The Impresario Effect

What is creativity?

I was impressed by the impresario, who knew writers like Hemingway, who was open, who engaged in a free-ranging exchange of ideas instead of holding forth and sucking all the oxygen out of the room like my father’s people. It was the first time I had seen adults talk ideas and offer perceptive observations. It was the first time I saw adults who listened, who invited the thoughts of others.

I was twenty-five years old.

Mr. Armitage was a guest of Kim Taylor’s, whose house west of Austin was a gathering spot for artists and intellectuals. Kim and Iya, his wife, had taken a young woman under their wing whose husband had become violent.

My connection was through my ex-girlfriend. She knew Ray Lynch, who lived across the street from the battered young woman, and somehow I was included in an invitation to visit the Taylor homestead with my friends. Everyone else was a true adult, fifty or sixty years old.

My impression of adults up to that time was that they were mostly full of — how shall I say — unquestioned and self-congratulatory opinions. These adults were different. They asked questions and seemed interested to learn. They themselves wrestled with creative projects and respected the effort and mentality involved to produce quality work.