I am currently working on a submission of poetry for the Landfall literary journal. The theme is music, and I started thinking about Chris Knox, an iconic kiwi musician who recently suffered a stroke. This then led me to think about the phrase ‘a stroke of genius’. What exactly defines genius? Of course, I turned to that much-too-trusted online tome, Wikipedia.
‘…genius is associated with achievement of insight which has transformational power. A work of genius fundamentally alters the expectations of its audience.’
When I read this, I realised that creativity and genius go hand in hand. It’s not about IQ, which has been superceded by many other types of Q, such as EQ and SQ anyway. It’s about re-creation, or transformation. I think the phrase ‘…nothing new under the sun.’ is true, therefore, genius is about bringing enlightenment or understanding of something, over and above the norm. Granted, superior intellect in an area, or possessing a rare talent can lead to genius, but not always. For example, Charlie Chaplin was more than talented or intelligent, he exceeded the expectations of the audience and pushed his art form to new heights.
Sometimes a piece of work or art is labelled ‘genius’ because it exists way outside of the norm of what we know. But more often than not, genius is what we know, plus. It takes what is common and then stretches, modifies, explains or transforms it into something new. It’s often building on a foundation of the familiar but with that little something extra, that makes us call something genius. We may not realise genius when we see it if it is too far outside the square of our experience, or we might label it that because of the fact.
Chris Knox has definitely transformed the music scene in NZ and has also been influential overseas. I think that there can be no genius without pushing existing boundaries somewhere.
Now, back to that Landfall submission. No pressure or anything.
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