I am connecting something that Julia Cameron talks about with the poetic work of the Spanish priest grilling Christ in the literature. They are speaking of the same thing: freedom or slavery, our choice. The Grand Inquisitor and Julia Cameron in The Artist Way takes a lot of time discussing the elements in our life that hinder our creativity. Nicholas Berdyaev writes volumes about what creativity is and isn't. And in Dostoevsky's writing, he goes straight to the core of the problem.

Creativity is an exciting subject and a difficult one to learn. Creativity, as it works out, is a very elusive gift.

Recent reading made it clear that there are gatekeepers at work, minding the work of the creative. They are the ones that get to say if it is valuable work or not. They are the ones that will tell you “good luck with that”. They are that gatekeepers that determine who is accepted to the MFA programs in this country. They screen your application for the hint of your politics and paradigm leanings. It’s a fact! There, I had my rant!

"Creativity is the cultural equivalent of the process of genetic changes that result in biological evolution, where random variations take place in the chemistry of our chromosomes, below the threshold of consciousness."

My desire in the months ahead is to attempt to discover what is in the writings of old and new, the best definition of creativity I can find. Then I hope to be able to connect the dots of the best descriptions, formulas, theories, and philosophies about the creative process I can find.