he source of creative genius may be one of the last great mysteries. Plato claimed a muse. Edgar Allen Poe smoked opium. Rudyard Kipling was haunted by a "daemon." Ludwig van Beethoven was inspired by God. Or so legend has it. The reality may be closer to comedian Edgar Bergen's theory of "practice, practice, practice!" But where do original ideas come from?

One characteristic all artists seem to have in common is the ability to create something new. "True artists," Plato said, "are those who give birth to a new reality. They enlarge our overall human consciousness."

Creative people are somehow able to tap into the vast storehouse of information that exists in the subconscious mind-less than one percent of which ever reaches the conscious level. They are able to relax and let their minds "wander." It is in this state of reverie that new ideas are born.

And it's that one percent that's the hardest quality to pin down. That's the "Aha!" moment. Like Isaac Newton's apple, it suddenly hits you. Everyone experiences this to some extent: the intuitive reaction, the hunch, the solution that comes to us when we're doing something else.

But if everyone has the capability, what sets creative people apart? Jazz musician Benny Golson once said, "The creative person always walks two steps into the darkness. Everybody can see what's in the light, but the real heroes delve in the darkness of the unknown."

At the University of Miami, artists of every discipline push the bounds of their creativity. From computer science to opera, faculty and students are bringing their imagination to light, but perhaps nowhere is that more visible than in the arts.

The Theatre of Life

t is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet, and that your survival depends on completing this construction at least one second before the old habitation collapses," playwright Tennessee Williams once said.

That's what David Alt, chair of vocal performance and director of the Music Theatre Program in the School of Music, asks his students to do every time they perform.

"I want them to create something unique," Alt says. "I don't let them copy anyone else's performance choices; they have to develop a performance that is from their own experience and imagination."

That may be why fewer than one-third of the students who begin the conservatory musical theatre training actually complete the program. Think of it as the "marines of musical performance."

"Only those who can't imagine themselves doing anything but this will succeed," Alt says. "It's like a musical decathlon."

At age 21, Millicent Thomas is a senior who has survived the training. A former English major and gospel singer from a small town in Texas ("I had to sing; my father was the pastor of our church," as she explains), Thomas likes to tell stories with her music.

For any character she portrays, she keeps a journal, as that character, for weeks before she begins to rehearse a song.

"Dr. Alt helps me to first understand what the composer meant, then he encourages me to pull a memory or reference for myself and layer it on top of the music, putting more of myself into it."

For example, in the song "Your Daddy's Son" from Ragtime, Thomas portrayed a woman who buries her infant son alive.

"It was hard to do," Thomas recalls. "For three weeks before I started to sing the song, I recited the words over and over, trying to understand this woman's point of view. She was so blinded by love that she didn't understand what she was doing."

What kind of courage does that take, to take on such a role?

"I think it takes someone who is something of a visionary," Thomas says. "You have to be able to see things beyond what is given to you. You have to be able to walk into another world and be really willing to give yourself over to your imagination."

From Here to Eternity

n A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's protagonist declared, "I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smith of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." For sculptor Tim Curtis, that means exploring man's relationship to the natural world. His work-exhibited throughout the world-illuminates issues that are universal to the human spirit: life, birth, death, and rejuvenation.

Curtis' underlying philosophy is that the sculpture's material is as important as the form.

"Materials are symbolically charged," explains Curtis, an associate professor of art in the College of Arts and Sciences. "All materials have intrinsic value and associative meanings. For example, wood is an organic material and is perceived as 'warm,' but you'd never refer to steel that way."

In his classes, Curtis talks about materials and techniques, but he also talks about where ideas come from.

"Many art schools only focus on one or the other, but I do both," he says. "If I have to err, I'd rather err on the side of teaching concepts, because you can always go to a hardware store and get advice on how to weld, but a plumber can't tell you how to develop your own ideas.

"I also try to teach by what I know and not just what I do," he adds. "I show students everything that's out there and try to help them find their own unique voice, to question who they are and what's important to them, and to put the answers into their own work."

That's the kind of inspiration graduate student Frank Wick, age 28, appreciates.

"Professor Curtis believes that students are in control of their own work, and he forces us to explore it on our own rather than dictating what we should do," Wick says. "That's rare, and I can't stress enough how much that means.

"Our styles are very different, but I consider him my mentor because of the way he thinks. We share ideas," Wick says. "That's why I came to the University of Miami, to study with forward-looking people like Professor Curtis."

With a background in oceanography and a master's degree in graphic design, Wick brings to his sculpture a passion for scientific innovations.

"Some of them inspire me and even frighten me," he says. "But it opens up some avenues for thinking, and I enjoy exploring those avenues in my work."

The Sound of Music

usic is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn," jazz great Charlie Parker once said. "They teach you there's a boundary line to music, but man, there's no boundary line to art." Violinist Glenn Basham breaks boundaries every day.

