0:00:01.018,0:00:05.322 On my desk in my office, I keep a small clay pot 0:00:05.322,0:00:09.785 that I made in college. It's raku, which is a kind of pottery 0:00:09.785,0:00:14.292 that began in Japan centuries ago as a way of 0:00:14.292,0:00:18.339 making bowls for the Japanese tea ceremony. 0:00:18.339,0:00:21.604 This one is more than 400 years old. 0:00:21.604,0:00:26.068 Each one was pinched or carved out of a ball of clay, 0:00:26.068,0:00:30.364 and it was the imperfections that people cherished. 0:00:30.364,0:00:38.436 Everyday pots like this cup take eight to 10 hours to fire. 0:00:38.436,0:00:41.545 I just took this out of the kiln last week, and the kiln itself 0:00:41.545,0:00:46.029 takes another day or two to cool down, but raku 0:00:46.029,0:00:50.832 is really fast. You do it outside, and you take the kiln 0:00:50.832,0:00:55.387 up to temperature. In 15 minutes, it goes to 1,500 degrees, 0:00:55.387,0:00:59.045 and as soon as you see that the glaze has melted inside, 0:00:59.045,0:01:01.863 you can see that faint sheen, you turn the kiln off, 0:01:01.863,0:01:04.450 and you reach in with these long metal tongs, 0:01:04.450,0:01:08.935 you grab the pot, and in Japan, this red-hot pot 0:01:08.935,0:01:13.849 would be immediately immersed in a solution of green tea, 0:01:13.849,0:01:17.081 and you can imagine what that steam would smell like. 0:01:17.081,0:01:20.246 But here in the United States, we ramp up the drama 0:01:20.246,0:01:23.911 a little bit, and we drop our pots into sawdust, 0:01:23.911,0:01:26.935 which catches on fire, and you take a garbage pail, 0:01:26.935,0:01:31.847 and you put it on top, and smoke starts pouring out. 0:01:31.847,0:01:36.727 I would come home with my clothes reeking of woodsmoke. 0:01:36.727,0:01:41.825 I love raku because it allows me to play with the elements. 0:01:41.825,0:01:46.321 I can shape a pot out of clay and choose a glaze, 0:01:46.321,0:01:50.625 but then I have to let it go to the fire and the smoke, 0:01:50.625,0:01:53.090 and what's wonderful is the surprises that happen, 0:01:53.090,0:01:56.363 like this crackle pattern, because it's really stressful 0:01:56.363,0:01:58.974 on these pots. They go from 1,500 degrees 0:01:58.974,0:02:03.053 to room temperature in the space of just a minute. 0:02:03.053,0:02:09.004 Raku is a wonderful metaphor for the process of creativity. 0:02:09.004,0:02:12.769 I find in so many things that tension between 0:02:12.769,0:02:16.204 what I can control and what I have to let go 0:02:16.204,0:02:19.998 happens all the time, whether I'm creating a new radio show 0:02:19.998,0:02:25.083 or just at home negotiating with my teenage sons. 0:02:25.083,0:02:29.057 When I sat down to write a book about creativity, 0:02:29.057,0:02:31.541 I realized that the steps were reversed. 0:02:31.541,0:02:35.190 I had to let go at the very beginning, and I had to 0:02:35.190,0:02:39.794 immerse myself in the stories of hundreds of artists 0:02:39.794,0:02:44.269 and writers and musicians and filmmakers, and as I listened 0:02:44.269,0:02:49.581 to these stories, I realized that creativity 0:02:49.581,0:02:52.909 grows out of everyday experiences 0:02:52.909,0:02:56.613 more often than you might think, including 0:02:56.613,0:02:59.533 letting go. 0:02:59.533,0:03:03.323 It was supposed to break, but that's okay. (Laughter) (Laughs) 0:03:03.323,0:03:06.272 That's part of the letting go, is sometimes it happens 0:03:06.272,0:03:09.677 and sometimes it doesn't, because creativity also grows 0:03:09.677,0:03:12.454 from the broken places. 