On my desk in my office, I keep a small clay pot that I made in college. It's raku, which is a kind of pottery that began in Japan centuries ago as a way of making bowls for the Japanese tea ceremony. This one is more than 400 years old. Each one was pinched or carved out of a ball of clay, and it was the imperfections that people cherished.
在我辦公室的桌上,我放了一個小陶壺 是我在大學時期做的 這是樂燒,一種製陶術 在好幾世紀以前源自日本, 日本人用這樣的技術為茶道製作了這些碗 這個壺已經有四百多歲了 每一個樂燒都是從一球黏土 捏成或雕刻而成 而成品本身的不完美卻是被人所珍視的
Everyday pots like this cup take eight to 10 hours to fire. I just took this out of the kiln last week, and the kiln itself takes another day or two to cool down, but raku is really fast. You do it outside, and you take the kiln up to temperature. In 15 minutes, it goes to 1,500 degrees, and as soon as you see that the glaze has melted inside, you can see that faint sheen, you turn the kiln off, and you reach in with these long metal tongs, you grab the pot, and in Japan, this red-hot pot would be immediately immersed in a solution of green tea, and you can imagine what that steam would smell like. But here in the United States, we ramp up the drama a little bit, and we drop our pots into sawdust, which catches on fire, and you take a garbage pail, and you put it on top, and smoke starts pouring out. I would come home with my clothes reeking of woodsmoke.
每一天,像這樣的杯子 都要花費八到十小時去烘製 上個禮拜我才剛把它 從窯裡面拿出來,而這個窯本身 也需要花一兩天來冷卻,不過樂燒呢 就很快了,你在窯外製作它,然後將窯升溫 在十五分鐘之內 它就會達到攝氏一千五百度 當你看到外層的釉已經在窯內熔化 可以看得見微亮的光澤時,將窯關掉 用金屬鉗伸入窯裡 然後抓住裡面的壺 在日本,這個火熱的容器 會立刻被浸入綠茶中 你能想像那蒸氣聞起來的味道 但在美國,我們更增加一些 戲劇效果.我們將我們的壺罐放在著火的 鋸木屑中,然後拿一個垃圾桶 把壺和燒木屑蓋起來,然後煙霧便開始傾出 我回家時,我的衣服散發出濃烈的木屑味
I love raku because it allows me to play with the elements. I can shape a pot out of clay and choose a glaze, but then I have to let it go to the fire and the smoke, and what's wonderful is the surprises that happen, like this crackle pattern, because it's really stressful on these pots. They go from 1,500 degrees to room temperature in the space of just a minute.
我熱愛樂窟,因為它讓我能玩這些元素 我能從一團黏土中塑形出一個壺並能選擇釉料 但之後我必須把它放進火和煙中 而最棒的是驚喜的事發生了 像這個碎裂的花紋,因為這些壺罐 承受了很大的壓力,它們在一分鐘之內 經歷了攝氏一千五百度到室溫的溫度變化
Raku is a wonderful metaphor for the process of creativity. I find in so many things that tension between what I can control and what I have to let go happens all the time, whether I'm creating a new radio show or just at home negotiating with my teenage sons.
樂燒對於創造的過程而言,是個很棒的比喻 我發現在很多事物中 介於什麼是我能控制的 和什麼是我得放手的張力 時時都存在,不管在製作一個廣播節目 或是在家中和我的青少年兒子們談判時
When I sat down to write a book about creativity, I realized that the steps were reversed. I had to let go at the very beginning, and I had to immerse myself in the stories of hundreds of artists and writers and musicians and filmmakers, and as I listened to these stories, I realized that creativity grows out of everyday experiences more often than you might think, including letting go. It was supposed to break, but that's okay. (Laughter) (Laughs) That's part of the letting go, is sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't, because creativity also grows from the broken places.
