That Creative Place ...

I used to ride horses when I was a teenager.  Quite often they were slightly insane horses that the owners had tired of.  There was Mickey who used to paw the ground when we crossed streams ... indicating she was about to roll and you could only stay on if you imagined you could stop her.  There was Nutmeg who made a vet turn away in horror when he health-checked her for her owner. 

I was that horse-mad kid for a while.  The vet had spotted multiple 'issues' with that big, slightly crazy, ungainly chestnut called Nutmeg.  And then there was her paddock-mate, Cinnamon, the ex-racehorse who occasionally raced off with whoever was riding him.  He was a geriatric.

I survived. 

But there were days, few and far between but enough to keep me going, of sublime happiness.  When, just occasionally, everything would come together. The sky would be blue, the air warm, and the horse would be having a best-behaviour kind of day.  Those days were the days where being out with the horse was like floating along on my own private cloud of joy.

Writing is like that for me.  Just sometimes it all comes together.

Photography I can do anywhere.  I enter that state of non-thinking ... that creative space, easily and work almost unconsciously, losing my self in the process.  But writing, that's something else entirely.

Writing, for me, comes from another place.  It's a space more consciously created.  I feed it like I might feed a fire.  Building the flame from a spark up into, if I'm fortunate, a roaring fire.  And I'm finally learning that sustaining that space or that mood, is the trickiest thing.

I'm almost bullet-proof as a photographer and yet I am as fragile as a butterfly when I write.  I had spent two hours building that creative space yesterday.  I have a photography exhibition opening on 31 October and the theme is complex.  I want to get it right.  Dreaming it into being involves writing.  Writing involves building the fire.

I was horrified to realise how fragile I was yesterday.  How fragile the creation of that space is.  At the same time I was glad to finally understand the different creative spaces I inhabit when I move between the two things I love doing best.

I knew I couldn't interview someone and photograph them at the same time but I didn't know why.  I think both disciplines ask for a similar depth but they're different.  With photography I'm simply searching for the soul, or for a small glimpse of the true core of a person.  I want to capture something of who they really are ... to show them their own personal beauty.

When I interview someone it's completely different.  I am listening, intently, consciously.  I can't lose myself in that photographer space where I don't really exist, where it's all about slipping under the surface of the person I'm photographing. I have to be present with an interview.  Later, when I'm writing it up ... perhaps then there's that slippage into the soul.  Or, more nicely put, into the shoes of that person.

I was a writer first.  I thought that was what I would be in my spare time, after I found a sensible job that paid ... but I never ever learned to protect the space.  Photography allows me to move in and out of the creative space with ease.  Well ... coming home after a photography shoot is sometimes slightly fraught, as I am empty and exhausted by all I've given but ... I can flick in and out of photography without building a fire slowly.

I love that I will be 50 soon.  I love that I'm finally getting curious about who I am and what I do.  And I love that I have the opportunity to put together this photography exhibition and explore complicated things while knowing I need to keep the line through it simple and clear.  I love that I have to find the poem within the story... the few images that capture multiple layers.

But most of all, I love that yesterday, I finally understood that I need to create and protect the space where I write.  That I begin with a spark and build a fire. 

Mmmhmmm, only took me 49 years to learn this simple thing ...

Listening to Van Morrison's Into the Mystic today.  Working now ...

Permission.

... But when we give ourselves permission, we move past this. The world once again reveals itself to us. We become open and aware, patient and ready to receive it....We give ourselves permission because we are the only ones who can do so.

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro.

I love catching up with the wise words of Terri Windling via her blog, Myth & Moor.  She's a soul-soother somehow.

Meanwhile, I completely agree with the concept of time.   Something beautiful always emerges out of taking the time to play ... some of the best art, or the beginning of a series idea.

Needless to say, I'm missing Genova.  Here's an imperfect glimpse, taken between the portrait shoots I was doing for my book.

Creativity

This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.

Jessica Olien, extracts from her article, Inside the Box - People don't actually like Creativity.

 

Who Does She Think She Is - a documentary

I found a link to this over at the Creativity and Women site and followed it to this website called 'Who Does She Think She Is?' ... a documentary was made.

That question, it has had so much power.  It can be said with so much venom/distaste/disgust/disapproval ...keeping women, very powerfully, in their place.

Have a look, I think it's marvellous.

Creative People ...

Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliability measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

Scott Barry Kaufman

I enjoyed this.  Loved the idea that there are 'creativity reasearchers'.  And that I might actually have all these contradictions going on.

In a world that prizes labels, I just couldn't work out how to frame myself.  I might just stop with that framing nonsense now , and get on with the 'being' stuff.

Truth, by Justine Musk.

I am enjoying wandering through this woman's website, reading her ideas about writers and creativity and women and all kinds of other interesting things.

She caught me with this one tonight, part 3 of 'why you need to write like a bad girl'.

‘Honesty’ is one of the traits that psychologist and creativity specialist Eric Maisel lists as being key parts of the successful artist’s personality (the others, in case you’re curious: intelligence, introspective stance, empathy, self-centeredness, self-direction, assertiveness, resiliency and nonconformity).

“Standing apart, holding your own counsel, attuned to both the beautiful and the moral, you are the one able and willing to point out the naked emperor, the stench coming from the closet, the starvation right around the corner, the colors of the far mountains as the eye really sees them.

Artists ...

Artists are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime....
Every day, artists face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again.
Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every role, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg.
Why? Because artists are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that line, that laugh, that gesture, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Artists are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another's heart.
In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.
David Ackert


Food for Thought Regarding the Current State of our Education Systems ... & a short piece on Passion

I couldn’t not share this over here ... This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin award.
Click here for more information on Sir Ken’s work.

But I loved this too ... Sir Ken was asked by the British newspaper, the Observer, to contribute a 280 word piece on passion to the regular series on Life Lessons.
Here it is:
Make the most of whatever it is that floats your boat…

It was Jeremy Bentham, I believe, who said there are two types of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types and those who do not. Well, these days I do. On the one hand, I’m constantly surprised by how many people settle for so little fulfilment in their lives, who endure their lives rather than enjoy them. On the other, I know people who simply love what they do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. “This isn’t what I do,” they say, “this is who I am.” There are people in every walk of life for whom this is true: people who are in their element. Being in your element involves doing something for which you have a natural aptitude. But it’s more than that: it’s about passion. You have to love it, too.

Passion can be a disconcerting idea in Britain, conjuring up images of fiery glances, pounding hearts and a hint of castanets. It’s not always like that. Passion is a deep attraction. It can be for someone else or for a process: music, maths, cooking, sport, entrepreneurship, teaching… whatever fires your imagination and stokes your energy. We all have different aptitudes and we have unique passions. The challenge is to find them because it’s in the fusion of both that we live our best lives.

 

An original meaning of “passion” is to suffer or endure, as in the Passion of Christ. Its modern meanings have evolved to include love, attraction and pleasure. Finding our own element is also a journey from endurance to enjoyment. It’s a vital step, too, in moving from being one type of person to being the other type.

Pearl S. Buck, Creative Minds

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off…

They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.
Pearl S. Buck