I spontaneously grabbed my alto recorder the other night while my daughter was playing in the bath. Since then, it’s become a habit for me to jam while she has splashing time. It’s maybe 15 minutes in the day, while my creations reverberate around the tiled concert hall that is the bathroom. My daughter, who’s a fast learner, has realised she can negotiate for more time by requesting “one more song”…and almost always gets it. 

It got me thinking about those art forms that drop out of our life when we are busy and intent on keeping our “primary” art form going. 

I earn my living writing and doing other creativity work. It’s also a huge part of my identity, so usually when I have pockets of time, that is where I invest it. In my dogmatic insistence that the pressures of the “real world” are not going to stop me writing, I have had to let other things go, sometimes consciously, sometimes inadvertently.  

Music is one of the casualties. I don’t earn money from it, and have no particular aspirations or dreams associated with it. There have been times in my life when I have performed, and others when I have gone for long periods with any kind of audience. I rarely talk about it, and am often quite happy not to be at all public with it. Occasionally, I am surprised to learn that that there are people in my life who don’t know that I am a musician, although there’s no reason why they would. It’s just so much part of who I am that it doesn’t occur to me to mention it. 

I hadn’t realised how much I had missed it. For me, playing connects me back to that experience of art and creativity that is just pure joy. It isn’t linked to my income, my vision for the future or how other people see me. It doesn’t “move me forward”. It doesn’t come up in coaching sessions, never appears on my to do list, and has no reason to appear on my business card. I’m not particularly concerned with how “good” I am, and it doesn’t elicit huge insecurities or anxieties.

What it does do is ground me, bring me closer to myself and adds meaning to my day. And for some reason, it can be easy to forget how important those things are. In fact, in terms of “artistic spirit,” it’s kind of like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 

What about you? Are there other art forms that feed your soul, are meaningful to you, or just plain fun that have got lost while you were busy protecting your “primary” art form? What baby steps could you take towards reintroducing them into your life? 

It has become annoyingly commonplace to hear about cuts to arts funding, especially in schools, as if arts-training is a quaint luxury that is fun and everything but bears no relationship to the real world and has no bearing on either culture or education. It certainly has nothing to do with our aspirations for the future of our society. 

Over the weekend, I had the privilege of attending a performance of Circus West – a local circus troupe in Vancouver for young circus performers, including kids, teenagers and young adults. It was a fantastic experience: riveting, engaging and beautiful. It had the full theatricality and magnificence of a professional circus performance, with just enough mistakes and gaffes to remind us that what the performers are doing is REALLY difficult and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

And although I happily allowed myself to be in awe of the many (and there were many) examples of brilliant athleticism and magical beauty, I was also interested in watching the performers’ discipline, the “rules” that were governing the performance and that even the youngest performers had mastered. Here are some of the rules of engagement I noticed:

Keep your body warmed up, and your brain turned on. 

Practice, practice and practice and then be ready to improvise.

Be willing to trust, but only with people who are trustworthy.

When you know you’re going to fall, figure out where to land so that you don’t bring everyone else down with you.

Know that sometimes you’ll be in the spotlight and sometimes you’ll just sit on the edge of the mat and respectfully witness someone else’s brilliance.

On the rare occasions when you fall completely flat on your face, have the courage and good sense to abort the attempt and get the hell out of there…and then get ready for your next entrance.

When someone throws something into your act that you weren’t prepared for, either incorporate it or calmly put it to one side without a fuss.

Respect what you can do; work on what you can’t.

Don’t let your mistake upstage someone else’s fantastic moment.

When you lose your balance, make small adjustments until you find it again (you may have to dismount and start again).

It may not work the first time….or the fifth. Stay calm and be persistent.

Know when to catch someone as they fall and know when to just get out of their way.

Extend yourself – literally – further than you thought possible.

When you do something spectacular, take a moment to stop and receive the applause you have earned.  

Don’t expect applause when you fall…but know that the applause you receive when you get back up again and finish will be worth the wait.

Know when to work in a team and when to step forward for your solo.

If it doesn’t work, figure out a different way to do it.

You may not be able to see them, but chances are good that there’s someone in the wings waiting to help you if you need it.

When you fall, wait patiently at the side until you see an opportunity to join back in. 