當我坐下來要寫一本有關創造的書時 我發現創造的步驟是顛倒的 在一開始時我必須要放手,然後我必須要 將我自己沈浸在幾百個藝術家, 作家, 音樂家,和影片製作人的故事裡 當我聆聽這些故事時,我了解到創造力 發芽於我們日常生活中的經驗 頻率比你想像的還高,也包括 放手的經驗 它應該要破掉的,不過沒關係 (笑聲) 這也是放手的一部份.有時候它發生了 有時候它不會,因為創造力也會由 破碎的地方生出
The best way to learn about anything is through stories, and so I want to tell you a story about work and play and about four aspects of life that we need to embrace in order for our own creativity to flourish. The first embrace is something that we think, "Oh, this is very easy," but it's actually getting harder, and that's paying attention to the world around us. So many artists speak about needing to be open, to embrace experience, and that's hard to do when you have a lighted rectangle in your pocket that takes all of your focus.
學習一切事物最好的方法 就是透過故事,所以我想要告訴你們一個故事 關於工作還有玩樂 還有人生中的四個面向 這些是我們需要欣然接受的 為了要讓我們的創造力能夠成長茁壯 第一個要擁抱的就是我們常認為 “噢,這非常容易”但實事上這件事卻越來越難 那就是:注意我們身邊的世界 所以許多藝術家談到保持開放的必要 去擁抱經驗,這是很難的 當你有一個發光的長方形物體在你的口袋 它將你的專注都奪走了
The filmmaker Mira Nair speaks about growing up in a small town in India. Its name is Bhubaneswar, and here's a picture of one of the temples in her town.
製片家米拉奈勒發表了有關成長的演說 在印度一個叫做布班那史瓦爾的小鎮 而這是她的小鎮中其中一座廟的照片
Mira Nair: In this little town, there were like 2,000 temples. We played cricket all the time. We kind of grew up in the rubble. The major thing that inspired me, that led me on this path, that made me a filmmaker eventually, was traveling folk theater that would come through the town and I would go off and see these great battles of good and evil by two people in a school field with no props but with a lot of, you know, passion, and hashish as well, and it was amazing. You know, the folk tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, the two holy books, the epics that everything comes out of in India, they say. After seeing that Jatra, the folk theater, I knew I wanted to get on, you know, and perform.
米拉奈勒:在這個小鎮中,大概有兩千座廟宇 我們老是在玩蟋蟀,我們算是在瓦礫堆中 長大的,主要激發我 走上這條路,最後成為一個製片家的 是會到我們鎮上的移動劇團 我會到操場去看 正義與邪惡兩方之間的大戰 沒有道具,只有,你知道的 熱情,和印度大麻花,這是非常驚人的 你知道, 民間傳說摩訶波羅多和羅摩耶那史詩 這兩本聖書、史詩, 在印度是一切的出處 在看過移動劇團加塔亞後 我就知道我想要上台去,你知道的,去表演
Julie Burstein: Isn't that a wonderful story? You can see the sort of break in the everyday. There they are in the school fields, but it's good and evil, and passion and hashish. And Mira Nair was a young girl with thousands of other people watching this performance, but she was ready. She was ready to open up to what it sparked in her, and it led her, as she said, down this path to become an award-winning filmmaker. So being open for that experience that might change you is the first thing we need to embrace.
講者:這不是個很棒的故事嗎? 在日常生活中你就能看見這樣子的機會 他們就在校園操場上 但是具備了正義與邪惡兩方 還有熱情和印度大麻花 米拉奈爾是個年輕女孩 和上千名觀眾一起看表演 但她準備好了。準備好向在她心裡閃耀之處 敞開她自己。她說,這帶領她 通往得獎製片者的 道路上 對於有可能改變你的經驗保持開放的心胸 是第一件我們需要欣然接受的事
Artists also speak about how some of their most powerful work comes out of the parts of life that are most difficult. The novelist Richard Ford speaks about a childhood challenge that continues to be something he wrestles with today. He's severely dyslexic.
