What if the question isn’t where ‘within us’, but where ‘beyond us’?

It’s been 12 years since Ken Levine’s last video game.

The mastermind behind the best storyline I’ve ever played, he’s been working on a new game for the past couple of years that missed its rumored release date of March 2025. Now that it’s April, I hope it’s released soon.

It has to be soon. How? He was on another podcast two months ago, discussing the upcoming game, previous projects, and insights on creating.

Only minutes in, I had to pause and write this (not in one sitting, of course) because I sensed crossover with a previous essay I wrote on Rick Rubin and Ernest Hemingway and wanted to further connect those similarities.

The first question asked:

“Is AI going to hurt the game industry?”

Ken replies:

“You can train an AI on Shakespeare’s writing, right? You can ask it any question about Shakespeare’s work. But the problem with creation is that we don't know how it happens. You can train AI on Shakespeare’s writing, but you can’t train it on Shakespeare the person... I believe our personality is a function of the molecules that make up our body and the molecules we interact with in the world, including other people. We don’t know what causes creation or how it happens.

“In some ways, we may be very similar to large AI models—we absorb everything around us and use that information to complete our own sentences... Most writers say—and I feel this way too—that at some point, the script starts writing itself. You get ideas seemingly out of nowhere. Where does that come from? That’s the part of creation AI has no insight into. Maybe it can develop that ability in the future, but right now, I’m not seeing it.”

So, where does it come from? It’s as if creativity—the fuel for creation—exists in some sort of ethereal plane or ever-expanding void, neither alive nor dead, but somewhere in between, only feeding into us on its own schedule, as if it’s waiting for the ‘right time,’ not wanting to arrive too early or too late. Creativity has to be the most nuanced thing we do.

“We don’t know what causes creation or how it happens,” Ken says. Yet, he does explain how it happens and what causes it: we absorb everything around us, it becomes our personality, and that, in turn, informs what we create. His statement here, in my view, is more in line with one’s search for a catalyst or a formula—plug in value x and get value y, add ingredient x to y, stir, bake, then get product z. We can be quick to say creativity comes from the brain, heart, or soul, but that’s neither helpful nor the answer most will accept.

In my view, creativity is our ability to recall information, events, and happenings and make connections where none have existed before, exactly as I’m doing here with Ken and Rick.

It’s where external events become internal feelings, then repurposed as external creations, representing our personal view of man and the world. Yet, for some reason, we’re still caught up on the what and the how for getting more creative.

What if we’re asking the wrong question? Or, better yet, what if the question needs to be reframed? What if, by looking beyond the brain, it lies somewhere more spiritual—not in the religious sense (or maybe so)—but ethereal and divine?

What if the real question isn’t what or how, but where—not where within us, but where beyond us?

Ideas happen to us from God-knows-where: the shower, the car, the beach, the forest, a library, a coffee shop, a museum, a mountain, a park—places where ideation has been known to happen, unique to each person.

We can’t control or force what, how, or when. Creativity strikes at the oddest times. What we can control is where—not within us, but beyond—a controlled environment waiting for it to arrive.

With Ken’s words above, along with the following from Rick and Hemingway, when and how creativity happens is as such: Ken says we absorb everything around us and, with that information, complete our own sentences; Hemingway said to write the one truest sentence you know—that’s all you need; Rubin says everything he does is just personal taste, making things that speak to him, and hopefully, someone else will like them too.

It’s by realizing that shower thoughts, long car rides in silence, staring at the ocean, walking in a forest, and drinking coffee in the living room aren’t just boring periods of time where we wish to pass Go, collect $200, and move on to the next thing.

What if, instead of trying to kill time, that time was when creativity would have happened—yet we sedated ourselves before it could be conceived?

I forget who said it, but by making time for ourselves to be bored, that’s when ideas come to us. After you’ve consumed ideas and culture, it then just becomes a matter of time.

Feed your muse, let it rest, then give it time to rise. Here’s where creativity will find a way to materialize. Amidst the chaos, randomness, and gut feelings, make time for creativity.

Or so I think,

George