Love

On nights like this
In the crevasses of my mind
A girl dances in bliss
Hair flowing like waters Rhine

Against the comfort orange glow
That envelops from the haunted cold
Likewise her lasting embrace
Started to make my heart race

In feather white linen we lay
Looking out together at the grey
And back at each other in light
I looked into her brown eyes
‘Oh what a sight

Such a vision so ethereal
If only I could make this thought corporeal
In time is all I could hope for
Because if the world stood still
This would be all I want, nothing more

On nights like this, I fear
The turning of heart like the sea
The sailor who lost who he endeared
In the crashing waves that drowned his plea

Like the unknown of the forest
Where Acacia trees cause light recluse
There the darkness seeps in jest
Making love a satirical ruse

On nights like this
My mind greatly grieves
While the heart yearns of a cradled kiss
My body suffers through conflicted eves

Yet on nights like this
The foretold story comforts
And frees my heart from aching lisp
As I set my head down to sleep with thoughts conferred

The fable took me to a house in the woods
Where I saw life’s beautiful dance
And in amidst the babbling brooks
I saw you happily prance

It might just be a dream
Or life’s interim
But one day I’ll see it transpire
As I lay it down to be what I aspire

Question: Reflection of your overall CT journey

Review:
This poem titled “Love” personifies “creativity” and describes my personal relationship with creative thinking. I felt that this captures my takeaways from this creative thinking course. There are three parts to this poem, “The Girl”, “The Loss” and “The Story”.

Part One: The Girl

On nights like this
In the crevasses of my mind
A girl dances in bliss
Hair flowing like waters Rhine

Against the comfort orange glow
That envelops from the haunted cold
Likewise her lasting embrace
Started to make my heart race

In feather white linen we lay
Looking out together at the grey
And back at each other in light
I looked into her brown eyes
‘Oh what a sight

Such a vision so ethereal
If only I could make this thought corporeal
In time is all I could hope for
Because if the world stood still
This would be all I want, nothing more

Creativity is likened to a “girl” in stanza one, which immediately paints the element of ‘obscurity’ through the diction “crevasses”. The girl had hair flowing “like waters Rhine”. This is also used to portray creativity as a lustrous embodiment, something that is almost “magical”, using the imagery of the Rhine river which flows over white limestone.

The second stanza describes my relationship with creativity. Here, I juxtaposed the ideas of cold and warmth, where the girl and her embrace presents warmth amidst the “haunted cold”. The imagery of an orange glow in a cold night further elucidates the idea of contrast. In this stanza, I am trying to express the comfort I have with creative thinking and writing, whereby I am well in my comfort zone or my ‘happy place’.

The third stanza continues the narration of a romantic relationship, where in each other’s embrace, the persona has fallen deeply in love. “Oh what a sight” was my effort in putting a ‘love sigh’ into words. Again, there is a contrast, “Looking out together at the grey” with embracing the “orange glow” in the second stanza. The third stanza sheds some light on my perspective of creativity, which is that I believe creativity brings colour to our everyday lives. Without it, our perspectives would only be grey and plain.

The fourth stanza reiterates the desire for the girl, or love, by the persona. However, it also states that this ‘girl’ is just a vision or a fantasy, a figment of the persona’s imagination in which he wishes for it to be “corporeal”. This links back to stanza one in which the girl dances in “the crevasses of my mind”. This is a reflection on my past pieces of writing throughout this course, where I believe that creativity has always been elusive and has always been something I struggled with in pursuing. While I desire to express my creativity, it has almost always only took place in random autotelic moments which I always felt did not represent my individual being adequately. There has always been an innate desire to be known and to express myself as a creative person. As such, I portray creativity as a girl in which I fantasise to be with.

Part Two: The Loss

On nights like this, I fear
The turning of heart like the sea
The sailor who lost who he endeared
In the crashing waves that drowned his plea

Like the unknown of the forest
Where Acacia trees cause light recluse
There the darkness seeps in jest
Making love a satirical ruse

On nights like this
My mind greatly grieves
While the heart yearns of a cradled kiss
My body suffers through conflicted eves

Part two describes the loss that the persona fears. The persona fears that he may not have love, or that the person he loves will have a change of heart. In stanza one, the theme of ‘sea’ and ‘waves’ are employed to express the turmoil that the persona feels, whereby he likens himself to a sailor who has lost his loved one. The layers I wove here were interesting because on one hand, the sea is the home of the sailor, but on the other hand, it is the very element that is used to portray the changing of hearts just like the turning of tides or waves. Tying this to my personal perspective, I have always felt a personal sense of responsibility to further my career, to provide for my family and to live comfortably. However, to do that, would mean losing my creativity to the rigidity of my career which is finance. Or so I thought. My creative sense of writing would have been washed out by the finance field critiquing my output in their domain.

The second stanza reiterates this point as well as the uncertainty and overhang that I have felt throughout entire semester, trying to figure out whether or not I was going to be an embodiment of both creativity and career or focus on one. Here, I used the concepts of light and darkness, used to evoke a sinister feeling. The literary techniques here that I want to highlight in particular are the personifying of darkness where it “seeps in jest”. This was used to show how firstly, the fear of loss taunts the persona about love and encroaches upon him, and secondly, how the fear of commitment to both creativity and career has stumbled my progress in either.

The third stanza portrays my wistfulness amidst all that is happening around me. While my “heart yearns of a cradled kiss”, where “kiss” alludes to the girl and creativity, there is a great sense of conflict, one in which I expressed in greater detail in my personal creative project.

Part 3: The Story

Yet on nights like this
The foretold story comforts
And frees my heart from aching lisp
As I set my head down to sleep with thoughts conferred

The fable took me to a house in the woods
Where I saw life’s beautiful dance
And in amidst the babbling brooks
I saw you happily prance

It might just be a dream
Or life’s interim
But one day I’ll see it transpire
As I lay it down to be what I aspire

Part three has been aptly titled as ‘The Story’. This refers to creative thinking as a module. It represents what the module has done for me and is a reflection of personal outcomes from the module.

The first stanza portrays the story as a “comfort”, which relieves my conflicted emotions and aspirations. This module has shown me what are the useful aspects of creativity and how I can use creative thinking in many ways other than just writing. It shows me that creative thinking is really a frame of mind rather than an output, something which I have previously always been fixated on. Different techniques throughout the course such as SCAMPER, blending, marrying the dichotomies, are all things that I can use actively to solve problems in business cases and scenarios. It also helps in idea generation, having a reference point, such as the red block activity, to build up our ideas. I have always had the perspective that creativity was something “artistic” or literary in nature but never had the perspective that it was always a frame of mind.

The second stanza brings back the girl in which the persona again has this vision of this fairytale. This is my personal gratitude to the creative thinking module, which gave me the opportunity to rekindle my love for writing and my expression through this medium. The fact that the module allowed us to express our creative thinking freely, allowed me to pen down my thoughts illustratively, unfettered by what others may think or how the education system has trained us to think.

The last stanza represents my hopes for the future. I recognise that this module may be short-lived, and may just be an “interim” throughout my entire life, but it has really set me down to think deeply about what I want for my personal self and my future. This module has really instilled confidence in my direction in life and how I would want to be a creative self amidst a “world of grey”.

Last but not least, thank you Prof. Alan for teaching this module. It has been an inspiring semester not only through your teachings but also through seeing the works of other students in class and hearing their thoughts and opinions. Though it may be a half module worth 0.5 credits, it has certainly been worth the effort and the time spent in developing my creative self. I hope my literary works have had some sort of impact on you as well. Thank you!