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| Art by the wonderful Macha Suzuki (via Sam Lee Gallery). For more of Macha's work: www.machasuzuki.com |
Pardon me; may I please borrow your brain?
I’m currently developing ideas for a series of creativity workshops. I’ve been thinking recently about the relationship between fear and creativity. To that end, I wanted to invite you to answer a couple of questions, in the comments below.
As an artist, writer, or creative thinker, what are your fears? Do your fears inhibit your work, or are they useful to you? What allows you to overcome nervousness, worry, embarrassment, or fear in order to create?
(My answers can be found here and here and here [this poem was initially inspired by the beautiful piece above]).
Thank you Hannah for sharing your fears (on April the 13th day!), and making me think about mine. My first one is that I have completely wasted my life on something that has no value to anybody else, and in fact must be hidden from the view of others because one would be (and has been) thought insane. The second, somewhat related, fear, is that the only readership/comradeship/support one is likely to find as a poet is through other poets, a fact remarked upon by Matt Groening in an old Life in Hell strip as “How do you torment a poet? Be another poet.” Third, in thinking about my secrecy about this whole affair, I’m reminded of what John Ashbery said at last year’s National Book Awards: “When they ask what you do, it’s fine to say you’re a writer if you’re a writer. But what if you’re a poet? You would never say that you are a poet, out of fear that your interlocutor would get up and leave the room. It sounds like you’re conferring value on yourself. You can’t be a poet who calls himself or herself a poet without leaving open the possibility that you’re a bad poet.”
ReplyDeleteI used to be afraid of using up or running out of good ideas or good imagery and then spending the rest of my life trying to get back to a place where I could make excellent work again. I saw some famous photographers who fit that model.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hit a time of my life when I was not making good artwork, I stopped trying to make work at all, figuring it would or would not come back again. When I did start to create again, I did so without the previous fear, or even preconceptions over what "good" work was, freeing me to try even seemingly ridiculous stuff like making serious art about flowering trees. That lack of a filter, lack of fear has allowed me to develop some of the best work that I have ever made.
In general my greatest fear is that we're destroying the planet, that feeds into quite a lot of my work too. As a writer my greatest fear is to not be recognised / appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThank you H. And thanks W. for insightful comments. My fears of late as a novelist whose novel is delayed by other stories and trying to earn a coin (and trying to make the novel as good as I can) is not having time to render all the works inside me. Because I have a lot of ideas I have a lot in the air, unfinished and that gnaws at me. Writing for me has its highs but is also boring and time consuming. The fear is risking time on one work when perhaps one should be doing another one. The fear is years spent on a piece of poor value. My children's book which I will put out on the kindle soon is a good story but has many failings. I spent years on it in trying times. So for me the fear is: am I devoting time to the wrong thing? I know I've got stories, but really am I a rubbish writer?
ReplyDeleteI also spent years song-writing. Nothing really came of it but bitterness at time wasted.
Yes, to refer to W. above you have to accept being rubbish. In a perfect world you'd know that someone had benefited from your rubbish by learning what not to do or knowing that you at least provided a spark; but who owns ideas in themselves... and they cross-pollinate anyway.
But you do what you do chiefly because you love your field and the immersion though it be sole to a work is also part of a sea of other works so in that sense the joy is drawing from the inspiration of the Tolstoys, the Dostoyevskys, the Eliots, the Dylans.
To die before I feel I've done my best. Or, worse, that it's already too late. These are the new fears, but they're more or less under control ;-)
ReplyDeleteI love what is being said here. Especially about time...I think of that famous poem by Wright, with its crashing final line (it's a quiet crash, which makes it harder):
ReplyDeleteLying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
By James Wright
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
--
Also something about trying to figure out what is good/bad....the underlying suspicion that we are bad/mediocre.
I'm loving these answers, and am hungry for more....
The only thing I fear is death and regret. So I try to write a little, paint a little, sew and knit, cook and love and breath the air in spring and most of all I am kind to myself and I have no expectations. The experience of writing is so mysterious to me, I have no idea where it comes from and so I turn off the negative voices in my head and see where it takes me. I am no better, I an worse, I just am.
ReplyDeleteoooh gosh! I will need to ponder this and get back to you...
ReplyDeletethea.
xx
My biggest fear is being--or appearing--unskilled. That fear pushes better work, so I like it.
ReplyDeleteHannah: My response is at http://albertbcasuga.blogspot.com/2012/04/his-private-grief.html
ReplyDeleteMy particular dread, of course, is when I've lost all my wits about me. Meantime, I create in my raise against time and the inexorable. I will win yet. I think.
Should read: "Race against time..." and gremlins like this.(See what I mean? Raise/Race, of course, is an example of my race against the inexorable if I lived to be a 100. :(
ReplyDeleteAre you the devil, Hannah? Well, probably not. I could almost say ditto to what the others have written (plus your “Pressing Ghosts”) and call it a day; but I’ll flail away. For me it’s fear of failure, which I might define as looking stupid, trite, sappy, or at the other end, cold, soul-less, judgmental, illogical, forced, and all the cousins of all those bugaboos.
ReplyDeleteFear and anxiety make me look harder at what I’ve written, often causing yet another revision. But sometimes I like end products I’ve made and remember that others have too. (I’m not at all fan of those who claim they don’t care what others think; in fact, I don’t believe them. If you really don’t care, why are you showing it around? In order to save humanity?). But I also remember keenly the dead ends and stinkers, hence anxiety and a sense of looming defeat. But But But.
What allows me to overcome the negative emotions and thoughts? What else am I going to do? Give up? Wonder forever what might have happened had I kept trying? Also, for the most part, I do like the process, moving words around—which moves experiences, images, thoughts, emotions. Also, there is again that minority of end products that remain satisfying—that’s quite a motivation. Writing and maybe photography are the only ways I feel like a maker, and I respect making.
So another big fear/worry is appearing like we don't know what we are doing while we are making...so that we are not talented/skilled/smart/cool (I added "cool"--I'm not a very cool person!).
ReplyDeleteIf we succeed even once, we give ourselves room to fail every time after that...interesting.
I am irrationally afraid of ruining a good story by writing it. They sit there perfectly in my head, and then sometimes, SOMETIMES they fall to pieces when they are manifested. It's as though my words are not strong enough for the visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
ReplyDeleteI am also afraid of time, because I have so little of it to write lately. But I use that as a crutch, which is a shame. I need to work on that.
do i say anything at all that matters? do i say it in a remotely decent way?
ReplyDeleteand then i remind myself that i am only trying to live my best life. this is what i am doing. who is anyone to judge this, my living? judgement has no basis in reality, not in the framework of living well and so i am free and so i live and walk and feel and try to pay attention and write.
xo
erin