I wrote this little number last year, in the midst of a personal renaissance that followed five intensive years of baby-minding. I had just watched a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert regarding the nature of creativity, and it struck a chord in me that I hadn't heard in a long time. I felt compelled to work out some of my thoughts in writing. I don't think I ever polished this mini-essay, but I still think it's worth keeping. Since I worked out these thoughts last year, I managed to finish one painting and am working on two more. I have sketched more, written more, and felt more comfortable in my own skin than ever before. It was a powerful time of growth for me, and it's still evolving.
I must admit that against my will I have come to find this woman unbelievably insightful, honest, sane, and helpful. She’s the one who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, which I received out of the blue from a friend last year. Of course, at the time, I read 10 pages and completely dismissed the author and her book because it’s a NYT bestseller, which obviously means it’s a shallow, touchy-feely piece of crap that only masses of soft-minded, soft-bodied, Oprah-loving women would find meaningful. But goddammit I picked the book up again a couple weeks ago and it’s really fantastic.
That’s all I’ll say about the book. I just wanted to set the scene. You know, to explain how I ended up googling this woman. So I googled her and found this excellent talk she gave recently in California, and it made me see orange (a good thing), and breathe a sigh of relief (a rare thing), and feel like I have a new friend (just hearing the thoughts of someone whose take on life is so similar to my own). (And by the way, if/when you watch the video of her talk—it helps to know that when she says “god” she doesn’t mean “God.” She means the Poetry rather than the Prose.)
She’s talking about the nature of creative people and how difficult it can be to manage your self, your creative drive, criticism (from others and from yourself), fear of failure, and the confusion that comes with the same force simultaneously keeping you alive and threatening to destroy you. What is this thing? Where does it come from? How do you live with it without going crazy?
Coincidentally, I’ve been pondering these same questions more than usual lately. I’ve been excited and encouraged recently to feel my perception of my self shift from I am creative. I can’t stop. It makes me feel crazy. But what have I done? Is anything I produce any good? What does that say about me? Why should I bother if it isn’t any good? Why bother if what I create doesn’t live up to what I feel I can do? Can I make a living as an artist? Do I really deserve to be called an artist?
Coincidentally, I’ve been pondering these same questions more than usual lately. I’ve been excited and encouraged recently to feel my perception of my self shift from I am creative. I can’t stop. It makes me feel crazy. But what have I done? Is anything I produce any good? What does that say about me? Why should I bother if it isn’t any good? Why bother if what I create doesn’t live up to what I feel I can do? Can I make a living as an artist? Do I really deserve to be called an artist?
to
I am human, and to be human can be many things. It’s as if “god” (for lack of a better term)—the engineer, the painter, the sculptor, the philosopher, the mathematician, the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the clown, the poet, the creator, the lover, the destroyer—split into billions of pieces and became living beings. My particular shard of humanity happens to be heavy on the creative ingredients in their many forms.
So now, rather than focusing on Me, My Identity, and whether I feel I meet the Artistic Person Criteria as I understand it, I suddenly find I am reveling in the thought that I am not unique. Millions of people are heavy on the creative ingredients and we all share the same battle and bewilderment with the creative drive. The natural impulse is to fight to establish one’s identity, if only to oneself, as an artist whose work and voice and soul is different from anyone else’s—to prove yourself to your self as much as to others. I, Me, Mine. I am an artist. Look at Me. This work is Mine.
But now, suddenly, I don’t feel I have to prove anything. I am not competing. I am what I am and I can’t help that, in both good ways and bad. To my usual self, who strives (mostly privately) to prove that she deserves the title Artist or Creator, I want to say, with the compassion of a mother, “Shhh, it’s ok. Be still.” Just do what you do because that is who you are—you couldn’t help creating, even if you tried. The act is all. The process—the creating itself—is all. What you strive for is already there in your fabric. Just sit down and do it—practice your craft, in every sense of these words. That is your job, that is your voice, that is who you are and what you do. It doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with your work, because you will. But that struggle is the point—it’s what makes you alive. Just don’t let the struggle take control and have the last word.
So this is what I’d been thinking about over the weekend, and when I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk. Her (and Tom Waits’s and the Greeks’) notion that the creative drive is like a collaborator—something you can ask to go away and come back when you’re ready—made me smile. It was like warm milk when you can’t sleep. All my life I’ve been fearfully running from this creative drive when I feel it coming—it makes me crazy and sick and upset. Yet it lives with me and I can’t get rid of it—like the “genius” in the walls she refers to. Tom Waits’s idea that you can take over the reins and negotiate the relationship never occurred to me before. I’d always assumed it was a ghost that haunted me at will unless I hid from it. Who would have thought you could ask it to wait a minute? I’m just so damn glad to know these people are out there and that their shard of humanity has so many of the same ingredients as mine. I don’t care if they’re more prolific or successful than me—that’s all gravy. All I care about is that for the first time I’m finding comfort and inspiration in that notion that I’m one of a million, rather than one in a million.
I am human, and to be human can be many things. It’s as if “god” (for lack of a better term)—the engineer, the painter, the sculptor, the philosopher, the mathematician, the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the clown, the poet, the creator, the lover, the destroyer—split into billions of pieces and became living beings. My particular shard of humanity happens to be heavy on the creative ingredients in their many forms.
So now, rather than focusing on Me, My Identity, and whether I feel I meet the Artistic Person Criteria as I understand it, I suddenly find I am reveling in the thought that I am not unique. Millions of people are heavy on the creative ingredients and we all share the same battle and bewilderment with the creative drive. The natural impulse is to fight to establish one’s identity, if only to oneself, as an artist whose work and voice and soul is different from anyone else’s—to prove yourself to your self as much as to others. I, Me, Mine. I am an artist. Look at Me. This work is Mine.
But now, suddenly, I don’t feel I have to prove anything. I am not competing. I am what I am and I can’t help that, in both good ways and bad. To my usual self, who strives (mostly privately) to prove that she deserves the title Artist or Creator, I want to say, with the compassion of a mother, “Shhh, it’s ok. Be still.” Just do what you do because that is who you are—you couldn’t help creating, even if you tried. The act is all. The process—the creating itself—is all. What you strive for is already there in your fabric. Just sit down and do it—practice your craft, in every sense of these words. That is your job, that is your voice, that is who you are and what you do. It doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with your work, because you will. But that struggle is the point—it’s what makes you alive. Just don’t let the struggle take control and have the last word.
So this is what I’d been thinking about over the weekend, and when I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk. Her (and Tom Waits’s and the Greeks’) notion that the creative drive is like a collaborator—something you can ask to go away and come back when you’re ready—made me smile. It was like warm milk when you can’t sleep. All my life I’ve been fearfully running from this creative drive when I feel it coming—it makes me crazy and sick and upset. Yet it lives with me and I can’t get rid of it—like the “genius” in the walls she refers to. Tom Waits’s idea that you can take over the reins and negotiate the relationship never occurred to me before. I’d always assumed it was a ghost that haunted me at will unless I hid from it. Who would have thought you could ask it to wait a minute? I’m just so damn glad to know these people are out there and that their shard of humanity has so many of the same ingredients as mine. I don’t care if they’re more prolific or successful than me—that’s all gravy. All I care about is that for the first time I’m finding comfort and inspiration in that notion that I’m one of a million, rather than one in a million.
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