told: repeated triumph and failure, victory and folly, in the name of desire.

STAN LAI: Courtesy photo

Sampan: Can we have wisdom without method in an artistic product? Is art that is purely methodical even worth our consideration? The plethora of Generative AI seems to be a consequence of the latter. We can tell a program to create a scenario that will give life to a photo of ancestors a hundred years ago and we can generate revenge porn. Is there really wisdom in those lethal prompts? What role does motivation play in the creative process? Does either scenario have an ounce of creativity, or is it all programmed?

Lai: One of the backbone theories of my book Creativitry is that you need both wisdom and method to succeed in a creative project. Method is taught in academies, but very curiously, there is no place to learn wisdom these days. You have to figure it out in life. If you see how art works on the viewer, you see how method and wisdom both have to kick in, sometimes one before the other, sometimes at the same time. And for the audience to feel it, you have to install it. Wisdom without method is like having a formula in your mind, but not being able to write it out. There can be no artistic or scientific product. On the other hand, art that is purely methodical is easily and quickly discarded by the discerning viewer. Certainly our current advantage over AI is the wisdom aspect, but who knows? “Artificial Wisdom” is certainly right around the corner, and once programmers understand the wisdom/method correlation in creative work, they will certainly program their AI models to work in this way.

What you describe, creating porn from photos of our ancestors is actually quite creative! Of course, whether it is worth anything depends on your wisdom in undertaking the whole enterprise in the first place. And here you can see how motivation becomes the key consideration. Why are you doing what you are doing? We too seldomly consider this super important question. Much of the book concerns our motivation for making art, or being creative, and we must consider whether what we are doing is a selfish ego trip or an altruistic gift to the world? And even if we see that we are on a selfish ego trip, can we still create worthwhile works?

Sampan: You write that wisdom and method are one. Is this a yin yang relationship? If creativity comes and forms naturally, as you claim, I’m wondering if we are living in the least creative timeline. If we see the dominance of content creators as the main tastemakers of popular media, how and where do we place their product in your theories of creativity? There is still sublime and beautiful creativity out there, but the din of manufactured content seems to always overwhelm it. This seems to be most clearly addressed in Chapter 12, the section “Wisdom Without Method.” If passion does indeed trump skill regarding sacred work (to quote Konchog Lhadrepa), what role does the sacred work play rather than just to exist and inspire?

Lai: For the artist, wisdom and method only become one later as they accumulate more and more experience in their art. Yes, I would consider it a Yin/Yang relationship, but just as in the Yin Yang ideogram, there still is a curved line separating the two. When you get to the stage of really accomplishing your art, the line disappears, and there is wisdom within method, and method within wisdom, and you don’t even think of the two as different from each other.

It is ironic as you point out, that we should be in the most creative era in human history, judging from all of the resources we have at our disposal, including knowledge and tools. But I do not feel we are a particularly creative era. Perhaps the overabundance of materials is killing the arts, as artists are more and more inclined to create technically dazzling work, which may not fulfill the craving for wisdom in the audience.

As to your question about sacred art, I would ask you: If you went to see a performance or an art exhibition and found it inspiring, wouldn’t that be enough?

Sampan: The chapter “The Curious Disappearance of Wisdom,” delineates that most stubborn of personality traits. ... In the next chapter, “Wisdom Starts With Why,” you consider motivation as a factor in the creative process. You quote Stockhausen’s still controversial notion that the horror of 9/11 was “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.” Where do you stand in a claim like that? ...Is this the essence of the mirror image of great darkness always lurking beneath sunlight? What happens if we dismiss our initial motivation for creating simply to finish our statement?

Lai: I don’t know if I would call wisdom a “personality trait.” That’s why it is so tricky, because we don’t even know how to define the word today. It is good enough to know that we lack it, although even this knowledge is rare today. To give a simple example, if you are a competent violinist, you would be able to play all of the notes of a Bach "Partita for Unaccompanied Violin." But computer software can do the same thing. Where is the wisdom of Bach in your playing, which is what will make you transcend the computer software? Where do you attain that wisdom? Through Bach? Through music? Or through life?