0:03:12.454,0:03:15.101 The best way to learn about anything 0:03:15.101,0:03:19.135 is through stories, and so I want to tell you a story 0:03:19.135,0:03:24.317 about work and play and about four aspects of life 0:03:24.317,0:03:26.713 that we need to embrace 0:03:26.713,0:03:30.781 in order for our own creativity to flourish. 0:03:30.781,0:03:32.797 The first embrace is something that we think, 0:03:32.797,0:03:37.003 "Oh, this is very easy," but it's actually getting harder, 0:03:37.003,0:03:40.998 and that's paying attention to the world around us. 0:03:40.998,0:03:45.453 So many artists speak about needing to be open, 0:03:45.453,0:03:48.893 to embrace experience, and that's hard to do when 0:03:48.893,0:03:52.511 you have a lighted rectangle in your pocket that 0:03:52.511,0:03:56.098 takes all of your focus. 0:03:56.098,0:04:00.238 The filmmaker Mira Nair speaks about growing up 0:04:00.238,0:04:04.843 in a small town in India. Its name is Bhubaneswar, 0:04:04.843,0:04:08.536 and here's a picture of one of the temples in her town. 0:04:08.536,0:04:11.408 Mira Nair: In this little town, there were like 2,000 temples. 0:04:11.408,0:04:14.264 We played cricket all the time. We kind of grew up 0:04:14.264,0:04:17.520 in the rubble. The major thing that inspired me, 0:04:17.520,0:04:21.168 that led me on this path, that made me a filmmaker eventually, 0:04:21.168,0:04:24.720 was traveling folk theater that would come through the town 0:04:24.720,0:04:28.032 and I would go off and see these great battles 0:04:28.032,0:04:31.448 of good and evil by two people in a school field 0:04:31.448,0:04:33.984 with no props but with a lot of, you know, 0:04:33.984,0:04:37.679 passion, and hashish as well, and it was amazing. 0:04:37.679,0:04:40.473 You know, the folk tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, 0:04:40.473,0:04:43.968 the two holy books, the epics that everything comes out of 0:04:43.968,0:04:47.498 in India, they say. After seeing that Jatra, the folk theater, 0:04:47.498,0:04:52.488 I knew I wanted to get on, you know, and perform. 0:04:52.488,0:04:54.395 Julie Burstein: Isn't that a wonderful story? 0:04:54.395,0:04:56.815 You can see the sort of break in the everyday. 0:04:56.815,0:04:59.534 There they are in the school fields, but it's good and evil, 0:04:59.534,0:05:05.067 and passion and hashish. And Mira Nair was a young girl 0:05:05.067,0:05:08.665 with thousands of other people watching this performance, 0:05:08.665,0:05:11.615 but she was ready. She was ready to open up 0:05:11.615,0:05:14.744 to what it sparked in her, and it led her, 0:05:14.744,0:05:17.359 as she said, down this path to become 0:05:17.359,0:05:20.162 an award-winning filmmaker. 0:05:20.162,0:05:22.983 So being open for that experience that might change you 0:05:22.983,0:05:25.916 is the first thing we need to embrace. 0:05:25.916,0:05:31.695 Artists also speak about how some of their most powerful work 0:05:31.695,0:05:36.567 comes out of the parts of life that are most difficult. 0:05:36.567,0:05:40.221 The novelist Richard Ford speaks about 0:05:40.221,0:05:44.263 a childhood challenge that continues to be something 0:05:44.263,0:05:49.023 he wrestles with today. He's severely dyslexic. 