Question: (Q).
That day, my mother picked me up from school, wearing the yellow sundress and shawl I remembered from our trip with Father the year before. She looked just like she did most days back then--a glamour queen, a movie star ("Just like Lena Horne," my friend Chloe had once said, "only darker--oh, sorry, Leah!"), but today her beauty somehow had a harder, more defiant edge to it. I could smell the expensive Dior perfume as soon as I opened the door, which surprised me, because my mom was usually fastidious about not getting perfume on her clothes. She was wearing her bug glasses--huge dark things with lenses that bulged out like fly eyes and reflected my face like a fun-house mirror. She had tied a yellow silk scarf around her hair and was taking deep pulls on a cigarette held between two immaculately manicured fingers. Only I knew about the nicotine stains she carefully covered with her special order "forest sable" cream each morning. Tiffany, a stupid but vicious senator's daughter who I had the misfortune of sharing a classroom with, suddenly dashed from inside the school, her face flushed. "Hello, Mrs. Wilson," she called. Before my mother could respond, she giggled and ran back to three of her friends waiting beyond the door. I could hear them laughing, but I was glad I couldn't understand their words. They were all fascinated with my mother--the black housekeeper who dressed like Katharine Hepburn and drove a Cadillac, whose daughter's "light toffee" skin indicated that she might just like her coffee with a lot of cream. Sometimes I hated those girls. "Get in the car, Leah," my mother said. Her already husky voice was pitched low, as though she'd been crying. That made me nervous. Why was she here? "Ma, Chloe was going to show me her dad's new camera. Can't I go home on the bus?" My mom pulled on the cigarette until it burned the filter, and then ground it into the car ashtray--already filled with forty or so butts. She always emptied out the ashtray each evening. Question: Who wore a silk scarf? Options:  A. Mrs. Wilson  B. Leah  C. Chloe  D. not enough information  === The correct answer is
(A).
A


(Q).
The office smelled like money. Brand new carpet, somebody's expensive perfume still hanging in the air. The chairs in the waiting room are leather and the copy machine has a million attachments and there's pictures on the wall that I don't know what they're supposed to be. Made me ashamed of the shirt I was wearing, the cuffs all frayed and some of the buttons don't match. The secretary is a knockout and I figure Dennis has got to be getting in her pants. Red hair and freckles and shiny skin that looks like she just got out of a hot shower. A smile like she really means it. My name was in the book and she showed me right on in. Dennis shook my hand and put me in a chair that was slings and tube steel. The calendar next to his desk had a ski scene on it. Behind him was solid books, law books all in the same binding, also some biographies and political stuff. "Too bad you couldn't make the reunion," Dennis said. "It was a hoot." "I just felt weird about it," I said. I still did. It looked like he wanted me to go on, so I said, "I knew there'd be a bunch of y'all there that had really made good, and I guess I...I don't know. Didn't want to have to make excuses." "Hard to believe it's been twenty years. You look good. I still wouldn't want to run into you in a dark alley, but you look fit. In shape." "I got weights in the garage, I try to work out. When you're my size you can go to hell pretty quick. You look like you're doing pretty good yourself." Charlene is always pointing to people on TV and talking about the way they dress. With Dennis I could see for the first time what she's talking about. The gray suit he had on looked like part of him, like it was alive. When I think about him in grungy sweats back at Thomas Jefferson High School, bent double from trying to run laps, it doesn't seem like the same guy. Question: What was the scene on Dennis's calendar? Options:  A. not enough information  B. beach scene  C. ski scene  D. river scene  === The correct answer is
(A).
C


(Q).
What is creativity? How de we define creativity? Where does creativity come from? How philosophical is the notion of creativity? Is everyone’s ‘creativity’ different? Or is it an ill conceived, simplified term that is used to describe a very specific series of neuronal & bodily reactions to certain stimuli? These are all the questions I’ve been thinking (and googling, and youtubing) since beginning this Capturing Creativity studio* and I have found some answers or maybe I’ve just found more questions: Creativity is generally defined as the ability to make new things, or come up with new ideas, it’s an ability to think outside the box, to see unique solutions and employ them in inventive ways. In this sense creativity is not always utilised when being ‘creative’, as to be creative is simply defined as the ability to make or produce something. However I guess that depends on your definition of creative, how different, unique, special, once off, un-influenced does something have to be, to be classified as creative? This is where creativity get’s tricky. It’s all well and good to be like oh this is what creativity is, so it’s easy to investigate it, but what if you don’t define that as being creative, maybe that was just following a formula, a somewhat inspired formula, but maybe it is just a formula. Creativity to most people seems to be a random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work and for us humans these percentages are unique to us. Maybe creativity to you is 90% unique idea, 5% skill and 5% hard work. Maybe creativity to you is 40% unique idea, 50% skill and 10% hard work. Maybe for you creativity doesn’t have to involve any hard work at all. For me when it comes to creativity I’m most interested in that unique idea portion; where does that unique idea come from? Is it simply random? Is it a gift from the gods? Is our unique idea just a product of a lot of subconscious effort, only made aware to us in the sense of a ‘random’ idea? Have we been influenced by something, processed it... Question: Who started Capturing Creativity Studio? Options:  A. The narrator  B. The narrator's friend  C. The narrator's cousin  D. not enough information  === The correct answer is
(A).

Answer: A