A PLENTY OF FREAKS
Why should we be creative? Can we measure it? How to know if I have this “thing”? And after all, what is it?
Difficult questions. Even more complicated answers. In the movie “Bueller’s Day Off”, in 1986, the writer-director John Hughes presented to the world one of the most controversial characters in Hollywood history. Ferris Bueller is a kind of anti-hero. But even so, it is impossible not to fall in love with him, despite his Machiavellian manipulation distilled over a crowd of people.
Bueller do not enjoy going to school and share their best “crimes” with friends. The film, which has become a classic, shows an anthological journey of three young people towards an irremediable unknown destination. To accomplish the personal project, Ferris uses his creativity to convince a world that he is sick, and another half-world that life needs to be amusingly realistic. The combination of ingenuity, talent and a lot of courage helps him to be an unforgotten figure, in many levels.
Intriguing as the classic’s mystery always reveals itself in unusual characters and their unexpected works. People who don´t care about rules, who play out of the box. They create works and forge their names in a unique way in history. Mozart, Einstein, Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Plato, Balzac, Beethoven, Kubrick, Benjamin Franklin, Darwin and Freud, to name a very few. They were not perfect human beings. Maybe they played hooky, seducing friends and winning some foes. They exaggerated sometimes. They created confusion in the name of their belief.
Who is not willing to make mistakes, can hardly create something new. This is the basic summary of the ideas of a man whose voice has been loud heard throughout the world. In recent years, Sir Ken Robinson, a hilarious British who attracted the attention of many people, proving that “student problem” may be the solution of most of society’s problems . “Outliers”, named by the British journalist Malcolm Gladwell, are people who don’t fit the norm, and don’t accept the rules, reinventing themselves in their own ability to interpret reality. Mistakes are just steps, opportunities to experience life, a passage to an unknown and incredible world.
The lesson of Ferris Bueller, when he decides to enjoy life is the ultimate feast of his personal fantasies, in his deepest childish, strumming all his existential layers. Putting everything to lose, perhaps because he believed in the immediate bet and unpredictable incomes. Being creative is a risk. Accept the rules just as it is freezes us, block us to recreate, rethink, recycle and reinvent. All genuine creativity runs the risk of being branded as ridiculous, dangerous or unnecessary. Things change because people change. Exaggerated people are called freaks. Rare people. A danger to the status quo.
Creativity is a state of mind. We’re not simply chosen to be creative. You cannot measure it. Creativity is something we can be inspired to. Thus, to be possible we need new attitudes, with revolutions per second. Disbelieving. Turning the world upside down. There are examples in history, in arts, literature, etc. The creative person is the figure who simply believes in the infinite. He or she feels free to make the journey that is necessary for those who wish to rewrite future as it emerges. At the risk of pain, scarring, but never abandoning the certainty that every experience is worth, during the search for our own identity, in every idea, project and person we met through the way.