0:05:49.023,0:05:51.930 Richard Ford: I was slow to learn to read, went all the way 0:05:51.930,0:05:55.762 through school not really reading more than the minimum, 0:05:55.762,0:05:58.290 and still to this day can't read silently 0:05:58.290,0:06:01.138 much faster than I can read aloud, 0:06:01.138,0:06:04.914 but there were a lot of benefits to being dyslexic for me 0:06:04.914,0:06:08.059 because when I finally did reconcile myself to how slow 0:06:08.059,0:06:12.554 I was going to have to do it, then I think I came very slowly 0:06:12.554,0:06:16.086 into an appreciation of all of those qualities of language 0:06:16.086,0:06:18.898 and of sentences that are not just the cognitive 0:06:18.898,0:06:22.011 aspects of language: the syncopations, the sounds of words, 0:06:22.011,0:06:23.854 what words look like, where paragraphs break, 0:06:23.854,0:06:26.881 where lines break. I mean, I wasn't so badly dyslexic that 0:06:26.881,0:06:29.819 I was disabled from reading. I just had to do it 0:06:29.819,0:06:34.362 really slowly, and as I did, lingering on those sentences 0:06:34.362,0:06:38.722 as I had to linger, I fell heir to language's other qualities, 0:06:38.722,0:06:41.986 which I think has helped me write sentences. 0:06:41.986,0:06:46.066 JB: It's so powerful. Richard Ford, who's won the Pulitzer Prize, 0:06:46.066,0:06:51.218 says that dyslexia helped him write sentences. 0:06:51.218,0:06:53.989 He had to embrace this challenge, and I use that word 0:06:53.989,0:06:58.102 intentionally. He didn't have to overcome dyslexia. 0:06:58.102,0:07:01.610 He had to learn from it. He had to learn to hear the music 0:07:01.610,0:07:04.674 in language. 0:07:04.674,0:07:09.244 Artists also speak about how pushing up against 0:07:09.244,0:07:12.638 the limits of what they can do, sometimes pushing 0:07:12.638,0:07:15.986 into what they can't do, helps them focus 0:07:15.986,0:07:19.225 on finding their own voice. 0:07:19.225,0:07:23.370 The sculptor Richard Serra talks about how, 0:07:23.370,0:07:26.290 as a young artist, he thought he was a painter, 0:07:26.290,0:07:30.569 and he lived in Florence after graduate school. 0:07:30.569,0:07:33.138 While he was there, he traveled to Madrid, 0:07:33.138,0:07:35.852 where he went to the Prado to see this picture 0:07:35.852,0:07:39.612 by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. 0:07:39.612,0:07:44.716 It's from 1656, and it's called "Las Meninas," 0:07:44.716,0:07:46.925 and it's the picture of a little princess 0:07:46.925,0:07:50.612 and her ladies-in-waiting, and if you look over 0:07:50.612,0:07:53.988 that little blonde princess's shoulder, you'll see a mirror, 0:07:53.988,0:07:57.285 and reflected in it are her parents, the King and Queen 0:07:57.285,0:08:00.690 of Spain, who would be standing where you might stand 0:08:00.690,0:08:02.465 to look at the picture. 0:08:02.465,0:08:07.532 As he often did, Velázquez put himself in this painting too. 0:08:07.532,0:08:12.225 He's standing on the left with his paintbrush in one hand 0:08:12.225,0:08:14.629 and his palette in the other. 0:08:14.629,0:08:16.657 Richard Serra: I was standing there looking at it, 0:08:16.657,0:08:19.267 and I realized that Velázquez was looking at me, 0:08:19.267,0:08:23.262 and I thought, "Oh. I'm the subject of the painting." 0:08:23.262,0:08:25.514 And I thought, "I'm not going to be able to do that painting." 0:08:25.514,0:08:28.715 I was to the point where I was using a stopwatch 0:08:28.715,0:08:33.153 and painting squares out of randomness, 0:08:33.153,0:08:35.171 and I wasn't getting anywhere. So I went back and dumped 0:08:35.171,0:08:38.401 all my paintings in the Arno, and I thought, I'm going to just start playing around. 