Creative acts are sparked by many things. These creative sparks interact in complex, often contradictory ways, and can’t always be identified and isolated. So, while I can never fully know what sparks my creativity, I like to think that some of the key sources are freedom, necessity, desire, boredom, inspiration, and randomness. Freedom, necessity, desire, and boredom are closely inter-related. I have had some of my most creative moments when I needed or wanted to get out of an existence that I didn’t like, or wanted to get to an existence that I thought I would prefer. There’s a lot of truth in the proverb “necessity is the mother of invention.” The less cluttered and freer my mind is, the more creative I am. I’ve always felt like this as a student, when I was working from first principles and wasn’t earning much—but also didn’t have much student debt! Nowadays, I keep my office and home environments intentionally austere, so that my mind can be uncluttered and free to create. But while scarcity and necessity often spark my creativity, so too can (abundance-induced) boredom. I have had some of my most creative moments when my mind was desperately under stimulated and seeking more stimulation.
By inspiration I mean external stimuli that produce a physical, emotional, or rational reaction in me. I find these external stimuli in both nature and other creative works. My scholarly ideas, for example, are often sparked by reading, seeing, or hearing about an unresolved problem or an unanswered question, often as discussed in the prior literature. But my ideas are also inspired by other types of artistic works such as music and visual art, including my own. I listened to the minimalist American composer, Philip Glass, almost every day during my doctoral studies at Oxford. His compositions, particularly Mad Rush and the Metamorphoses series, seem to sync with, and nurture, the quiet murmurings and silences of my unconscious mind. Most of my own visual artworks—paintings, photos, ceramics—are inspired by natural and manmade forms, particularly the buildings, people, animals, plants, and colors that I see on my daily walks and travels. Many of these sources of inspiration are unexpected and unpredictable—sort of what I mean when I cite randomness as an agent in my creative process.