Be safe, but take risks. Take risks, but be safe.

Pay attention.

Embrace possibility. 

Have fun.

There are probably many others.

If you had to come up with a list of “life lessons” we as a society might want to teach our teenagers before they become fully fledged adults, this list would be a pretty good start, don’t you think? I dunno about you, but I’d be pretty reluctant to try to put a dollar amount on this kind of education. Which bits would you cut? 

I’m speaking today at the BCreative Conference on the principles of deliberate creativity. Should be an interesting group of people coming together to discuss the future of the creative industries in BC. 

I started writing the manuscript “The Pragmatic Artist” (the predecessor to this blog) when I became a parent. How was I going to juggle work, home, bills, family and my creative projects? Was it the end of my creative life as I knew it? Would I ever write again? 

It looks like I’m going to be revisiting some of those fears in the next few months because…I am in the process of becoming a parent for the second time! My partner and I are expecting another baby in November. 

How on earth am I going to keep my creative life alive with TWO kids?

There will be ample time to figure that out. In the meantime, I’m celebrating that I have a wonderful new “creative project” to nurture and couldn’t be happier. :) 

When people think about grief for a creative, they often think of the clichéd path where multiple rejections pre-empt uproarious success, that elegant pas de deux between art and rejection that is told only later, as a mark of true accomplishment. We all have long mental inventories of very famous people who got rejected countless times before finding an appreciative audience for their work. This is the foundation upon which our creative mythology is built.

(I remember when I was 14 and I got my first rejection – I leapt around the kitchen yelling in joy, “Mum! Mum! I got rejected! I’m a real writer!)

But there are other kinds of grief that can haunt us as artists too. These “creative injuries” are often kept silent for years, even decades, before coming up almost accidentally in conversation with a creativity coach or close friend. And because they are often not talked about, we don’t expect them, aren’t ready for them when they show up, and greet them with more than a dose of shame or embarrassment.

After all, how do we admit to creative injuries without exposing our own cavernous inadequacies and deficiencies?  When there is war and suffering in the world, how can you justify grieving over your art? When there are people mourning the death of their loved ones, how can we see creative loss as legitimate?

And so the grief seeps into our souls. It metamorphizes into creative ‘blocks,’ crippling us as we try to embark on creative marathons with one foot tied behind our knees.

The artist who has no new ideas may not realise that he still grieving the fact that they spelled his name wrong on the latest round of publicity posters. The writer who is perpetually exhausted may not see the link to the grief about the agent who sat on her work for 14 months and then rejected her. The sculptor who can’t finish a project may not acknowledge that she doesn’t see the point since her favourite gallery rarely shows female artists. 

Here are some others. Do you recognize any of them?

·         The grief of putting a beloved piece out in the world and having it rejected…300 times

·         The grief of finding that an entire industry you have devoted your life to learning has changed right beneath your nose

·         The grief of hitting those milestone birthdays and not achieving the dreams you have always dreamed

·         The grief of being “unfriended” on Facebook by a manager who used to think your work was hot

·         The grief of finding your work posted online without your permission

·         The grief of seeing an inferior piece of work receive huge acclaim, while your own lies unacknowledged

·         The grief of seeing that your work in reality does not match the work as it is in your  mind’s eye

·         The grief of learning that the next generation hasn’t even heard of you

·         The grief of putting your heart and soul into a work only to find that you bore yourself

·         The grief of receiving a major award for a project you don’t care about, while the work that has the most meaning to you languishes without recognition

·         The grief of believing that you have finally “made it” only to discover that you are only as good as your last project

·         The grief of discovering that the words “opportunity” and “acclaim” are just euphemisms for “more hard work”

·         The grief of discovering that you are burnt-out, working is painful and you’re not sure if you will ever feel human again

·         The grief of discovering that behind every door you open is another one for which you don’t yet have the key

·         The grief of discovering that after thirty years of working at your art, you are less well known than a 20 year old who has appeared on a reality TV show and who isn’t even that good

·         The grief of seeing with new eyes just how unfair the world is

·         The grief of losing ten years of work in a basement flood

·         The grief of realising that nobody is going to be writing your biography

·         The grief of finding that something that meant the world to you no longer has any meaning

·         The grief of realising that “copyright” does not protect your life’s work

·         The grief of handing your work over to amateurs who don’t know how to make it sing

·         The grief of taking the plunge to open your own business, only to have to close the doors six months later

·         The grief of being laughed at when you were being serious

·         The grief of considering the possibility that you might not be the one in a million

None of these things are the end of the world, as much as they feel like it at the time. Like all feelings, they are not deal breakers, if we have the chance to look them in the eye and stare them down. And grieve them. 