藝術家也常說到他們最有力的作品 是如何產生於生命中最困難的時刻 小說家理查・福特談到 一個童年的挑戰延續成為某件 他至今仍舊努力解決的事。 他有嚴重的閱讀障礙
Richard Ford: I was slow to learn to read, went all the way through school not really reading more than the minimum, and still to this day can't read silently much faster than I can read aloud, but there were a lot of benefits to being dyslexic for me because when I finally did reconcile myself to how slow I was going to have to do it, then I think I came very slowly into an appreciation of all of those qualities of language and of sentences that are not just the cognitive aspects of language: the syncopations, the sounds of words, what words look like, where paragraphs break, where lines break. I mean, I wasn't so badly dyslexic that I was disabled from reading. I just had to do it really slowly, and as I did, lingering on those sentences as I had to linger, I fell heir to language's other qualities, which I think has helped me write sentences.
理查・福特:我學習閱讀得很慢,在 全部求學期間,我的閱讀只是在最低程度 而至今我默讀也不會 比大聲朗讀時快很多 但是閱讀障礙對我而言有很多好處 因為當我終於接受我閱讀會是多麼地慢時 我慢慢地開始 欣賞語言中的特質 還有不只是語言中認知層面的句子 的句子。其中的切分音、單字的音 這些字的樣子、段落是在哪裡分隔 詩句是在那裡切斷。 我的意思是,我的閱讀障礙 並沒有嚴重到我不能閱讀。我只是需要 讀地很慢。當我如此這樣做,我徘徊在 我需要徘徊的句子之中時, 我成為語言裡其他本質的繼承人 我想這幫助了我寫每一個句子
JB: It's so powerful. Richard Ford, who's won the Pulitzer Prize, says that dyslexia helped him write sentences. He had to embrace this challenge, and I use that word intentionally. He didn't have to overcome dyslexia. He had to learn from it. He had to learn to hear the music in language.
講者:多麼強而有力。 理查・福特,普利茲獎的得主 說閱讀障礙幫助了他寫作 他必須欣然接受這個挑戰, 而我是故意用「欣然接受」這個字。 他不必克服閱讀障礙 他需要從中學習。他需要學著去 聽語言中的音樂。
Artists also speak about how pushing up against the limits of what they can do, sometimes pushing into what they can't do, helps them focus on finding their own voice. The sculptor Richard Serra talks about how, as a young artist, he thought he was a painter, and he lived in Florence after graduate school. While he was there, he traveled to Madrid, where he went to the Prado to see this picture by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. It's from 1656, and it's called "Las Meninas," and it's the picture of a little princess and her ladies-in-waiting, and if you look over that little blonde princess's shoulder, you'll see a mirror, and reflected in it are her parents, the King and Queen of Spain, who would be standing where you might stand to look at the picture. As he often did, Velázquez put himself in this painting too. He's standing on the left with his paintbrush in one hand and his palette in the other.
藝術家也談到逼自己超越 自己的極限,有時是如何將他們推入 自己以前做不到的事,幫助他們專注於 找到他們自己的聲音 雕刻家理查席拉說道 身為一個年輕藝術家,他認為他是一個畫家 他住在佛羅倫斯在他畢業以後 當他在那裡時,他旅行到馬德里 在那裡他去了普拉多美術館去看 西班牙畫家維拉斯奎茲的畫作 它作於1656年,它的名字是《宮女》 它是一幅一個小公主 和她的侍女的畫作。若你仔細看 那個金髮小公主的肩膀後面,你會看到一面鏡子 反射於其中的是她的父母,西班牙的 國王和皇后,他們於理應該就站在你看畫時 所站的地方 如同他常常做的,維拉斯奎茲將他自己放在畫中 他正站在畫中的左邊,一隻手裡拿著他的筆刷 另一隻手拿著他的調色盤
Richard Serra: I was standing there looking at it, and I realized that Velázquez was looking at me, and I thought, "Oh. I'm the subject of the painting." And I thought, "I'm not going to be able to do that painting." I was to the point where I was using a stopwatch and painting squares out of randomness, and I wasn't getting anywhere. So I went back and dumped all my paintings in the Arno, and I thought, I'm going to just start playing around.