"There's a revolution going on in string teaching today: Classical training is reemphasizing improvisation, and vice versa," he says. "There's so much creativity going on here that we don't even think about it.

"We're always doing something new," explains Basham, associate professor in the School of Music and one of the founders of the renowned Bergonzi String Quartet, which is in residence at the University.

"There is this great duality: In classical music the creativity comes from interpretation and emotional impact, where in jazz you have to become a spontaneous creator of notes. Meeting both those challenges simultaneously creates a tremendous creative energy," he adds.

Basham often takes the lead in challenging his quartet, and his audience. "We enjoy throwing curve balls into our performance," he says. "We are always looking for new ways to express our creativity."

He encourages his students to do the same, but he adds, "Inspiring creativity in my students is more challenging, because the moment you put a system in place to quantify it, you've already excluded it. That's a fine line to walk."

Student Breana Burkett, age 19, is a violinist in the School of Music's strings program. She is one of the first string musicians learning to create completely new sounds by combining classical instruments with state-of-the-art technology such as MIDI (musical instrument digital interface).

"I like to do things that are new, that haven't been done before," she says. "And programs like Extreme Strings, here at UM, enable me to do that."

The creative process for her, while natural, requires focus and hard work. "I don't set out to be creative, I just go with what I feel inside, and it happens," she says. "I think everybody has that unique aspect in their personality that makes them creative, but I like to stretch that to the limit, and think about things in completely different ways. That opens the door to a lot of new ideas."

The Courage to Create

he bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it," said Greek historian Thucydides. For Master of Fine Arts student J.B. Bissell, age 25, that meant leaving his home and his job in Colorado to study creative writing at the University of Miami.

"It was a very traumatic choice and a huge adjustment, but I made the commitment," Bissell says. "I want to write. I want to get my work out there, where people can read it. That's what I think about when I'm having any doubts.

"There are many creative people out there who don't take that risk," he adds. "They may be people with wonderful voices or a gift for painting, but nobody may ever get to experience it. It's an
individual choice, but for me, thinking about an audience gives me a lot of my creative energy."

Bissell, and other students in the M.F.A. program, are
encouraged to take literary risks by professors such as Fred D'Aguiar, associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

An extraordinary author in his own right, D'Aguiar helps his students develop their confidence and creativity through unusual exercises. For instance, he asks them to complete Coleridge's Kubla Kahn, one of the greatest literary fragments of all time.

"I give them a background on the story--the legend that Coleridge was interrupted while transcribing his vivid dream and therefore unable to complete the poem. Then I ask my students to finish it--not to try to be Coleridge, but to write from their own experience," he explains. "It's a very productive exercise, and helps students find their own way of articulation, whether it's through lyrics for rock music or as classical poetry."

D'Aguiar also helps develop students' use of their subconscious and intuition by asking them to write as a reader.

"A reader doesn't know where the story is going until the next sentence, so I tell them to try to feel their way along and use their writing as revelation," he says. "That builds their 'creativity muscles,' and studying creativity is part of what it is to be a student. Expanding knowledge and expanding understanding go hand in hand."

Persistence of Vision

zra Pound defined artistic genius as "the capacity to seeten things where the ordinary man sees one, and where the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art."

J. Tomas Lopez, associate professor and director of the graduate program in art and art history in the College of Arts and Sciences, learned from Margaret Mead that photos have a transcultural meaning; they are a communication between the artist and the audience.

Lopez comes from a unique background combining psychology, anthropology, and photography. While in the Army during the Vietnam War, he was put in charge of a halfway house for veterans where he pioneered the use of photography as therapy. Later, he attended graduate school at the University of South Carolina in one of the nation's first multimedia programs, combining film, video, music, photography, and live performance.

Today, Lopez's photographs focus on content and contextualization: surreal images of underwater environments that are symbolic of the human unconscious.

"What's interesting is the meaning beyond the surface," he says. "For example, everyone has seen red peppers, but no one really saw red peppers until Edward Weston photographed them. For him they were metaphors for the human body. That is creativity."

Can that be taught? "You can teach the craft of photography or any other art, but you can't teach creativity," Lopez maintains. "What you can do, is inspire by example, make it possible for students to follow a path of self-discovery, and then get out of their way."

Student Leonard Levy says Lopez excels at opening up those avenues. "He doesn't teach in the conventional way. He uses a lot of myth and metaphor and critical thinking to channel his students' creativity beyond conventional limits," says Levy (M.D. '69), somewhat unconventional himself. Semi-retired at 54, Levy is finally pursuing photography, after sublimating his interest in the arts to a demanding career as a thoracic surgeon.

"Everything Tom does is meant to challenge us to express ourselves in our work," Levy says.