Σεμινάριο Εξοχικού Ασκητηρίου (Retreat) Aγγλικής
Δημιουργικής Γραφής θα πραγματοποιηθεί στα Κύθηρα, για εμπνευσμένους από την
Ελλάδα Αυστραλούς Συγγραφείς, υπό την καθοδήγηση της υψηλής επιρροής
μυθιστοριογράφου Δόκτωρος Sue Woolfe,
συγγραφέως του γνωστού έργου “Leaning Towards Infinity” (Κλίνοντας προς Το
Άπειρο). Εννέα συγγραφείς από την Αυστραλία, ήλθαν να διδαχθούν από εκείνη μία
συγκεκριμένη μέθοδο δημιουργικής γραφής, σε ένα ιδιαίτερα Ήσυχο, Ιστορικό και
Γαλήνιο τόπο, όπως είναι τα Κύθηρα.
Το σεμινάριο θα πραγματοποιηθεί στο Ξενοδοχείο Ανατολή της
Αγίας Πελαγίας για τις δύο πρώτες εβδομάδες του Μαΐου.
Κυριακή Μαυρομάτη-Ορφανού
Τηλ. ξενοδοχείου: 27360-34141, 39112
Dr. Sue Woolfe
has worked as a teacher, scriptwriter, documentary filmmaker and academic. Her
fiction includes the prize-winning “Leaning Towards Infinity” which is been
taught at the University of Athens. Currently she is engaged in the study of
the Neuroscience of Creativity. She is leading a group from Australia,
including scientists, doctors, farmers and artists, to teach them how to
enhance their creativity through writing, using methods developed from
breakthroughs in neuroscience.
Together with
Kiriaki Orfanos, she plans to conduct this retreat on a regular basis, here in
Kythera.
The Misbehaving Brain
It’s often
said that creativity can’t be taught, that people are either creative or they
aren’t. What few people know is that scientific research has begun to show that
creativity depends on a set of perfectly ordinary brain activities, but
successful creative people take them to extremes.
For example,
science also shows us that renowned creative people intuitively sense how to
harness the odd thoughts that come out of nowhere and flicker through our
minds. Many people deride and mock them. Creative people don’t.
As children,
creativity came naturally to everyone. We were all like the little girl who
when she said she was drawing a picture of God and was told that no one knew
what God looked like, said that they soon would. The world knocked such poise and assurance
out of us, unless we were very lucky, unless we had permissive parents, or
artist parents, or neglectful parents.
Speaking
personally, the big realization for me happened just across the water. I gave myself a year on a mountain in the
Peloponnese, a long way from home because I didn’t want anyone to know how
silly I could be. As soon as I sat in silence to write whatever story was
inside me, my brain began behaving oddly. I don’t mean I was behaving oddly, if
you’d have seen me you’d have said I looked perfectly normal, I was just sitting
there scribbling, but my brain began to misbehave. I allowed it to, since I didn’t know any
better, and nobody would find out. A
totally unexpected novel poured out of me.
I discovered a
long time later that my brain wasn’t misbehaving - it was just doing its job.
Several novels later I was interviewed by a student of neuroscience for his
PhD. His questions were uncannily knowing. It was as if he’d been spying on my
misbehaving mind. I even suspected foul play. How do you know this? I finally demanded.
His answer was his bibliography. I’m no
scientist, just a novelist, so it took me a while to get through. But I’m
curious by nature, and I could read the parts of the scientific papers between
the squiggles of mathematics. And so I
discovered that brains must misbehave to be creative; the brain must get
disorganized, to form new thoughts.
Socrates and
his contemporaries showed us the beauty, elegance and relevance of logical
thought, but Socrates’ logic is excellent for some vital things, and death to
other things. I can’t blame Socrates for what our society has made of what he
taught, insisting that his logical thought is the only proper way to think.
Recent science
shows that if students are taught to allow their brains to misbehave, taught
how it happens, and what to expect, then their creativity increases, by a huge
average of 29.5 %.
These days I
divide my time between actually creating, and teaching creativity in the only
way I know how, to write.
So we’ve come
to Kythera to write, not about you, not about your island, but to be inspired
by it, to lose our usual preoccupations and learn about our own creativity, and
to treasure its misbehavior in this lovely place. We are a company of writers
but also scientists, a doctor, a cattle farmer, and an artist. If out of our time staying with you, we go
home to create something new, some new story, some new poem, some new
scientific or medical breakthrough resulting from our time here, we will thank
you forever for having us amongst you, and making this possible.
