Abstract
In this chapter we will ask a number of questions: How are we moved to create? What drives us? What is it we want to express? Starting from the Self—that paradoxical Jungian notion of the deeply personal selfless interaction with the, largely subconscious, collective whole—this chapter will look at feelings and their role in causing and motivating the development of an idea. We will explore the journey of a fragile notion manifested as a feeling and chart the journey through a creative and industrial process, through an expressive form, to the impact in the hearts and minds of others.
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Notes
- 1.
“At each touch I risk my life” (Cézanne cited in Bresson 1977, p. 70).
- 2.
I am, of course, thinking of the American poet Emily Dickinson (2016), whose intimate domestic poetry has touched many across the world.
- 3.
See, for example, The Gulag Archipelago (Slozhenitsyn 2007).
- 4.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell 1993) there is a discussion about the fact that classical heroes always respond to the call with a first refusal.
- 5.
The story of Jonah originates from the Book of Jonah in the Hebrew Bible.
- 6.
Einstein reputedly claimed that all his scientific theories were based on ideas and imagery he was playing around with as a child.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Consider, for example, the premise in Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play, Six Characters in Search of an Author (Pirandello 2014).
- 11.
Most of us now live in urban environments and we are completely immersed in a world that we constructed, a paradigm that we created in which all phenomena have rational causes and effects. But there are people who have different relationships with living phenomena, where the coincidental, the mystical, the inexplicable, the contradictory or paradoxical, all have an equal standing to that of the rational—see Jung’s essay on the subject, “Archaic Man”, in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Jung 2001, p. 127). And as we shall see, these life attitudes do have a profound effect on how people shape and tell stories.
- 12.
Psychoanalysis, regression therapy, NLP and many other psychological therapies are examples of whole industries dedicated to understanding the impacts of our childhood, and in some cases past life experiences on our current lives.
- 13.
A wonderful story about this kind of synchronous action is Thornton Wilder’s 1928 novel, The Bridge over San Luis Rey (2000).
- 14.
In my view it is overly narcissistic to assume that the search for happiness is an ultimate motivation. I think it more advantageous to think that having meaning and purpose for complex beings like ourselves is of paramount importance as a tool for coping with, and making the most out of, life.
- 15.
The seven basic plots that Booker (2004) refers to are: overcoming the monster, which includes such stories as “Gilgamesh”, “David and Goliath”, “Red Riding Hood”, “Star Wars”, “Battle of Britain”, any James Bond film and so on; rags to riches, which include stories such as “King Arthur”, “Cinderella”, “My Fair Lady”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “Superman”, “Billy Elliot”, “Slumdog Millionaire” and so on; the quest, which includes works such as The Odyssey, King Solomon’s Mines, Watership Down, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lord of the Rings, Pilgrim’s Progress, Divine Comedy and so on; voyage and return, such as Alice in Wonderland, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Time Machine, Brideshead Revisited, Peter Rabbit, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Gone with the Wind and so on; comedy, including such examples as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Night in Casablanca, The Marriage of Figaro, The Boys from Syracuse, War and Peace and so on; tragedy, such as Dr Faustus, Hamlet, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Lolita, Carmen, Bonnie and Clyde, Anna Karenina and so on; and rebirth, including such works as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, A Christmas Carol, Crime and Punishment, The Secret Garden, Per Gynt and so on.
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Knudsen, E. (2018). Why Create?. In: Finding the Personal Voice in Filmmaking. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00377-7_2
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