A question on the DGM Guestbook: if a creative insight is instantaneous, then how may this be referred to as a ‘download’?

Very briefly, one approach is this: a creative insight does not inevitably, nor necessarily, strike that part of us which is best able to respond. Creativity is necessarily creative: how could this be otherwise? So, creativity ‘downloads’, or broadcasts, or impinges, or appears, to whatever and wherever it may. This is its necessity and, in a sense, its inevitability. Some of the ‘reception zones’ are undeserving, some inappropriate. For example, cruelty may be creative; and evil may be also creative, however we understand the terms and implications. The Basement may also be creative: this is sometimes referred to as being ‘creative in personality’ in differentiation to ‘creative in essence’.

To explore the shades and graduations which occur as and when a creative insight takes place, or drops upon us, is primarily a practical matter; and properly explored and investigated in an appropriate context. It cannot be experienced merely through words that attempt to describe the process, although words may prepare the ground and help to clarify the experience.

A creative insight may be so powerful that it continues to resonate and repercuss, even throughout the duration of a lifetime. The insight itself is instantaneous and takes place outside mundane time. Its unfolding, however, is in sequential time. The repercussions continue to repercuss, the unfolding continues to unfold. This is the part of the creative process that is more appropriately referred to as ‘download’: the outgoing, spreading ripples, as the significance of what we have been given continues to resonate within us, as we increasingly move closer to understanding the implications of what we have been shown.

The concern of the artist is to become a bridge for the Creative Impulse to have effect in our wonderful, dreadful, fallen, rising, appalling, blind, deaf, stupid, available, pleading, aspiring world. For this, the price is to deny ourselves what we want and choose instead to be what we wish.

Robert Fripp
Wednesday 20th. June, 2001
Evershot Old Mansion
Deepest Dorset, England