Absolutely brilliant. I've encountered many of these ideas before, but not all of them. And he states them all so well. Parts of what he's talking about are the reasoning behind freewriting, where you write freeform and don't edit at all, even to correct mistakes (it activates the inner critic—the absolute enemy of creativity). You do this not really to generate material so much as to crack open and activate creative mode. Then, as he said, you go into productive mode (closed mode he called it) and get to work. And I've always intuitively understood that humor opens the way to creativity. I joke around all the time, just stupid little puns and jokes and improv stuff, in outlandish voices, or making up new lyrics to songs while singing them. I do this stuff, and out loud, even if nobody is around. Make yourself laugh hysterically and you're deep into creative mode. The goal is to hit that special kind of laughter where you squint at least one eye shut because you're laughing so hard, and laugh until you almost can't breathe. Ideally tears are involved. The more it affects you physically the better. It's about learning to open yourself up to humor even if it's stupid, because even here you don't want to activate the evil critical mode. That is the enemy. And as you go you learn to improve the humor, and even though you allow the really dumb stuff and laugh your ass off at it, your humor will get better and better. It will itself become increasingly creative. You begin to tap into deep resources most people don't think are there and will make fun of you (not in a fun way) for doing it. But those people are jealous bitches, incapable of tapping into their own creativity, and they hate seeing you do it. They hate that you're not afraid of what they're afraid of—being insulted by dull, fear-filled people and forced to conform. Creative mode means unleashing the inner child. That's when you were unapologetically and un-afraid-ly creative. You've still got it in you, but you must make a fool of yourself to access it. It's mostly fear that blocks you.
Interesting piece, but I found the subtitles very distracting. It reminded me of the mock-Scandinavian "credit roll" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I kept expecting to see a reference to moose..
It is. I'm not going to lie, I was never a big fan of John Cleese before I saw this video. I hated "Monty Python", I just didn't get the comedy, nor did I much like "Fawlty Towers". But, there was a newfound respect for him when I happened upon this video. I'm not s fan of his humour, nothing is going to change that, but i totally understand his methods of unlocking his mind in order to allow creatively to blossom and grow. Yeah. I've done freewriting, (or writing in a stream-of-consciousness for years.) Its main function is to unlock the mind and put a gag on self-censorship, but for me, I've also gained a lot of ideas from it, even if it's just a string of dialogue. I once wrote in a stream-of-consciousness, for what seems like 4 hours, and managed to to create a dozen short stories out of it and a shed-load of strings of dialogue. That's my strongest technique, as I'm just natural at it. I can happily sit down and write in a stream-of-consciousness for hours... and I have, on many occasions. I think most people would have to practice it in order to properly nail it, but there's a few lucky people who it comes natural to. Same. Though, not the funny voices, thing. When I get into my writer's-space I'm all business, though. But yeah, what's life if laughter is missing. A pretty dull life, that's what.
Yeah. Sorry about that. I tried linking the video from YouTube (without subtitles) but I don't think they allow outside linkage.
It's interesting that you mentioned that. I remember an interview of John Cleese that I read. Monty Python's creative work came mainly from two writing teams. Cleese and Graham Chapman were one team, and Terry Jones and Michael Palin were the other. (Eric Idle wrote skits on his own, but would occasionally work with the second team, while Terry Gilliam was off in his own world of animation.) The interviewer remarked that, of the Cleese/Chapman team, Cleese seemed to be doing most of the heavy lifting, with Chapman developing very few ideas of his own. When Cleese was asked whether he felt he was getting short-changed, he told the following story: Cleese had been working on a sketch were a customer was trying to return a toaster he'd bought to the shop where he'd gotten it, on the grounds that it was defective. (The skit was based on an earlier one that Palin and Chapman had written for a previous series, about a car that was falling apart as the salesman was assuring the customer that there was nothing wrong with it.) The toaster sketch was pretty good, Cleese thought, but it somehow didn't come up to the standards that he'd set himself. Graham listened to the skit as Cleese acted it out, thought for a minute, and then made a comment. "Instead of a toaster," he said, "make it a parrot." And those eight words transformed the skit into a Monty Python classic. So it wasn't verbiage that Chapman contributed to the team, but the creative insight that steered it in the right direction, and Cleese could never find a way to measure that.
They were not very friendly to the Scottish or the French, or to the English upper class. Or the English lower class for that matter. I always loved them though. Probably because I was none of those things.