 But mostly, we don’t do that. We pretend that they don’t matter to us, or shouldn’t matter to us, or only mattered to us when we were “young and foolish,” or at the very least don’t matter to anyone else, and so they fester. And then, instead of being emotions that we pass through on the way to something else, they start to define us, even as we continue to ignore them.

So whether you identify as an artist or just “wish you were one,” my question today is: what are your creative injuries? What have they cost you?   

And how are you going to grieve? 

I always think that great examples of creativity evoke great reactions. Recently, I saw the movie Hugo. There were times when I wanted to sigh happily, times when I wanted to shout out, “Yes, that’s it!,” times when I wanted to stand in my seat and shout, “Bravo!! Fantastic!!” and times when I wanted to throw popcorn at the screen, and rewrite the script. 

Hugo is the story of an orphaned young boy who keeps the clocks of a Parisian train station going. He is left an “automaton” by his diseased father, but is missing the key, so he embarks on a journey to find it and discover what the automaton is trying to tell him. He is lead to Isabelle – the owner of the key - and to “Papa Georges” – Isabelle’s adopted father and a prolific retired film maker, and Mama Jeanne – Isabelle’s adopted mother and a prolific retired actress.

I should say upfront that I think it is an absolutely brilliant movie, with a beautiful vision and wonderful execution. It has in fact, become one of my all-time favourite films. It’s a magnificent testament to the power of the imagination.

This is why I had the reactions I had:

The “sighing happily” moment

When the kids are introduced to new art forms. Hugo introduces Isabelle to film – which she has never seen (for reasons that become clear as the plot unfolds), and Isabelle introduces Hugo to a wonderful second-hand bookshop. There are some beautifully inspirational moments that capture what it is like to be a kid when you come across a new art form for the first time, and that little “o” of wonder on your face as your mouth drops open. It’s easy, I think, when you’re working in your art form day in, day out to forget what that’s like, and I really appreciated the reminder that art is, in its essence, the creation of magic.  

The “Yes, that’s it!” moment

The film explores many themes around what it is to imagine, create, and be an artist. One of my favourite was the idea that, if you are an artist who is not creating art, you feel “broken.”The automaton is broken because it cannot draw, and the filmmaker, character Papa Georges, describes feeling broken because he has stopped making films. This idea of feeling broken perfectly captured those feelings that many artists have described to me – and that I have felt myself – in the absence of meaningful art-making.

The bravo moment

I love to applaud brilliant ideas, and whoever decided to film this in 3D made a brilliant choice. At first it’s no more than a gimmick – the audience ducks when something gets thrown, and pulls back when a vicious dog comes hurtling towards them. But then we start to see the resonances with the plot and themes. We are introduced to the early days of film-making, and repeatedly shown the footage of an audience reacting to some of the first moving images – a train coming into the station. This unsophisticated, naïve audience is shown screaming and trying to get out of the way because they feel that the train is going to run them over. Laughable, now - it’s just a movie! So how can a sophisticated modern cinema audience possibly understand what that was like for those early audiences? By experiencing the movie in 3D and having very similar reactions to those early audiences. Brilliant! Bravo!

The throwing popcorn moments

As much as I enjoyed the movie, I did have one real beef with it, and that is how the story of Mama Jeanne is told. In my opinion, her story is even more tragic than her husband’s, because no one seems to recognize that she, too, is an artist who is not creating. She is an actor who believes her life’s creative work to have been destroyed, and cannot even tell Isabelle – her daughter – about her identity as an artist. But the movie’s pivotal interest is on the broken figure of her husband and his lost art, and Mama Jeanne (the fact that I can’t remember her real name speaks volumes) is put in the position of having to protect him from painful memories. I was hoping to see her regain her creative strength at the end of the movie, when all the wrongs are righted and all the loose ends tied up, but sadly, the final scenes just make her story all the more tragic – while her husband stands up on stage and is recognized publically for his contributions to film-making (the lost reels having been recovered), Mama Jeanne is forced to watch from the audience, the proud wife, and clap proudly. I got the distinct feeling that we, as the audience, were supposed to feel that everything was all right again, but I couldn’t help thinking, “What about HER??!! What about HER art? What about HER lost creative identity??!!!”