理查席拉:我站在那看著這幅畫 然後我了解到維拉斯奎茲正在看著我 我想到:噢,我就是這幅畫中的主題 然後我繼續想到:我永遠不可能畫出這樣的畫 在當時我使用秒錶 隨意地畫些方塊 沒有任何的進步。所以 我回到義大利並在亞諾河畔 丟掉我所有的畫作。 然後我想:我要開始輕鬆地玩耍
JB: Richard Serra says that so nonchalantly, you might have missed it. He went and saw this painting by a guy who'd been dead for 300 years, and realized, "I can't do that," and so Richard Serra went back to his studio in Florence, picked up all of his work up to that point, and threw it in a river. Richard Serra let go of painting at that moment, but he didn't let go of art. He moved to New York City, and he put together a list of verbs — to roll, to crease, to fold — more than a hundred of them, and as he said, he just started playing around. He did these things to all kinds of material. He would take a huge sheet of lead and roll it up and unroll it. He would do the same thing to rubber, and when he got to the direction "to lift," he created this, which is in the Museum of Modern Art. Richard Serra had to let go of painting in order to embark on this playful exploration that led him to the work that he's known for today: huge curves of steel that require our time and motion to experience. In sculpture, Richard Serra is able to do what he couldn't do in painting. He makes us the subject of his art. So experience and challenge and limitations are all things we need to embrace for creativity to flourish.
講者:理查席拉說得如此不在乎, 你們可能沒有領會到。 他看到一幅畫,出自於一個 已經死了三百多年的人,然後領悟到 “我做不到”。所以理查席拉回到 他在佛羅倫斯的工作室,拿起他到當時為止 所有的畫作,然後將它們丟進河裡。 理查席拉在那一刻放開了繪畫這件事 但他並沒有放棄藝術。他搬到紐約 然後他組合了一串動詞 -捲,弄皺,折疊- 超過一百種動作,然後他說 他開始輕鬆地玩耍了。他重複這件事 在不同的材質上。他會拿一大張的鉛紙 捲它再展開它。他會做同樣的事 於橡膠上,然後當他玩到"舉“這個方法 他創造出這個作品,現在在現代藝術博物館中。 理查席拉必須放棄繪畫 才能開始從事這個好玩的探索 引導他創造出今天他為人知曉的作品 鋼鐵的巨大弧線 那些需要我們用時間和動作 去經驗的。在雕刻中 理查席拉能做那些 他在繪畫中不能做到的事 他讓我們成為他作品中的主題 所以經驗和挑戰 和極限全是我們需要欣然接受 讓創造力繁榮
There's a fourth embrace, and it's the hardest. It's the embrace of loss, the oldest and most constant of human experiences. In order to create, we have to stand in that space between what we see in the world and what we hope for, looking squarely at rejection, at heartbreak, at war, at death. That's a tough space to stand in. The educator Parker Palmer calls it "the tragic gap," tragic not because it's sad but because it's inevitable, and my friend Dick Nodel likes to say, "You can hold that tension like a violin string and make something beautiful."
這是第四個欣然接受,而這也是最難的 要欣然接受失去 這個最古老也是最亙古不變的人類經驗 為了要創造,我們需要站在 我們看到的和我們希望的世界的中間 直視拒絕,直視心碎 直視戰爭,直視死亡。 這是個令人難以立足的空間 教育家帕爾默稱它為“悲劇的裂口” 悲劇並不是因為悲傷 而是因為這是無可避免的 我的朋友迪克諾度喜歡這麼說 “你可以抓住像小提琴弦上的張力 而創造美麗的事物”
That tension resonates in the work of the photographer Joel Meyerowitz, who at the beginning of his career was known for his street photography, for capturing a moment on the street, and also for his beautiful photographs of landscapes -- of Tuscany, of Cape Cod, of light. Joel is a New Yorker, and his studio for many years was in Chelsea, with a straight view downtown to the World Trade Center, and he photographed those buildings in every sort of light. You know where this story goes. On 9/11, Joel wasn't in New York. He was out of town, but he raced back to the city, and raced down to the site of the destruction.
