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Kirsten Dunst.. has been acting since she was seven, scoring her first high profile role opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview With The Vampire at the tender age of twelve. However, Dunst is relieved she managed to miss the pitfalls of many child stars by managing to steer clear of excessive partying and an over-inflated ego.  She laughs, "You know, I'm lucky I'm not at some bar at night doing coke because I'm so messed up. I mean, I am very young. I've been working for a really long time but it's so important in this business to stay open and childlike. You don't want to block yourself. It's really important to be affected by things."  [imdb.com 27 April 2004]  /  photo from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

**related page :........early life

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In 1996, Addi Somekh and Charlie Eckert began traveling to different places in the world to make balloon hats for people and take photos of them. The goal was to show people all over the world laughing and having fun, and to emphasize the fact that all human beings are born with the ability to experience joy. In total, they visited 34 countries and have over 10,000 pictures. > photos, text from balloonhat.com

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Be curious. Childish curiosity. Learn to be curious like a child. What will kids do if they want to know something bad enough? You're right. They will bug you. Kids can ask a million questions. You think they're through. They've got another million. They will keep plaguing you. They can drive you right to the brink. Also kids use their curiosity to learn. Have you ever noticed that while adults are stepping on ants, children are studying them? A child's curiosity is what helps them to reach, learn and grow. Jim Rohn from article Practice Being Like a Child his site : Jim Rohn International

 

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I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life  through the wrong end of the telescope. Which is what I do. And that enables you to laugh at life's realities. Theodore Seuss Geisel   (1904-1991) Dr. Seuss books

 

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I hope I've returned to how I was when I was growing up in Nebraska. Willa Cather said, "I'll never be the artist I was as a child." And I really love that idea that when you're a child and you don't have much, you're so purely imaginative. And I like the idea of going back to that aesthetic, you know, to just making things up and making do. Playwright / Director Mary Zimmerman [right] [pbs.org interview 3.22.02] photo at left of Willa Cather (1973 - 1947) from book: Women of Our Time:  An Album of Twentieth-Century Photographs by Frederick Voss

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.. .. Do you take breaks? Breaks include things like getting up from your desk, easel, or other instrument of creative expression and taking a walk, goofing off, daydreaming, dancing boogie woogie, talking to a tree you've been neglecting.  These things may seem frivolous but they are vital to prevent the creative process from being depleted. Gertrude Stein said "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing."  Breaks also include outings to places that give you a fresh perspective... toy stores, libraries, parks, sculpture gardens, galleries even hardware stores. Vacations... even for a weekend help. The mind must be given a void every once in awhile in order to make room for fresh flocks of migrating thoughts.

.. .. If you're not having fun, the child-like spirit inside of you will rebel and prevent ideas from trying to make their way to your conscious awareness.  You must find time to do those things that you find fun every once in a while, even if they are not related to work.  Play and joy are creative helium and lift your spirits into view of new ideas... and crazy concepts that pop into ingenuity. Jill Badonsky - from her Dear Muse Column on her site photo: Gertrude Stein at age 3 ...Jill Badonsky. The Nine Modern Day Muses:  10 Guides to Creative Inspiration for Artists, Poets, Lovers,  and Other Mortals Wanting to Live a Dazzling Existence

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.. .. The Genius of Play - By Kaja Perina excerpt from article [Psychology Today] Do all great scientists make their best discoveries in the lab? Probably not physicist Richard Feynman, for whom a flying plate in a college cafeteria led to a quick calculation of electron orbits and eventually the Nobel Prize.  Certainly not medical researcher Alexander Fleming, who was culturing mold for his hobby, microbe paintings, when he accidentally spawned the moss-colored Penicillium notatum, which yielded the first antibiotic.  The annals of science are filled with lunchtime discoveries and productive goofing-off, as geniuses amass disparate elements in service of their craft.

But how exactly does play contribute to creativity? For more than a decade, scholars Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein have sought empirical answers to this highly unempirical question. Robert Root-Bernstein, Ph.D., a professor of physiology at Michigan State University, recently compared the hobbies of 134 Nobel laureates in chemistry to the hobbies of a control group of scientists in the Sigma Xi society.  Root-Bernstein found that the Nobelists were highly accomplished outside the lab. More than half had at least one artistic avocation, and almost all had an enduring hobby, from chess to insect collecting. One-quarter of the Nobelists were musicians, and 18 percent practiced visual arts such as drawing or painting. ... In the Root-Bernsteins' book Sparks of Genius they amass evidence of 13 cognitive tools, including imagining, abstracting and, yes, playing, that may contribute to creativity by helping people synthesize knowledge across domains. .... The Root-Bernsteins maintain that the key is not to just slave away at the piano or the easel, but to "find the links between everything in your life, the connections that others miss." You may not unlock the origins of the universe, but you'll see the world in a different way. image: "Chomp" 1995 - a 'Microbe Painting' by Suzanne Joelson