The simplest differentiation is between information and wisdom. You can study and attain all sorts of information, but how to use that information depends on your wisdom. So it is with creativity. As a writer, you may feel the freedom to be able to write anything you want. But how does it all come together and make sense? That is where the wisdom of method kicks in. And how do you say something profound? That is the wisdom of wisdom.

I clearly and absolutely stated that my quote of Stockhausen was in no way an endorsement of the cruel events of the day, which I like any person with any sense of humanity denounce with all my soul. Nevertheless, the quote forces us to see that doing something like planting bombs in cellular pagers is a brilliant display of creativity. Next we must face the fact that this type of creativity kills people. Therefore, motivation becomes the difference-making criteria. A knife is in your hand. You can carve the most exquisite sushi, or you can go out and kill someone. We celebrate the great military strategists of history for their creativity. Why? They were all murderers on an unbelievable scale. I am forcing you to think, why? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Are you contributing to the world or creating more garbage? Or even worse? It's rather sobering to think this way, but I think we need to.

Sampan: One of your lines in Chapter Nine, “Inspiration’s Warehouse,” really resonates:

“To see the equality of all phenomena is to be on another freeway to creativity.”

It brings to mind William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” which in turn was the driving force of Bob Dylan’s “Every Grain of Sand,” a beautiful example of great artists reaching out towards each other, consciously or not. Is this the ultimate goal? What happens after it’s reached?

Lai: What I am saying is not exactly what Blake meant. To see eternity in an hour or the world in a grain of sand is a kind of vision where small things can be a portal to the grand. When I say that phenomena is all equal in terms of creativity, I explain that there is no topic that is larger or more significant than any other topic. The glorified and gory stories of mythology may be equally worthy as watching the waves from the shore. If you can reach this view of equanimity, nothing particular happens. It’s just that anything can become a topic for a creative project. You are no longer searching for unique, original content, but just soaking in everything around you, wherein you may realize that the sunshine coming through your window can spur the writing of a play.

Sampan: In “Three Views,” Chapter 11, you looked at various perspectives in the creative process: World View, The Floating World, Cause and Effect View. The Floating World immediately brought to mind Kazuo Ishiguro’s “An Artist Of The Floating World” where the artist in question leaves his initial path to compromise his vision and become a government propagandist. Later, you advise the reader to “Let go and hold everything.” What does the artist risk if that ability is attained early in the creative process? Are there higher planes to reach?

Lai: In the end, it is your motivation for creating art that will decide which direction you will go. If creativity is to be used for propaganda, then that becomes your path. If you are able to let go in the moment of creativity, you have the ability to create amazingly spontaneous and natural things. Are there higher planes to reach? Of course. They may be come with higher method, but usually they come with higher wisdom. And higher wisdom often comes with refining your motivation.

Sampan: At the root of the source is chaos, Jung believed there was a cosmos in chaos, and the world itself is based on duality. These are ideas you consider, and I was taken by these lines in Chapter 13 (The Tao Is The Well):

“There is no duality in the source. It is a place of oneness. There is no me, no ego. There is just being.”

What happens if the creative artist stops searching for the source? Is that the purpose of the artist?

Lai: I think the artist first needs to be aware of the existence of what I call “the source.” It can appear to one in any way one can think of. Meaning you can think of a oneness in Daoist terms, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Christian, or through nature, or even through substances. By defining the source, and striving to attain it, you stay on a productive path toward creativity. By denying it, or not knowing of its existence, it is like creating within a vacuum. You are not connected to anything greater than yourself. That means that yourself must be great enough for your work to be of use to others. In certain situations, artists deny the existence of a predefined source, and search to create one for oneself. This may be problematic.

Sampan: Your considerations of jazz connects with the creative process. I think of John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Steve Davis and “My Favorite Things,” and Miles Davis’s collaborations with Gil Evans. How does improvisation fit into the tangible connections between wisdom, craft, motivation, and inspiration?

