After listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's talk on creative genius at the TED talks this year I am contemplating the dangers of being an artist and in participating in creative life. There is a certain pressure on artists, especially post-successevent of some sort. The role of criticism to stifle artistic expression seems dangerous, but that is not where the danger lies. It is the willingness to expose oneself to the muse, only the muse is a daemon or genius or genie who may or may not have the artist's interests at heart.
3/7/09: It strikes me that creativity poses danger because to do something new is to be unfettered by the rules that keep us safe. The first time I ice skated in an indoor rink, I went really fast as I learned the cross over step and then promptly smashed into a wall that appeared to come at me with blinding speed. As I spent more time at the rink, I learned to take speeds and alternate them for more control. I could not have entertained my skating genie without learning about speed, but I got bruised along the way. The thing thing occurred with skiing and several other sports.
Taking off the filter for safety opens doors to the new, but training to be able to recover seems to be the only way, lacking an overseer or mentor, to allow for new learning that also invites a lack of safety. This seems closely related to trying the same trick multiple times while expecting differing results - the common description of madness.
I will add to this over time.
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Some excellent talks hosted on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design Forum).
"Ole to you for continuing to show up." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"A near death experience is good for creativity." -Amy Tan
"Some stories haunt me until I write them." -Isabelle Allende
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4 comments:
Creativity is dangerous. In part that is what makes it so stimulating, life asserting, exploratory, as well as potentially dangerous.
Write on, please.
"It's Frankensteinian -- an attempt to create a wonderful monster out of our dead bodies! Sure, we need a muse, but we've got to get it under the whip or all hell breaks loose." --Del Close, quoted in the Preface to Jeff Griggs's _Guru_.
Maybe the time has come to let all hell break loose. To go for "it," rather than just go with the flow--what ever that "flow" may be....
Tides do turn.
Under what whip? Whose whip? What for?
Clever. Any chance for some expansion here?
Lest you doubt, I am not talking full anarchy.
I don't know whether the "all hell" you're thinking of might not be entirely salutary, Donna, but Del's hell was widely reputed to be a mean, nasty place...and he's said to have vented it often upon the innocent and unsuspecting
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