On Creativity

As an artist, once you tap into your creativity you feel like you’ve got it. You’ve trapped lightning in a jar and carry it along in your pocket everywhere you go feeling secure that you possess something inalienable. The creativity beams through you, dashes down your veins, and you feel that you have ascended to a bright plane of enlightenment. And then one day you don’t notice that light anymore. The sky is gray and the trees are dead. You wonder what has happened and then you brush the jar of lightning in the bottom of your pocket. It’s been buried under receipts and fraying tissues, the glass is grimy and you can’t find the lightning inside anymore. Where did it go? The lid of the jar shakes lightly and you realize. In your carelessness you had let the lid get loose and the lightning had leaked out. It soaked through your pocket, and evaporated into the ether. Now what had been so prized has become full of crumbs and sticky on your jacket lining. How could you have let this happen? 

Well the process doesn’t happen overnight. It feels like that but it's because you don’t realize how much you’ve lost until it's gone. Each day the trials of life loosen the lid just a little bit. It’s a microscopic turn each time and you tell yourself that it's ok, you’re just tired. You’ll tighten up the lid again one of these days, maybe tomorrow, maybe next weekend. But you don’t and you forget. A bland, two-dimensional world emerges and you don’t know if you can learn how to see color ever again. 

And then you remember that all along you should have been tightening the jar. That tightening the jar was in fact more important than its contents. You can catch lightening again but without keeping the jar tight it will trickle away and you’ll always be chasing the strike. Luckily there are people out there that have already thought of how to keep lightning and when I stumbled upon my own empty jar this year I sought out one of these experts. 

A few years ago I received a copy of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. If you are a creative of any type you have probably come across this book at some point. For those unfamiliar, the Artist’s Way endeavors to heal people’s sense of creativity through 12 weeks of introspection and two main tasks: Morning Pages and Artist’s Dates. Morning Pages involves writing three pages each day. The pages can be about anything and they aren’t meant to be taken seriously. Once you have written your morning pages for the day you are to file them away and not re-read them. It’s about letting your creative consciousness run free without your inner-critic shutting you down before you even have ink on the page. Artist Dates on the other hand are dedicated weekly moments about nourishing your creative-self. They operate on the premise that without new input to your creative-self then you can’t create anything. 

When I first received this book I was at the beginning of my artistic journey. I had been painting for a little over a year at that point and thought I would try out the program to see what would happen. Parts of the book seemed unimportant to me- I wasn’t middle-aged, I hadn’t denied creative pursuits in favor of other careers. I was young and fresh with a world of possibilities ahead of me. Still, I followed the 12 weeks and ended up learning quite a lot about myself as well as built up enough creative steam to write the first draft of a book. The book never developed into anything but it gave me the kernel of hope that if I want to, I can in fact write 70,000+ continuous words and someday maybe I can complete another grand project.

Satisfied with my journey through the Artist’s Way I lent it to someone else and moved on with my life. My artistic endeavors had grown over the years and I was sure I had my creativity in the bag. And then after my most successful year in art yet, I lost it all. After pushing hard for months to develop an art career while simultaneously working a job that I care deeply about I was left steamrolled in an exhausted heap on the side of the road. I had transformed from a person who swam in the primordial ooze of wonder to a dulled husk. I felt blind and deaf and utterly unknowing of how to get my magic back. Earlier this month I decided enough was enough. I wanted my creativity back- I needed it back. I realized how integral to my sense of self it had become and now it felt like agony to live without it. 

At some point the Artist’s Way had made it back to my shelf and I flipped through it one morning. It was worth a shot so I started writing. The hardest part of doing the Artist’s Way when you have actually lost your creativity is that your writing isn’t spontaneous and full of transformative thoughts. Instead you drone on about work and the dreadfully over-discussed events of your life. It took me a full two weeks before I was able to break free of anxiety-spirals in my writing. The Artist’s Dates also posed a problem- what was I even to do with myself when I had spent nearly the entire past year of my life directed towards some concept of productivity? The idea of taking time for myself or even spending money on myself felt almost painful. I started out easy the first week and just spent a bit of time perusing art books until I found one about plein-air painting with artwork that struck a deeply submerged sense of awe inside of me. The next week, I broke out my embroidery materials and started working on a simple piece where I could use pretty colors. Last week I went for a walk with my camera at golden hour and watched spruces light up like candlesticks. After the walk I picked up my paints for the first time since November and decided to copy a couple of pieces I had found interesting on Pinterest. And I detected something that week- I was noticing again. The color of a shaded berm of grass along the road, the shape of a willow tree, the sunlight coming through my apartment window. The world that has always been there but was absolutely lost on me is coming back. 

Now dear reader, it seems rather self-serving of me but this blog is in fact part of the program. Writing this short essay is an Artist’s Date. I hope that besides just being useful for myself that you might have found this somewhat beneficial as well. Maybe you have come to realize just as I have that creativity isn’t nearly as nebulous as you think but something that can be nurtured and tended to like a growing seed in your garden. And in that, knowing how important it is to take care of the gardener just as much as the seed since one can’t survive without the other.