> Based on the title alone, you might think that this is about needing silence to be creative
On that tangent, I believe this is very much dependent on the person in question. I personally like to do knowledge work in library silence. I even find music distracting, although instrumental music without vocals is better than open office noise. On the other extreme I've heard stories that Richard Feynman liked to do physics in strip clubs. I'm not ashamed to admit that Feynman was more creative than I'm likely to ever be, but I don't think that my relative inferiority in that regard is because I'm not working from a strip club.
Like you, I mostly prefer creating in quiet solitude approaching sensory deprivation. However, sometimes I find it possible to coax a creative idea or concept into conscious awareness when surrounded by a familiar roar of external stimuli but only as long as I perceive that cacophony as a fairly uniform wall of noise. Personal examples include aimlessly walking alone around a massive trade show floor with booths all blaring their visual and sonic messages. For me, such noisy environments seem especially good for more "connectionist" type inspirations.
I've heard the Feynman strip club story and others like it, and always interpreted it in a similar way. It appears that environment was both familiar and comfortable for Feynman and perhaps his ideas could emerge as signal from the wall of perceptual noise.
On that tangent, I believe this is very much dependent on the person in question. I personally like to do knowledge work in library silence. I even find music distracting, although instrumental music without vocals is better than open office noise. On the other extreme I've heard stories that Richard Feynman liked to do physics in strip clubs. I'm not ashamed to admit that Feynman was more creative than I'm likely to ever be, but I don't think that my relative inferiority in that regard is because I'm not working from a strip club.