這緊繃的張力也在攝影師的作品中共鳴 喬爾邁耶羅維茨的作品裡。 他在職業生涯的一開始 出名於他的街頭攝影,捕獲街上 的瞬間。他也知名於美麗的風景 攝影-塔斯卡尼、鱈魚岬、 光影。 喬是個紐約人,而他的工作室很多年來 都位於卻爾西,有著能一路看見商業區 到世界貿易中心的視野。他拍攝 這些建築物於各種不同的光影下 你們知道這個故事怎麼發展的了 911那天,喬不在紐約市,他出城了 但他飛快回到城裡,一路狂奔到 遭破壞的地點
Joel Meyerowitz: And like all the other passersby, I stood outside the chain link fence on Chambers and Greenwich, and all I could see was the smoke and a little bit of rubble, and I raised my camera to take a peek, just to see if there was something to see, and some cop, a lady cop, hit me on my shoulder, and said, "Hey, no pictures!" And it was such a blow that it woke me up, in the way that it was meant to be, I guess. And when I asked her why no pictures, she said, "It's a crime scene. No photographs allowed." And I asked her, "What would happen if I was a member of the press?" And she told me, "Oh, look back there," and back a block was the press corps tied up in a little penned-in area, and I said, "Well, when do they go in?" and she said, "Probably never." And as I walked away from that, I had this crystallization, probably from the blow, because it was an insult in a way. I thought, "Oh, if there's no pictures, then there'll be no record. We need a record." And I thought, "I'm gonna make that record. I'll find a way to get in, because I don't want to see this history disappear."
喬爾邁耶羅維茨:就像所有的路人一樣 我站在菱形粗鋼絲網牆外,在議院 和格林威治街交叉口。所有我能看到的只有煙 和一點點的瓦礫堆。我拿起我的相機 想多看到一點,只是想看看是否有什麼能看見的 然後有個警察,一個女警,打了一下我的肩膀 然後說:嘿,不准拍照! 而這是把我叫醒的一擊 我猜我是註定要如此被喚醒 然後當我問她為什麼不能拍照時,她說 “這是一個犯罪現場,沒有任何的照片是允許的” 我接著問:“如果我是一個記者, 那情況會是如何?” 然後她告訴我 “噢,看看你後面” 而後面正是一大批的記者 被限制於一個囚禁式的區域 然後我說:“好吧,他們什麼時候能進去?” 她說:“可能永遠不能” 當我離開時,我想清楚具體看見一件事 有可能是因為那一擊,因為那是一種侮辱 我想:噢,如果沒有照片 就沒有記錄。我們需要一個記錄 然後我想到:我必須做那個記錄 我會找到一個進去的方法,因為我不想 看見這個歷史消失
JB: He did. He pulled in every favor he could, and got a pass into the World Trade Center site, where he photographed for nine months almost every day. Looking at these photographs today brings back the smell of smoke that lingered on my clothes when I went home to my family at night. My office was just a few blocks away. But some of these photographs are beautiful, and we wondered, was it difficult for Joel Meyerowitz to make such beauty out of such devastation?
講者:他做到了。他找到了他能找來的所有幫助 然後拿到一個進入世貿中心的通行證 在那裡他拍了九個月的照片,幾乎每一天都拍。 看著這些照片讓我想起 徘徊在我衣物上的煙味 當我在傍晚回家時 我的辦公室離世貿中心只有只個街區遠 但其中有些照片很漂亮 而我們想知道,對喬爾邁耶羅維茨這困難嗎 從廢墟殘骸中創造這樣的美?
JM: Well, you know, ugly, I mean, powerful and tragic and horrific and everything, but it was also as, in nature, an enormous event that was transformed after the fact into this residue, and like many other ruins — you go to the ruins of the Colosseum or the ruins of a cathedral someplace — and they take on a new meaning when you watch the weather. I mean, there were afternoons I was down there, and the light goes pink and there's a mist in the air and you're standing in the rubble, and I found myself recognizing both the inherent beauty of nature and the fact that nature, as time, is erasing this wound. Time is unstoppable, and it transforms the event. It gets further and further away from the day, and light and seasons temper it in some way, and it's not that I'm a romantic. I'm really a realist. The reality is, there's the Woolworth Building in a veil of smoke from the site, but it's now like a scrim across a theater, and it's turning pink, you know, and down below there are hoses spraying, and the lights have come on for the evening, and the water is turning acid green because the sodium lamps are on, and I'm thinking, "My God, who could dream this up?" But the fact is, I'm there, it looks like that, you have to take a picture.