All told, though, there are many reasons to love this movie, especially if you are interested in the role that the imagination, vision, creativity and art play in our lives. Final reaction: Bravo. 

I’ve been thinking this week about what it means to create “in the middle of things.” You know, for those of us who aren’t about to have the chance to spend six months in solitude on a desert island to finish a project (or have no desire to do so.) I always love hearing examples of how people have worked out ways to keep their art “close” no matter what they’re doing. Some of my favourites:

- the artist who kept a colour wheel in the bathroom so that while she was bathing her kids, her mind could be mulling over the colours for her next project

- the writer who wrote an entire short story on her cell phone walking to work

- the composer who left melodies on his voice mail so that he could capture them later, when he “had time”

- the sculptor who kept play dough in her pocket so that she could always move her hands

- the graduate student who wrote an entire funding proposal on a 2 inch notebook on the bus

- the photographer who always found herself without her expensive camera, and so built a career on the photos she captured on her mobile phone

- the painter who set up a child-sized easel next to his own so that his daughter would be happily occupied while he was working

- the playwright who lurks in public washrooms with a notebook in hand to capture nuggets of dialogue

- the entrepenueur who develops ideas on the back of napkins in coffee shops

What do you do to keep your creative projects top of mind when you’re in the “middle of things”?

P.S. I am not suggesting that these things replace more committed time to art - or that we use them to dissipate creative energy - but just that they can help us to keep our projects in our minds so that when we do “turn up to them” it doesn’t take so long to get back into the right headspace. They are not replacements for other kinds of creative time.

Occasionally, I do a good impersonation of a tormented artist, usually when I’m stuck on a creative project. “I don’t want to work! What’s the point?” I wail. “Who cares anyway? This is so stupid.” And then, as I ramp up, “Why do I do this to myself?” My partner looks at me with affection, and replies calmly, “Because it matters to you. You’ll figure it out.”

For a long time, I have turned to the work of Eric Maisel when I am struggling with this kind of creative angst. Whether I’m reading The Van Gogh Blues, Mastering Creative Anxiety, Coaching the Artist Within, or Creativity for Life, I find comfort in Eric’s down-to-earth, pragmatic approach. He takes it for granted that creatives will experience these moments and reassuredly offers advice for getting through it. He reminds me that I am not alone in sometimes needing a nudge towards what matters to me. 

He brings this same touch to his latest book, Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning. He takes a big, hairy monster like depression, and alchemizes it with his particular brand of no-holds-barred realism (“Existence is the mother of all cold showers. Whether it is frostbite in Siberia or malaria in the Sudan, a difficult childhood or a lonely adolescence, bills piling up or your self-esteem plummeting, you will have plenty of reality with which to reckon”) and matter-of-fact solidarity (“Never — not once — am I going to say that you are not experiencing whatever it is that you may be experiencing. Never — not once — am I going to say, “Just cheer up!”)

I am delighted to welcome Eric today as my special guest, to discuss what all of this might mean for our creative lives. 

The Medicalization of Depression 

In the first part of the book, Eric – who is also a licensed psychotherapist – takes issue with much of what is going on in the mental health profession, arguing that normal human emotions such as sadness and unhappiness have become pathologized and given labels that come with corresponding drug treatments. He argues that the label of depression is largely a fiction, not because drugs can’t change emotional experiences, but because the underlying causes for the unhappiness remain untouched.

Take a stand; Live an Authentic Life

In the second part, he offers a step-by-step guide to tackling the existential causes of unhappiness. “The experience of unhappiness is not one you want to prolong or, if you can help it, repeat,” Eric says. “How to avoid that? Work your existential program. You take as much control as possible of your thoughts, your attitudes, your moods, your behaviors, and your very orientation toward life and turn your innate freedom into authentic living.” And he offers a way to do that.

