Creation Story, Part 1

Creation Story, Part I

Create: (according to my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged): “1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.”

Create, creative, creation. My graduate program, this blog space are touted as creative writing. Last December I met a woman who asked me what that meant. I don’t think I ever gave her a satisfactory answer. In some ways, I’ve never struggled so much to feel creative, in others, I’ve never been so clear in my ability to create.

‘Something unique that would not naturally evolve.’ I’ve been reading a lot more about the original Biosphere 2 project; Rebecca Reider’s book, Dreaming the Biosphere, and Jane Poynter’s, The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2. The more I read, the more I come to view Biosphere 2’s existence as a creative (rather than scientific) achievement. Then again, Jane Poynter writes: “If you ask twenty people who were part of the project what the aim of it was, you would receive close to twenty different responses.” (p. 103). And also, “The Biosphere was a big Rorschach test with everyone seeing through his or her own lens.” (p. 65).

At Biosphere 2’s inception, the founders and the mainstream press frequently invoked the US manned space flight programs for comparison. It may have seemed grandiose, but the original B2 mission was in many ways a greater testament to the power of a creative vision than the lunar landings. For one thing, B2 was more ambitious technically and scientifically – the ultimate goal was a self-sustaining miniature Earth capable of being exported to other planets. For another, B2 was created and controlled by John Allen. He had a Harvard MBA and an engineering degree, but his previous two decades had been mostly spent leading a series of communes and a traveling theater troupe; the Mercury and Apollo programs were directed by actual rocket scientists. Both the books I mentioned above devote whole sections to exposing the unfairness of the media attacks on Allen and the Biospherians based on their unorthodox lifestyles and lack of scientific credentials. In truth, the B2 creators and participants appear to have been a remarkably talented, committed group; and the scientists they attracted were top-notch, too. But, the fact remains that a man and his followers with resumes more suited to Burning Man than Man on the Moon were responsible for creating a $200 million project with the stated objective of space colonization – and convincing a billionaire and several respected scientific institutions, this University among them, to commit their resources to it. The commitment to creative vision, not to mention the sheer chutzpah of that, is mind-boggling.

Somewhere at the other end of the creativity spectrum lies a woman I met last December in Amarillo, Texas. This woman – we’ll call her Martha -- spent most of her previous two decades as a fundamentalist Christian missionary in far Eastern Europe. Now, through happenstance and in-laws (which may be synonymous), I found myself in her living room having tea and cookies as she asked me what I did. It was when I told her about my MFA program that she asked me, “What does ‘creative writing’ mean?”

I’ve thought about it a lot lately, and I would love to have said something witty or profound. Or maybe I could have turned it back on her and said, “You tell me.” As it is I explained that I was in a program with different genres, including poetry and non-fiction, and that my focus was fiction.
“What do you mean by ‘fiction?’” she responded.
I paused, not sure if she was putting me on or not. “Ah, fiction is made-up, not true.” She asked me for an example. I said, “I’m working mostly on short stories for now, maybe novels and screenplays later.”
“What do you mean by ‘novel?’”
It was clear to me from earlier conversations that Martha was at least normally intelligent. So I tried to imagine that she was incredibly naïve, like a cloistered nun, or maybe George of the Jungle. But there was something about the way she kept smiling without making any attempt to suggest answers that made me feel defensive. She had the strange quality of being inquisitive without seeming curious.

Everyone else in the room was looking at me, and I stifled an urge to give my wife the “Is it me?” look. “A novel is a type of book, a long fictional story," I said.

“Hmmm, that sounds so smart,” said Martha, pronouncing smart like it was exotic and vaguely indecent, like it was Shakira’s ass. “I’m not that smart. Why don’t people just say ‘book’ – why do they have to sound so smart?” She kept smiling the whole time.

My department head, Aurelie Sheehan, is working on a novel. I met with her last week to talk about some of my ideas for this B2 writing project, and when I was leaving I asked her how her work was going. She paused and seemed to leave the room for a moment to think. “It’s like an alternate reality,” she paused again. “Which is good.”

I agree. That sounds good.