Is the hotspot a myth?
Are there places in the world that are better for certain types of creativity, or is it possible to find community outside of noted centres of imagination: San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo, to name a few that come to mind when pause to I think.
I find when evaluating spectra of a thing, it helps to look for the opposite: if we are asking if hotspots for creativity exist, what is the opposite of that?
As I write this I am coming off of a temporary gig up in the northern parts of my province where I was even deeper into nowhere than I usually am. I was in a small rural community for a whole week and out of happenstance and curiosity I tried to figure out if I could buy some watercolour paints (I’d left mine at home.)
“You’d probably need to get something like that off Amazon.” The hotel receptionist suggested.
Imagine that, I thought to myself.
I personally got started in watercolour because I was in an art store and I impulse-purchased supplies. Then I took a local class. Then I found other people who could paint and I used them as inspiration.
My home city is hardly a hotspot for watercolour painting, but it is very telling to see what something looks like when it isn’t even a “spot” let alone a hotspot for a specific kind of creativity.
Terms FROm this POSt
- community
- It comes in many forms, but I like to think of community as something deeper than just social connection: in the artistic sense, those people are around you to support, inspire, and honestly critique.
- inspiration
- A vague concept I mention frequently in my writing but rarely pause to define, I think the notion of being inspired is really at the foundational level, the seeds of creativity. Without inspiration, without muse, without spark creativity is just work or repetition or rote effort. Inspiration does not necessarily need to be monumental or epic or of the highest quality, but rather it is what is at the start of every creative process …until it flowers and drops more seeds of inspiration and the cycle repeats.
