Education

Whether Education kills creativity or not is depends on the education system. Most of students receive compulsory education, and I think Japanese compulsory education kill students creativity, because Japanese compulsory education determine who is better person with test score or knowledge, also they often constrain to students the thought, behavior, or rules. If students made mistakes, or did something wrong from the rules, teacher gets really angry.  For example, when I was studying in elementary school, teacher told us to draw a mountain and cherry blossoms. I tried to draw a mountain with green color and cherry blossom with a lot of little pink flower. But the teacher told us to draw a mountain with blue little dots, and cherry blossoms with pink little dots. I asked to the teacher why does a mountain need to be blue? Also I said flower is not dots. The teacher was disagreeably surprised and she got angry. It has been 13 years past from this memory, but I still don’t understand why she got angry. Finally, student pictures were posted on the wall, and they were all same pictures. Therefore this education killed student ideas, imaginations and characters that are important to be creative. However every education does not kill creativity, because there is several kinds of education, science, art, music, dance and so on.  The important thing to be creative is to choose the education by yourself that you interested in and, which can find your character or talent and help to improve these. For instance, I chose to study in America, because I wanted to study music and other subjects, but in Japan we can’t study music and other subjects like business or law in same school. So we need to choose a music college or a university. I hate this system. I always try to choose the education that looks good for my future, and this is my way to be creative as a student.

Revising or rethinking / reworking

Revising or rethinking / reworking is necessary for people to improving ourselves or make something better, also in my opinion, to check on the past value that we had, or our experience, will be kind of revising or rethinking / reworking too, because this action makes our behavior or works much further better. Revising or rethinking / reworking is important for my life. Especially, it is important for my campus life. I have been living in America since July, and I have had a lot of language mistakes and culture difference, because I am international student, but each time revising and rethinking have helped me a lot to improve my English. Also revising or rethinking / reworking is necessary to improve my piano performance.

My campus life past over a month, and I still don’t understand what the faculty members are speaking in class, also I do not understand what students are talking in class or with their friends. Especially, writing assignment is very hard to me. I always have some grammar errors, and using wrong words for the sentence, so I try to revise and rethink two or three times each assignment. When I revise some thing  always try to be other person, because when I’ve finished the assignment, that assignment is perfect to me. After finished revising, I still have a lot of mistakes, but this action makes my English skills better. 

I chose music as a minor in this university, and I sometimes practice some pieces, I usually record my best one each day, then listen to the performance and write down where I had mistakes and where I should change or revise, and try to fix mistakes and improve my performance totally. Recording is useful to revise and rethink my performance, because I can listen to my performance objectively.

Therefore, revising or rethinking / reworking is important to improve my English and piano performance. 

Henry Darger

I watched the movie about Henry Darger and his fantasy “ In the realms of unreal” Probably, every people around him thought he was different, but I do not think he was mentally ill, because was working normally and he was able to lead the normal life, however from some of his characteristics and behavior, I think he was kind of developmentally-disabled individual such as asperger syndrome. He had had a lot of hard experience since he was young, also he subjected to unjust treatment by people around him, and he had a beef with world, however these diversified experiences led him to write the fantasy, because I felt some part of his life is projected on his fantasy. so if he had the happy life, maybe we couldn’t see his art. I think he is creative, because he created a lot of new ideas and new things from his experience, his imagination, and some part of magazines, books or pictures that we can’t imagine. For example, when I saw his book illustrations on the movie, I was so shocked. I could not understand that girls have something that girls usually don’t have in real world, but I like his colors of the book illustrations.

Also, his book illustrations are receiving recognition as outsider art. He is a one of the famous outsider artist, so these evidence shows he is creative too.

I think we should about care his art, because there is no work like Henry Dager created, and he spent over 60 years for this production. This is not easy to do. Also he was different from other people, and this is mean nobody can create art like him. 

John Cleese --- a lecture on Creativity

Jon Cleese lectured creativity is not a talent. It is a way to operate.  Creative people getting themselves in particular mode — open mode. Open mode is child-like — able to play with idea, relax, less purposeful. 

Jazz music and Classical music

Creativity is important to use new idea and make new things.

 I think Jazz music is a creative music, on the other hand Classical music is not a creative music.

 Most of people think the difference between Jazz music and Classical music are rhythm, or melody. But the main feature of these music are what is necessary to express when performers play music.

The main characteristic of Jazz music is improvisation, so the performer’s personality and originality is very important. 

When performer play Jazz, they read the sheet music which is consisted by melody of theme and chords then revolve the theme little by little, and add arrangement, finally they play the improvisation developed by chords as much as they want. 

Therefore there is no piece that is exactly the same. Jazz music has many pieces by an increment of executant, also it never makes listener bored.

Autumn leaves/Keith Jarret

 Autumn leaves/Bill Evans

However classical music has opposite characteristic. The main characteristic of classical music is faithful representation.

 When performer play Classical music, they need to interpret the sheet music faithfully, consider the composer’s life and period, perform rhythm, melody and tempo correctly, because It is very important to gain a resurgence of composer’s will which is written in sheet music.

If they perform different rhythm or melody, that will be referred as go against the composer’s will, so Performer’s personality and originality are not important for classical music. Sometimes it makes listener very bored.

According to these reasons, Jazz music is creative and Classical music is not creative, because the main aspect of Jazz music is improvisation and the main feature of Classical music is faithful representation. I think creativity can make new things, but not creativity is also important, because in this case, Classical music is the original point of the music. To create new things we also need fundament.