Creativity is a big topic. I could get lost in it. I did, in fact, get lost in it, in the messy process of drafting this post. So let’s start here:
I do not understand my creativity, and I’m not sure I ever will.
I harbor the same feelings toward it that Churchill expressed regarding Russia: It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
At least in the case of Russia, though, Churchill went on to say: “but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”
If there is a key to unlocking the secret of my creativity and predicting its wily movements, I could not tell you what it is, what it looks like, or how I may come to find it.
To be clear: I do have a lot of thoughts about my creativity. And there have been times in my life when I thought I understood the key. I even thought I possessed it. (Ha!) Those memories of past certainty and the confusion-despair that followed are more than enough to humble me and deter me from making any decisive proclamations now. (“We plan, God laughs,” is already a saying. “We declare certainty, God laughs harder,” seems equally apt to me.)
This is, probably, why I love reading others’ thoughts on creativity so much, and why they can feel so precious to me. Even just to have my own confusion affirmed can feel like a blessing.
Take for instance the two quotations I keep pinned above my desk. The first:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
That’s Rilke, being all those Rilke things we love to see him be: earnest, insightful, simultaneously familiar and mysterious. A poet draped in mystic wonder who, if we’re lucky, might rub some of that wisdom onto us. I read his words and I think, You’re right, Rilke. Who wants a boring, comprehensible heart anyway?
Here’s the second:
When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
That’s Vonnegut, graciously bringing the levity and comic relief we (and by “we” I mean “I”) sorely need.
What feels so generous about Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on creativity, Big Magic, is how she spritely jumps between these two modes. Her voice feels equal parts experienced and humble, wise and playful. It’s like she’s seen it all: the thankless work of being a nobody writer in her twenties, the dream-inspiring rise to national bestsellers lists with Eat Pray Love, and then the relative obscurity — and dutiful adherence to her craft — since.
I essentially read this book twice. The first time rather quickly, reveling in the pleasure of meeting a voice who speaks truth to my own experiences. I didn’t plan on writing about this book for my third category, but the gratitude and relief I felt told me I must. The second time, I read more slowly, copying my favorite quotations into a notebook. (Which took, by the way, eight pages.)
Big Magic offers so many insights, I feel as though I’ve been given not just one key to better understand my creativity, but a jangling ring of them.
Why did it feel so helpful? Let’s start with this:
If you’re a creative person — writer, artist, musician, whatever — and you’ve been practicing your craft seriously for any length of time, you probably have a story you tell yourself about it. You have to, right? Creativity is a big endeavor, and often a counterintuitive one at that. Stories are our shields. They give our egos something to grip onto. They help explain why we accept the hardships and indignities we do, and they muster up our energies and courage for future battles.
In Big Magic, Gilbert questions the assumptions underlying the most common narratives of creativity. She takes issue with the prominent tale of creativity as misery, of art as pain, and of talent as burden — in other words, of the artist as martyr.
And she offers not just criticisms, but substitutions. Why not replace “martyr energy” (heavy, guilt-ridden, self-flagellating) with “trickster energy” (light, playful, self-trusting)? What might happen if you stop treating your relationship with creativity like an unhappy marriage, and begin pursuing it with all the passion and abandon of a wild affair?
Do you love your creativity?
If you do, great — but do you believe your creativity loves you back?
Why not? Why wouldn’t it?
It chose you, didn’t it?
Most helpful is how Gilbert gives voice to several paradoxes inherent in creative life:
Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.
What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.
We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits.
We are terrified, and we are brave.
Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege.
Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.
Paradoxes, even for all their riddle-mystery-enigma confusion, are comforting. At least to me. Why? Because they give legitimacy to my conflicting experiences. Have I sometimes felt burdened by creativity? Yeah. Have I felt leavened by it? Also, yes. Do I feel grateful for it? I try to. And on my best days, I really, genuinely, do. Have I also at times resented it? I hate to say it, but honestly, I think yes. In darker moments, I have.
Does that mean I want to give it up?
Not hardly.
And so paradoxes speak truth to our complications. They echo another wonderful quote I keep on my wall, albeit not above my desk:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict
myself, I am large,
I contain multitudes.
That’s Whitman. I love the lightness he and the other writers I’ve quoted exhibit. I’m drawn to it, even as I suspect it’s not something that comes easily to me.
But I wonder if lightness is something you can practice. I wonder what might happen if I seek it, if I hold myself in this pose — if it might start to feel more natural. If I could learn to live in these paradoxes with greater ease. And I wonder what greater lightness I might feel if I unburdened myself from the established paths I’ve built up around my creativity — if I began telling myself a different story altogether.
Thank you for spending this time with me. If you enjoyed reading, I hope you might take the time to share with a friend, or subscribe to Reading Cycle if you haven’t already.
This post covered my third category: a book I feel I “should” read. You’ll hear from me again in two weeks, when I’ll be writing about The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers as the choice for my fourth category: a recommendation.
Looking forward to then, and take care.