Lai: In the creative process, you can spend as much time as you want talking and thinking and deliberating and planning what you want to do, but in the end you have to do it. And improvisation is a way of doing where you actually let go of what you were planning. The greatest jazz is amongst some of the greatest achievements of humanity, because the artist is playing directly from the soul, composing on the spot, making sense, making structures, making fluidity and beauty, through the mysterious method of letting go of oneself. I think learning and employing improvisation can help any artist, or anyone interested in creativity.

Sampan: (What about) the fascinating story of your TV program from the mid-1990s, “All In The Family Are Human”? The original plan was for 40 episodes; you produced 600. You connect this with the Gladwellian notion of 10,000 hours (from 1995-1997.) This idea emphasized deliberate practice over innate talent in order to perfect your craft. What did you learn from this experience? Is it still relevant?

Lai: That was a crazy chapter of my life that came from the wild idea that we could do an hour of sitcom every day for a new cable company about anything we wanted, written, directed, and performed on the same day of broadcast. Working with improvisation and a seasoned cast of theater actors, we pulled it off, dealing with the often surreal events of the day from the Taiwan political scene, that were woven into the lives of the main characters. Actually, it would be quite effective today in America! When life is stranger than fiction, you need a television program to document what’s happening to people’s lives. I took this job because I had burned out through continual theater productions, and two feature films, and I really didn’t want to do anything. But the offer came, and I countered with an offer that I knew they would refuse, and so I could get out of it, but they accepted! And so we embarked on this impossible endeavor that audiences still talk about today. For me, it was my chance to refine my craft after over a decade of working professionally. That is a rare opportunity, indeed.

Believe me, the pressures of writing and directing and producing 48 minutes of sitcom every day will do wonders for your craft. You gain an innate sense of time, of timing, of how stories can be woven together. You become a much more refined storyteller, and most importantly, you gain a knowing of what you’re doing. That’s what the Gladwellian notion of 10,000 hours is for me. You know that when you do a certain thing, it creates a certain effect. That’s it. You know. The knowing is the mastery of the craft.

Sampan: You conclude that perfectionists need to compromise and we all need distance to fully appreciate a creative expression (either as producers or consumers)... You note the importance of sincerity and humility as an artist.

This is all prelude to my question about one key moment that follows. “Sincerity is a commitment to what you believe in,” you write. What if those beliefs are toxic? Can an artist survive solely on sincerity?

Lai: If your beliefs are sincerely toxic, then I must conclude, what you make will draw in that toxicity. You can’t escape what’s at the bottom of your soul. If there is human kindness, it will shine through in your work. If there is hatred and anger, that will become prominent as your work surfaces into form. This applies to anything you make. I believe that if you are an anger-filled baker, the bread you bake will have an angry disposition, whatever that is. Of course I’m having fun thinking this way, but in a way it’s true. The important thing is, can the artist be aware of whether your beliefs, or your soul, is toxic or not? The awareness itself brings you to the opportunity to make change.

Sampan: “Newness to me is overrated,” you note. Is there really any artistic release that’s truly new? What is our responsibility as consumers or producers of art? Is immersion in everything we can find about our chosen field our responsibility, or a quixotic task? I strongly agree with your view of newness, but I’d also go further and question any definitive notion of “new” in any art. Is the quest for originality realistic or idealistic?

Lai: There are two aspects to this question. From the artist’s viewpoint, there are those who don’t like repeating themselves, and they are forever seeking new modes of expression. From the consumer’s viewpoint, the modern consumer is very fickle, and susceptible to trends and fads in social media and whatever. This in turn creates a vicious cycle, where content providers in all fields need to always make something new to feed the needs of the consumer. In different times, the artist wouldn’t have had such pressure. Look at Michelangelo. Do you criticize him for painting in the same style on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in comparison to his “Doni Tondo”? If he were our contemporary today, art critics might think that he was quite skilled, but always doing the same sort of thing. We really need to think, what is wrong with that?