0:08:38.401,0:08:41.233 JB: Richard Serra says that so nonchalantly, you might 0:08:41.233,0:08:44.841 have missed it. He went and saw this painting by a guy 0:08:44.841,0:08:48.609 who'd been dead for 300 years, and realized, 0:08:48.609,0:08:52.481 "I can't do that," and so Richard Serra went back 0:08:52.481,0:08:55.312 to his studio in Florence, picked up all of his work 0:08:55.312,0:08:59.115 up to that point, and threw it in a river. 0:08:59.115,0:09:03.051 Richard Serra let go of painting at that moment, 0:09:03.051,0:09:06.577 but he didn't let go of art. He moved to New York City, 0:09:06.577,0:09:09.491 and he put together a list of verbs 0:09:09.491,0:09:12.779 — to roll, to crease, to fold — 0:09:12.779,0:09:15.475 more than a hundred of them, and as he said, 0:09:15.475,0:09:17.512 he just started playing around. He did these things 0:09:17.512,0:09:20.829 to all kinds of material. He would take a huge sheet of lead 0:09:20.829,0:09:24.627 and roll it up and unroll it. He would do the same thing 0:09:24.627,0:09:29.803 to rubber, and when he got to the direction "to lift," 0:09:29.803,0:09:34.901 he created this, which is in the Museum of Modern Art. 0:09:34.901,0:09:37.861 Richard Serra had to let go of painting 0:09:37.861,0:09:41.301 in order to embark on this playful exploration 0:09:41.301,0:09:44.571 that led him to the work that he's known for today: 0:09:44.571,0:09:50.149 huge curves of steel that require our time and motion 0:09:50.149,0:09:53.886 to experience. In sculpture, 0:09:53.886,0:09:57.157 Richard Serra is able to do what he couldn't do in painting. 0:09:57.157,0:10:01.653 He makes us the subject of his art. 0:10:01.653,0:10:05.589 So experience and challenge 0:10:05.589,0:10:09.249 and limitations are all things we need to embrace 0:10:09.249,0:10:11.845 for creativity to flourish. 0:10:11.845,0:10:15.405 There's a fourth embrace, and it's the hardest. 0:10:15.405,0:10:17.765 It's the embrace of loss, 0:10:17.765,0:10:22.055 the oldest and most constant of human experiences. 0:10:22.055,0:10:24.878 In order to create, we have to stand in that space 0:10:24.878,0:10:28.678 between what we see in the world and what we hope for, 0:10:28.678,0:10:33.485 looking squarely at rejection, at heartbreak, 0:10:33.485,0:10:36.059 at war, at death. 0:10:36.059,0:10:38.449 That's a tough space to stand in. 0:10:38.449,0:10:43.838 The educator Parker Palmer calls it "the tragic gap," 0:10:43.838,0:10:47.805 tragic not because it's sad but because it's inevitable, 0:10:47.805,0:10:50.845 and my friend Dick Nodel likes to say, 0:10:50.845,0:10:53.789 "You can hold that tension like a violin string 0:10:53.789,0:10:57.225 and make something beautiful." 0:10:57.225,0:11:00.363 That tension resonates in the work of the photographer 0:11:00.363,0:11:03.573 Joel Meyerowitz, who at the beginning of his career was 0:11:03.573,0:11:06.813 known for his street photography, for capturing a moment 0:11:06.813,0:11:10.495 on the street, and also for his beautiful photographs 0:11:10.495,0:11:14.179 of landscapes -- of Tuscany, of Cape Cod, 0:11:14.179,0:11:16.861 of light. 0:11:16.861,0:11:20.130 Joel is a New Yorker, and his studio for many years 0:11:20.130,0:11:24.128 was in Chelsea, with a straight view downtown 0:11:24.128,0:11:27.043 to the World Trade Center, and he photographed 0:11:27.043,0:11:31.376 those buildings in every sort of light. 