Living authentically, for Eric, means organizing your life around your answers to three core questions.

• What matters to you?
• Are your thoughts aligned with what matters to you? 
• Are your behaviours aligned with what matters to you?

It is up to each of us, he argues, to create our own meaning – to take off the blinkers that make us believe that meaning is something waiting to be found, to stare reality in the face, and to build a life we want to live.

Eric – thank you so much for being my guest today and for being the catalyst for some wonderful food for thought. It’s great to have the chance to chat with you.  

One of the things I’m very interested in is how you don’t dismiss the “realities” of life. You acknowledge that it’s unrealistic to expect to feel great meaning every second of every day, and you don’t claim that your program is a solution to unhappiness. As you say, many people have very real reasons for feeling unhappy with the universe and their place in it and you argue that grappling with those realities is an important part of making meaning.

In terms of those realities, though, I know many people who would say that they would love to live a life that is personally meaningful to them, but feel that they are stymied by the responsibilities and duties of their everyday lives – parenting and family responsibilities, the need to earn money, lack of time, negotiating a disability, and so on. When they can barely keep up with the laundry, making meaning seems impossible. What would you say to them?

Eric: Meaning is a subjective psychological experience and you can nurture and influence that experience whatever your life circumstances. There is no necessary relationship between living a life of difficulty and living a life without meaning. In fact, people with too much ease often have the hardest time keeping meaning afloat. You make value-based meaning, despite of and in your exact circumstances, by making daily meaning investments and by seizing meaning opportunities as they arise. Anyone who cares to do this can.

Your main argument in the book is that we are responsible for creating our own meaning. Do you see this quest for meaning as being something that is easier or more relevant at certain ages, for example later in life? What advice might you give to someone who was just starting out in their creative career and trying to work out what creative work to invest in?

Eric: Let me begin by saying that there is no quest for meaning: meaning is not something that you seek; rather it is something that you make. I don’t know that it is harder or easier at any particular time of life, as we may have less experience early on but also fewer disappointments, more experience later on but also more infirmities, and so on. It is always not easy, whether you are young or old, because making meaning is a real effort and real effort is not easy. As to what creative work to invest in, that must be a personal, idiosyncratic choice.

Many artists and authors shy away from tackling work that is controversial, yet you make quite a few claims in your book that are highly contentious, especially in relation to the mental health profession. How did you find the courage to write this book? Do you worry about people being angry at you?

Eric: No, I don’t worry about people being angry with me. I don’t look forward to it but I am not worried about it. I do the books I feel need doing and I take telling the truth (of course, as I see it) as a principle I want to uphold. After you’ve taken on all manner of gods, as I did in The Atheist’s Way, taking on mental health professionals and pharmaceutical companies in this book is a piece of cake!

Quotable Quotes

It’s all very well to say that we should make our own meaning, but how do we actually do that? Eric offers very specific advice across a broad spectrum of existential, cognitive and behavioral categories. Here are some of my favourite parts of Rethinking Depression. 

You Focus on Meaning Rather Than Mood

“One decision that an existentially aware person makes is to focus on making meaning rather than on monitoring moods. If you pester yourself with the question, “How am I feeling?” you create unhappiness. If the question you pose yourself instead is, “Where should I invest meaning next?” you live more authentically.”

I’ve never been a big believer in mood. It’s so easy just to say “I’m not in the mood” whenever we face a creative challenge, and magically we’re off the hook. Not having to monitor our moods leaves a lot more time to work!

You Reckon with the Facts of Existence 

“The world is not built to accommodate you. Your favorite bakery may close, or war may break out — from the smallest to the largest, the facts of existence are exactly what they are. They include pain and pleasure, loyalty and betrayal, life and death. And they include your formed personality. All this you learn to navigate as best a human being can.”

I love this. You reckon with the facts of existence. You can mope and despair, but this is how it is; what are you going to do with it? No more waiting until everything is perfect before the journey begins. 

You Negotiate Each Day

“A day is a dynamic affair made up of meaning-making efforts and vacations from meaning. You choose your meaning opportunities, you repair meaning when it gets torn, and you accept the tedious, unrewarding, difficult bits with practiced maturity. Each day is a project requiring existential engineering skills as you bridge your way from one meaningful experience to the next.”

