Let me tell you a story. It’s the story of 2012, which is fast approaching. (The year, not the movie. The movie’s already out.) The Mayans proclaimed that the calendar, and by extension, the world, would end in 2012.
Because I write better fiction than non-fiction (at least, so I hope), and because I’m not a historian, an astrologist, a scientist, or God, and because I don’t actually believe in ancient predictions about the end of the world (okay, maybe I believe in some ancient predictions, but verdict on the world’s end is t.b.d.), for today’s purposes, “2012” should only be viewed as a metaphor for transformation. I.e., the changes in our lives, our sense of place—our own “worlds” so to speak. For most of us, 2012 is coming, whether on a global scale or a personal one. Our response, then, to this impending event—whether that event is losing an adult tooth, making a baby, finding a stray dog, being swiped by a tsunami, or eating dirt after a nuclear war—will be adaptation and creativity, the same traits that shaped the story of life from its beginning…the same traits that helped “us” survive for thousands and thousands of years, as we listened and responded to a living, shifting world.
So if we don’t believe that 2012 represents the end of time, why are adaptation and creativity still important? And how can we apply such traits to the varying contexts of our lives? For me, someone who likes to write, one of the first places I go to explore this notion of creativity is the library…where I might, for instance, scour the Paris Review Interviews. Why do I lose my sense of time while reading, tap dancing over any mention of the creative process? Is it because I believe there’s one right way to be creative and that the secret will soon be mine if I read closely enough? No. Is it because I can recite the contents of every book that every author being interviewed has written?
Absolutely not.
Instead, I read out of a desire to experience some of the particularities of the life—the singular world—being presented on the page, and link them to my own particularities. My perspective expands while reading, and the connections between myself and others become more obvious. Creativity (at least one facet of the definition) is finding connections where others have not. It’s expanding consciousness so that the concept of what is me and mine becomes ours. The power in that language shift is explicit.
We are living in a world where me and mine create borders, and borders create strife and competition. To pass into the territory of someone else’s mind, someone else’s perspective, establishes a shared connection, but this transference requires openness, creativity, and perhaps more than anything, a willingness to listen. And so, with those things in mind, I approach this idea of FlipCollective. The idea of “collective” is appealing to me because it suggests a connection or the establishment of one; because it’s many voices, with many different perspectives, all in a single place.
It’s with this thread of interconnectivity that I’ve decided to arrange (at least for now) a series of informal conversations with some of the people around me. People I find interesting; my curiosity triggered not only because of who they are, but because of what they are saying, and how their lives reflect their words. People who have adapted to varying contexts of place, who have a grasp on what it means to be creative in this world—before, during, and after the year 2012, now and in (we hope) the distant future.
So, stay tuned, patient reader. I hope I’ve whetted your appetite, if only mildly. Next week, come ready to read about someone’s version of the real 2012 – the one we’ll all eventually experience. Not the one starring John Cusack.
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Creativity seems to be a concept that has waned as we have progressed throughout time and those who are merely louder or stronger squash out those smaller voices who also have something to say, or something to contribute. This finding of connections that you relate to creativity is why I myself have been drawn to reading, writing, and exploring the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of myself and others in an attempt to understand as much of the world and connect my own world to those of others.
I look forward to reading your future articles; you have certainly triggered my own curiosity with your words here, and I imagine they will only continue to do so.