I hope everyone enjoyed Rusty's talk today as much as I did. She began by discussing the root of the creative process, the inspiration source of our penned pages. One idea that especially appealed to me, borrowed from the philosopher Giorgio Agamben (who was borrowing from the ancient Greeks), is that the creative act (writing) is, in one sense at least, the "unveiling" or illuminating of a pre-existing nugget of personal experience or insight by the conscious mind from the subterranean archives of the subconscious. William Stafford, a favorite poet, agreed, saying that our creative process is more about mining and melding the buried bounty within each of us than some glorified physical, outward act of genius. I agree with Stafford and Rusty, and think that we produce our most vivid writing when its fuel is our personal experience. Reading, I think, is about (and I'll paraphrase the wonderful musical and film The History Boys here) "those moments when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out and taken yours." A writer best encourages this transcendent experience through infusing his (or her) writing with the deeply personal, which he (or she) knows best (one would hope).
-Alex The Intern (I don't always go by this title, but in this case . . .)
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