13 Notes on Creativity
Chicago, IL
Borges esencial
Jorge Luis Borges
FICTION
44-45 p.
November 5, 2022
Humboldt Park Public Library
In the final pages of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Circular Ruins,” a page is inserted, on it is written 13 words relating to the idea of the finite. On the other side of the page, 13 words relating to the idea of the infinite are written. “The Circular Ruins” is a story about the relationship between these two impossible poles and how creation is a process which runs from one pole to the other. In their book “What is Philosophy,” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari lay out a concept of creativity where the creator is one who dips in and out of an undifferentiated depth, a chaos, finding threads and bringing effervescent organizational structures to the surface. The relationship between creativity and chaos lies in the possibility of enormous depth in the absolute/infinite, and the possibility of finding contingent creative organization within.
