Waves and Chimes

A day in the life of immigration activist Rodrigo Torres, who is down for whatever the day brings in terms of supporting SB54. This piece (SB54) was produced by Colleen Thomas, as part of The 24-Hour Radio Race from KCRW's Independent Producer Project.

COLLEEN THOMAS: SB54 (2017 Radio Race)

PSA for a Bay Area Bond Fund benefit concert. 1.28.2018.
Music: "Not in My Name" by Humanistic. Used with permission. http://www.humanistic4.com/humanology.html

Humanistic

Not in My Name

Bond Fund PSA

Mouse In The House

Rodrigo Torres is searching for the truth about creativity, not just about human creativity but about the why behind everything. When traditional books on creativity fail him, he begins his own journey to tease out the truth. 
- Music by Terry Hughes
- Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Transcript:

Torres: That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out, what is creativity? We all think we have an idea of what it is but then what is it really? It’s a big mystery.

Rodrigo Torres is on a mission to learn the truth. He is looking for the truth about creativity, not just human creativity but the why behind everything. Surrounded by books he sits and reads about creativity for hours. 

Torres: I think the most common definition is bringing something new into the world.

But Rodrigo’s journey to learn about creativity wasn’t a smooth one. Most of the books he found held too narrow of a focus.

Torres: I  started out by being really interested in creativity when I found a book on creativity and I was like, wow, this is really cool. And it was by this guy Alex Osborn. I started, like, reading everything I could about creativity but everything I found was about how, you know, how we create, how can you be more creative, and I never could find something that was like, really definitive. It seemed like a lot of opinions and then a lot of different, varied ways. But nothing like what is it at its core, deep down. 

When the literature that he found didn’t provide the answers he was looking for about how it all works, he didn’t give up. He kept looking at the question from different angles. Then it came to him. 

Torres: When you’re talking about human creativity, it’s really kind of what’s happening in our minds and we really don’t really know what the heck is happening in our minds. So why don’t we look at creativity in other areas of the world like biology, cosmology, or how we have thought about creativity in the past and so that started me on the quest of looking at creativity from a much bigger angle and just seeing trying to understand it as a much bigger story. The human creativity becomes kind of a part of a much bigger what I would call cosmic creativity story.

And that quest continues. Rodrigo is currently writing his own book on creativity, looking at the mystery of it from a variety of angles. He hopes his book will become invaluable to artists and creatives. 

Torres: I really love like small, thin books that are really useful and sort of have become like the standard reference for that area. The best example of that is the Elements of Style, which is a really short, small book but has become really kind of like the touchstone in terms of writing style. So I’d like to have it be a small, short book but that’s really packed with a lot of useful stuff. And something that people can just sort of have around and can like dip into - especially creative people that might inspire them and be seen sort of like as a good tool to have on your desk.

Rodrigo freely admits of the book that he is writing doesn’t fill that void the void he found but he sees it as the first step.

The Mystery of Creativity

A clip from "Making Room for Boredom" an installation piece featuring sounds recorded on 11/22/19. 10 devices controlling lighting, sound and virtual interactions were used by a crew based in two states for the piece. Artist: Colleen Thomas. Crew: Anna Adelman, Patricia Zetelumen and Terry Hughes.

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