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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect  but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.  The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.    Carl Gustav Jung CG Jung books

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When he talks about creativity, John Cleese doesn't bring up such timeless examples as Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks or the parrot sketch.  Instead, he cites research by the late Donald MacKinnon, a World War II spymaster and UC Berkeley psychologist who studied creativity in architects, among others. "It's such beautiful research because it's so simple," Cleese said of MacKinnon's comparison of highly creative architects with their less gifted colleagues. The difference between them?  "The more creative ones had a facility for switching into a more playful mode. It's a leisurely mode," Cleese said. And, unfortunately, he pointed out: "Most of us are manic." ... He says he wrote the first draft of "A Fish Called Wanda" (nominated for a best original screenplay Academy Award) in just 10 days at a fat farm.

.. .. In that unhurried environment, Cleese admitted, he didn't spring out of bed each morning and get right to work. "Nobody sits down to write right away," he said. "There's always a period of sharpening pencils and making phone calls." .... [LA Times January 21 2003]

...related books:

The Human Face - by Brian Bates, John Cleese et al

The Way of the Actor: A Path to Knowledge & Power - by Brian Bates

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative - by Ken Robinson

Time and the Soul: Where Has All the Meaningful Time Gone -- And Can We Get It Back
by Jacob Needleman, John Cleese (May 2003)
 

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I'm as much of a child-adult as there is. I'm frozen at about 6 and a half.  I'm still climbing down on the floorand looking at the world  from a kid's perspective. It's an amazing tool.    Jamie Lee Curtis her books include: I'm Gonna Like Me : Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem

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I suppose that the best actors are children, so to that extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality is probably the best part of acting. Paul Newman****[darkhorizons.com interview July 1, 2002]**** photo: as John Rooney in Road to Perdition

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I think that laughing and having a good time is only one kind of fun.  The other kind is a process, like painting, that resonates with my soul.  Denis Clifford, Age 62, Attorney  [quoted in article "Fun Masters" by Priscilla Grant, modernmaturity.org July/Aug 2002]

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Yet this time, the child in me had acted fast, backed by the extravagant commitment I'd made before I'd left the house: "Today, I explore my interests with attention, not condemnation." ...  I'd listened to my head long enough.  I bought the book [Writing the Natural Way] even though I didn't know why other than it made my heart chirp and I was listening for chirping these days.  And a good thing, too. Because that first creative writing book prompted taking writing classes, buying other books and eventually writing my own book and teaching my own classes.  I never could have figured out this path, I just had to let it out. ... It's the unencumbered mind or child self that retains our joy and the connection to things unseen, but known. ... our fun is more than fun; it's the vortex and hot spot of uncanny wisdom. ...

.. .. If you want to find work that feels like play, you do have to play. Tama J. Kieves book cover art from Tama Kieves site: AwakeningArtistry.com *books: This Time I Dance! Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work You Love: How One Harvard Lawyer Left It All to Have It All!by Tama Kieves Writing the Natural Way  by Gabriele Rico, PhD

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['You've said in the past that children need to be bored in order to use their imagination.']

"Not just children. That's what I do in between films. What I mean by boredom is just allowing
your imagination to revitalize itself and to engage with life rather than be dictated to by images
that stop you from thinking."

**-Peter Weir**(director: "The Truman Show" etc.) [Movieline, June, 1998]

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"I hadn't realized that this group [of managers] needed permission to pretend... Creative problem-solving
is absolutely dependent on the ability to pretend. We all have it... it is our birthright as human beings.

If we have concluded that pretending is childish, deceitful or impractical, then, as adults, we need to
give ourselves permission to pretend the way we did as kids."

*from book: Putting Your Talent to Work  by Lucia Capacchione, Peggy Van Pelt
 

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The reclamation of our creative spirits is an easy and enjoyable journey. We only need to devote a modicum of courage and short, but regular, periods of time to find our way back to our essential nature, which is unfettered, playful, and free.      *from book:*A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life : Self-Expression and  Spiritual Practice for Those Who Have Time for Neither by Nina Wise

 

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<< title photo: The Walk to Paradise Garden [1946]  // related book: W. Eugene Smith : Photographs

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