喬:你知道,醜陋,我是說,強而有力的 還有悲劇的和可怕的和一切 但它也是,在自然中,一個重大的事件 在殘餘中轉化 就像其他很多遺跡 -你會去古羅馬大型競技場或大教堂的遺跡- 當你看著它們的處境時它們呈現新的意義 我的意思是,有幾個下午我在那裡時 光線變成粉紅色的,空氣中有薄霧 你站在廢墟中,然後我發現自己 認出了大自然的內在美 而自然,以時間方式呈現, 正在抹去這個傷痕的事實 時間的流逝是不可擋的,而它改變了這個事件 它離那天越來越遠 光和季節以某種方式調和它 這不是因為我很浪漫。我真的是個現實主義者 現實是,威爾伍斯大樓 在這個場景煙霧的薄紗中 但它現在看起來像一塊窗簾布 蓋過劇院,而它現在正在轉成粉紅色 你知道,下面有在噴灑的水管 路燈因傍晚而亮起,而水 轉為酸綠,因為納燈開了 我想著:我的天啊,誰能料想到此景? 但事實上,我就在那裡,它看起來像 你必須要照張相
JB: You have to take a picture. That sense of urgency, of the need to get to work, is so powerful in Joel's story. When I saw Joel Meyerowitz recently, I told him how much I admired his passionate obstinacy, his determination to push through all the bureaucratic red tape to get to work, and he laughed, and he said, "I'm stubborn, but I think what's more important is my passionate optimism."
講者:你必須要照張相。那種憂患意識 需要開始工作的需求,在喬的故事裡很強大 我最近看見喬爾邁耶羅維茨時,我告訴他我有多麼 欽佩他熱情的頑強,他的決心 要克服所有官僚的繁文縟節去工作 然後他笑著說:「我很固執 但我想更重要的 是我熱情的樂觀主義。」
The first time I told these stories, a man in the audience raised his hand and said, "All these artists talk about their work, not their art, which has got me thinking about my work and where the creativity is there, and I'm not an artist." He's right. We all wrestle with experience and challenge, limits and loss. Creativity is essential to all of us, whether we're scientists or teachers, parents or entrepreneurs.
我第一次說這個故事時,觀眾席裡有一個男人 舉手並說道:『這些藝術家談他們的作品 而非他們的藝術品,這讓我開始思考關於 我的工作,和其中的創造力在哪裡 而我不是一個藝術家。』他是對的,我們都和 經驗和挑戰搏鬥,還有極限和失去 創造力是對我們每個人來說都是不可缺的 不論我們是科學家或老師 父母或企業家
I want to leave you with another image of a Japanese tea bowl. This one is at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. It's more than a hundred years old and you can still see the fingermarks where the potter pinched it. But as you can also see, this one did break at some point in its hundred years. But the person who put it back together, instead of hiding the cracks, decided to emphasize them, using gold lacquer to repair it. This bowl is more beautiful now, having been broken, than it was when it was first made, and we can look at those cracks, because they tell the story that we all live, of the cycle of creation and destruction, of control and letting go, of picking up the pieces and making something new. Thank you. (Applause)
我想要留下另一個 日本茶壺的印象給你們。這一個 在弗利爾美術館,位在華盛頓特區 它已經超過一千歲了而你們仍舊能看到 陶藝家捏它時的指痕i 但你們也能看到,它的確破裂 在幾百年中的某個時刻 但把它拼湊回來的那個人 卻沒有遮掩住裂痕 反而決定要強調它們,使用金漆去修復它 這個碗現在更美麗了,比起它最初被造的時候 更為破裂 我們現在能看著這些裂痕,因為 他們訴說了我們都經歷過的故事 創造和破壞的循環 控制和放手,撿起碎片 然後創造出新的東西 謝謝(掌聲)