0:11:31.376,0:11:35.026 You know where this story goes. 0:11:35.026,0:11:37.514 On 9/11, Joel wasn't in New York. He was out of town, 0:11:37.514,0:11:42.113 but he raced back to the city, and raced down to the site 0:11:42.113,0:11:44.238 of the destruction. 0:11:44.238,0:11:46.417 Joel Meyerowitz: And like all the other passersby, 0:11:46.417,0:11:49.317 I stood outside the chain link fence on Chambers 0:11:49.317,0:11:51.515 and Greenwich, and all I could see was the smoke 0:11:51.515,0:11:55.185 and a little bit of rubble, and I raised my camera 0:11:55.185,0:11:58.185 to take a peek, just to see if there was something to see, 0:11:58.185,0:12:02.529 and some cop, a lady cop, hit me on my shoulder, 0:12:02.529,0:12:04.969 and said, "Hey, no pictures!" 0:12:04.969,0:12:08.193 And it was such a blow that it woke me up, 0:12:08.193,0:12:12.249 in the way that it was meant to be, I guess. 0:12:12.249,0:12:14.292 And when I asked her why no pictures, she said, 0:12:14.292,0:12:17.383 "It's a crime scene. No photographs allowed." 0:12:17.383,0:12:18.852 And I asked her, "What would happen if I was a member 0:12:18.852,0:12:21.056 of the press?" And she told me, 0:12:21.056,0:12:25.150 "Oh, look back there," and back a block was the press corps 0:12:25.150,0:12:28.960 tied up in a little penned-in area, 0:12:28.960,0:12:30.481 and I said, "Well, when do they go in?" 0:12:30.481,0:12:32.963 and she said, "Probably never." 0:12:32.963,0:12:37.454 And as I walked away from that, I had this crystallization, 0:12:37.454,0:12:40.248 probably from the blow, because it was an insult in a way. 0:12:40.248,0:12:42.423 I thought, "Oh, if there's no pictures, 0:12:42.423,0:12:45.929 then there'll be no record. We need a record." 0:12:45.929,0:12:47.799 And I thought, "I'm gonna make that record. 0:12:47.799,0:12:50.086 I'll find a way to get in, because I don't want to 0:12:50.086,0:12:51.954 see this history disappear." 0:12:51.954,0:12:56.197 JB: He did. He pulled in every favor he could, 0:12:56.197,0:12:58.710 and got a pass into the World Trade Center site, 0:12:58.710,0:13:02.942 where he photographed for nine months almost every day. 0:13:02.942,0:13:05.886 Looking at these photographs today brings back 0:13:05.886,0:13:08.791 the smell of smoke that lingered on my clothes 0:13:08.791,0:13:10.788 when I went home to my family at night. 0:13:10.788,0:13:14.206 My office was just a few blocks away. 0:13:14.206,0:13:17.822 But some of these photographs are beautiful, 0:13:17.822,0:13:20.937 and we wondered, was it difficult for Joel Meyerowitz 0:13:20.937,0:13:25.279 to make such beauty out of such devastation? 0:13:25.279,0:13:28.645 JM: Well, you know, ugly, I mean, powerful 0:13:28.645,0:13:32.016 and tragic and horrific and everything, but 0:13:32.016,0:13:36.312 it was also as, in nature, an enormous event 0:13:36.312,0:13:41.478 that was transformed after the fact into this residue, 0:13:41.478,0:13:43.294 and like many other ruins 0:13:43.294,0:13:47.143 — you go to the ruins of the Colosseum or the ruins of a cathedral someplace — 0:13:47.143,0:13:51.780 and they take on a new meaning when you watch the weather. 0:13:51.780,0:13:53.653 I mean, there were afternoons I was down there, 0:13:53.653,0:13:57.303 and the light goes pink and there's a mist in the air 0:13:57.303,0:14:01.334 and you're standing in the rubble, and I found myself 0:14:01.334,0:14:05.218 recognizing both the inherent beauty of nature 0:14:05.218,0:14:07.972 and the fact that nature, as time, 0:14:07.972,0:14:11.367 is erasing this wound. 