the process of creation

We think of what we see with our eyes as being unmediated - we're just looking at stuff. But our brains, not our eyes, actually do a lot of the work of seeing. Sometimes, if we look at an image upside down, we can't quite figure out what it's an image of. So, although our eyes can perceive the image, we can't see it. 

That could be why two different people can be eyewitnesses but have a very different understanding about what happened. One of them may not have understood what happened. Preconceptions can also play a part. If you think something is likely to happen, you're more likely to interpret what you see as being that event happening. Our minds are very good at filling in the gaps and making sense out of disorder, even when what we see actually is disordered. 

I watched an interview of Siri Hustvedt - Siri Hustvedt Interview: Art is a Memory - in which she talks about how to look at or see art and the difference between visual art and writing. She says that writing is different in that, when you look at an image, you see everything all at once, but when you write about something, you have to provide the details in a serial format - this, then this, then this. And she talks about how, if she writes an essay about a work of art, she's not translating the image itself into written form, she's translating her experience of looking at the image into written form. Earlier in the interview she talked about that experience and about how it involves taking time to engage with the work of art. I think this relates to what I was thinking about recently and wrote about here - that art and other forms of creativity are more about the process than about the final result. 

What I was thinking before was that the artist's experience of the art work is very different from the viewer's experience. For the artist, it's a process. The viewer sees the finished work. I think this way of thinking about art is why I don't get very excited about going to art galleries. Siri Hustvedt is talking about making processes out of the art. Her way of looking at the art is a process. Her translation of that experience into writing is a process. 

I can relate to this as well. Just looking at art is kind of boring, but if I start analysing an art work I'm looking at, with the intention of writing something about it, and then go away and write something, that's really satisfying and interesting. Same with poetry. I usually don't get poetry the first time I read it. Often I'm completely mystified by it. So, it's hard to like it. But when I start going through it line by line, analysing it, trying to figure out what the poet is trying to achieve, and then writing about it - then it becomes fascinating and very satisfying, because I'm getting it - I'm actually understanding it.