This isn’t a once-off, fix-everything program. Meaning shifts. It gets torn and needs repairing. Sometimes it’s tedious. But tomorrow’s a new day. Maturity is not something you reach, but something you practice. It makes it manageable, somehow. 

You Engage in Existential Self-Care

“Existential self-help consists of grounding yourself in a pair of realities: that life is exactly as it is and that you are obliged to keep your head up and make yourself proud. By accepting the realities of life and by asserting that you are the sole arbiter of the meaning in your life, you provide yourself with a sure footing as you actively make meaning.”

Brush teeth, read to kid, do dishes, write chapter, engage in existential self-care. Repeat. (“I know we’re running late, honey, but I still have to brush my hair and put on my pair of realities.”)

You Engage in Cognitive Self-Care

“We help ourselves make meaning and reduce our sadness by talking to ourselves in ways that support our intentions. We want our thoughts to provide us with hope, defuse our doubts, and settle our arguments with life. What we think is how we feel, and it is up to us to get a good grip on what we think.”

Like in any long-term relationship, we’re going to have arguments with life, and life won’t always fight fairly. We can learn to settle them. We can defuse our doubts, so they don’t explode all over us. That makes sense to me. Reality is what happens in our heads anyway. 

I see many creatives fall into the trap of believing that their life will have meaning later, perhaps when they hit the next milestone: publish the damn novel, finish that bloody sculpture, land the elusive dream job, win that stupid award - or when the particulars of their “real world”  - their jobs, their responsibilities, their housework - disappear. But this is a bit like staring at the eggs, flour, butter and sugar on the counter and complaining that you have no cake. 

Whether you identify with the depression label or not, agree with Eric’s analysis of the mental health profession or not, Rethinking Depression offers an alternative way of thinking about a meaningful life, one where YOU decide what matters. One where meaning is something that you don’t buy pre-packaged but make for yourself, from scratch. Definitely worth reading. 

Thanks for visiting Eric. It’s been great having you here.

You can see the rest of Eric Maisel’s blog tour for Rethinking Depression here.

Many artists I talk to are convinced that they would be able to finish their book/symphony/script/sculpture/painting/quilt and fulfil their artistic dreams if only they had an unlimited amount of money and no commitments. Until then, they argue, there’s no point in even starting.

Needless to say, most people never get a chance to test this hypothesis, not only for the obvious financial reasons but also because the pressures of the “real world” don’t actually go away.

Eric Maisel – author of 35 books on creativity, as well as a licensed psychotherapist – makes a similar argument in his latest book, Rethinking Depression, where he argues that existential pressures are here to stay as well:

“Why is it that so many lottery winners, after a brief period of euphoria, become unhappier than they were before winning the lottery? This happens because there is no lottery to win with regard to life. If you were an alcoholic before you won the lottery, you are still an alcoholic — albeit with a better-stocked liquor cabinet. If you were a cranky, critical, angry young man with a hefty sense of grandiosity and no willingness to do any real work, you are still that narcissist — probably even more so. If you wanted to create symphonies, occasionally tried, but invariably bored yourself with your efforts, you could now hire a symphony orchestra to play your music — and bore a concert hall full of people. Where is the change or improvement in any of that? 

This is what many lottery winners experience. If you weren’t living an authentic life before you won the lottery, an influx of money will provide you with the perfect opportunity to live just as inauthentically, or even more inauthentically. If you haven’t created yourself in your own best image, if you haven’t demanded of yourself that you strive to understand what matters to you, if you haven’t aligned your thoughts and behaviors with your intentions, an influx of money is just an opportunity to further refrain from stepping up to the plate.”

He argues that we cannot afford to rely on external things to give meaning to our lives, but that we must create meaning for ourselves, embrace the fact of human unhappiness and sadness, and give up our expectation that mental health professionals can solve these problems for us.

You may be wondering how to start. Is meaning really so important? Isn’t it a lot of work? And how on earth does one create an “authentic life” when one is busy fighting the monsters under one’s child’s bed, ironing clothes for work the next morning, and frantically trying to find just half an hour to devote to one’s creative work?  

Eric Maisel will be making a guest appearance here tomorrow to answer these questions and more. Stay tuned!