Creative Literacy in the 21st Century
by Steven McCabe
Sandra Dee & Bobby Darin at the Oscars, 1964, with ice cream and a Camus quote.
Sandra Dee & Bobby Darin at the Oscars, 1964.
American warplanes spray the jungles of Vietnam with chemicals, 1960s.
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
– Albert Camus
Albert Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our time.” Source: Wikipedia.
Bobby Darin performing his hit song ‘Dream Lover’ in 1959.
Bobby Darin singing his antiwar song ‘Simple Song of Freedom’ in 1969.
Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Source: Wikipedia.
Creative literacy connects the dots between images, texts, and media sources using both linear and non-linear styles of thought. A narrative is developed through a process of response, identification, and speculation.
Moral and ethical dimensions of both the individual and society are contemplated. Mapping this landscape involves experimentation and playful determination while formulating and answering questions.
Symbols are investigated. Historical sources corroborated. Personal transformation considered.
Personal inquiry gives voice to meaning by relating personal history to the text and drawing conclusions from analogies.
Threads of perception assemble a poetic pattern. No clue is too small. No inference or implication too obscure.
I do not own the rights to any of these photographs. I am using them non-commercially under fair use provisions for purposes of commentary.
poemimage 
I love the stretch, the cacophony, of influences here, Steven. Some of us became rubber bands…encompassing, editing, becoming adept at a profound depth of chaos.
Thank you for these ideas Jana. Intriguing this idea of being a rubber band. Harvesting concepts or Bringing in the Sheaves as a rubber band. Collecting a confluence of ideas as a rubber band. One twists into Elasticity. Psychological and spiritual elasticity.
Once more Steven, you transcend the apparent limitations of the blog screen with this seemingly surreal montage that transforms into a deep and connected reality the more i scroll its vertical story..absorbing and brilliant…Chapeau!
Hi John. Thank you for these thoughts. The idea of ‘scrolling vertically’ and ‘transcending’ seems an endless motion somehow revealing details while adding understanding. An investigation and composition simultaneously assisting us in our ‘reading.’
Steven, you, in your way, introduce the universal “harvest of concepts” as personal and sensitively announce that the layered lenses of personal experiences and thoughts and intuition, etc. are real and (possibly-hopefully) legitimate. This feels kind of like a manifesto.
Hi Jack, A manifesto! The Harvest of Concepts Manifesto. I love this idea more than you can imagine. You are helping mightily with the harvest. Thank you.
Fascinating, bold and deftly done – the subjects/ objects had to be so diverse to illustrate your point. It’s brilliant.
Hi Richard, Thank you for this thought and feedback. I strained to put it together in my own mind and went on intuition. It sounds good to hear it had to be this way.
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