0:14:11.367,0:14:15.201 Time is unstoppable, and it transforms the event. 0:14:15.201,0:14:17.530 It gets further and further away from the day, 0:14:17.530,0:14:21.885 and light and seasons temper it in some way, 0:14:21.885,0:14:26.029 and it's not that I'm a romantic. I'm really a realist. 0:14:26.029,0:14:29.513 The reality is, there's the Woolworth Building 0:14:29.513,0:14:35.341 in a veil of smoke from the site, but it's now like a scrim 0:14:35.341,0:14:39.285 across a theater, and it's turning pink, 0:14:39.285,0:14:42.388 you know, and down below there are hoses spraying, 0:14:42.388,0:14:45.397 and the lights have come on for the evening, and the water 0:14:45.397,0:14:49.425 is turning acid green because the sodium lamps are on, 0:14:49.425,0:14:51.602 and I'm thinking, "My God, who could dream this up?" 0:14:51.602,0:14:55.803 But the fact is, I'm there, it looks like that, 0:14:55.803,0:14:57.697 you have to take a picture. 0:14:57.697,0:15:00.890 JB: You have to take a picture. That sense of urgency, 0:15:00.890,0:15:06.690 of the need to get to work, is so powerful in Joel's story. 0:15:06.690,0:15:10.043 When I saw Joel Meyerowitz recently, I told him how much 0:15:10.043,0:15:13.828 I admired his passionate obstinacy, his determination 0:15:13.828,0:15:18.411 to push through all the bureaucratic red tape to get to work, 0:15:18.411,0:15:20.587 and he laughed, and he said, "I'm stubborn, 0:15:20.587,0:15:22.991 but I think what's more important 0:15:22.991,0:15:26.452 is my passionate optimism." 0:15:26.452,0:15:29.255 The first time I told these stories, a man in the audience 0:15:29.255,0:15:32.745 raised his hand and said, "All these artists talk about 0:15:32.745,0:15:37.483 their work, not their art, which has got me thinking about 0:15:37.483,0:15:40.151 my work and where the creativity is there, 0:15:40.151,0:15:44.779 and I'm not an artist." He's right. We all wrestle 0:15:44.779,0:15:49.395 with experience and challenge, limits and loss. 0:15:49.395,0:15:51.646 Creativity is essential to all of us, 0:15:51.646,0:15:54.299 whether we're scientists or teachers, 0:15:54.299,0:15:58.658 parents or entrepreneurs. 0:15:58.658,0:16:00.835 I want to leave you with another 0:16:00.835,0:16:03.929 image of a Japanese tea bowl. This one 0:16:03.929,0:16:06.899 is at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. 0:16:06.899,0:16:09.435 It's more than a hundred years old and you can still see 0:16:09.435,0:16:13.078 the fingermarks where the potter pinched it. 0:16:13.078,0:16:15.995 But as you can also see, this one did break 0:16:15.995,0:16:18.715 at some point in its hundred years. 0:16:18.715,0:16:21.475 But the person who put it back together, 0:16:21.475,0:16:24.039 instead of hiding the cracks, 0:16:24.039,0:16:29.755 decided to emphasize them, using gold lacquer to repair it. 0:16:29.755,0:16:34.199 This bowl is more beautiful now, having been broken, 0:16:34.199,0:16:37.211 than it was when it was first made, 0:16:37.211,0:16:39.441 and we can look at those cracks, because 0:16:39.441,0:16:41.806 they tell the story that we all live, 0:16:41.806,0:16:45.483 of the cycle of creation and destruction, 0:16:45.483,0:16:50.410 of control and letting go, of picking up the pieces 0:16:50.410,0:16:52.409 and making something new. 0:16:52.409,0:16:56.963 Thank you. (Applause)