Creative
Magic
“I
should explain at this point that I’ve spent my entire life in devotion to
creativity, and along the way I’ve developed a set of beliefs about how it
works—and how to work with it—that is entirely and unapologetically based upon
magical thinking…Because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a force of
enchantment—not entirely human in its origins.”
Elizabeth
Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, p.34; Riverhead Books, 2015)
From
time to time, I come back to Elizabeth Gilbert and Big Magic, because it feels
like she wrote this book from inside my head. Creativity, in my experience, is
not a “thinking function” sort of thing. Thoughts and ideas, sometimes images or
fragments of poetry, come floating through the ether and pass through my head
like trains in the night. For me, this is usually in those few minutes when I wake
up but have not yet moved. Like fragments of a dream, images are trailing away
as consciousness dawns, and if I can grab hold of them before they disappear, they
are mine. Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching
for willing human partners.” (p.35) Since we are such a rational society,
and any time I say something like that, it’s referred to as “nano-nano,” (or
worse), I try to find other ways of explaining it.
But the
truth is, as any artist or fiction writer will tell you, that’s how ideas come—from
elsewhere. (Even Einstein acknowledged this mystical truth.) I try to use science-based
explanations such as, it’s the neurons on the right side of the brain firing
and creating images—the right side is the one that sees whole pictures. The left
side assesses sequences that make up the whole, but right gets the whole
picture at once. What I have found to be true is this: if I can get out of the
way with my skepticism, the idea will take root and send up a little shoot showing me how to begin.
Since
we have inherited an enormous amount of DNA from so many generations of human
beings, (my science-teacher-friend, Susan, says 30,000 generations) some of the
images we see are likely not from our personal history. They may be ancient,
archetypal, original. When we receive them, however, it is our responsibility
to render them as truthfully as possible. They may not make sense to us, but
that’s none of our business—our duty is to render them as close to the way they
appear in our vision as possible. An archetypal image does not belong to you,
or to me. It has visited us, but we do not own it, just as we do
not own the portion of a river flowing through our land, or the beach in front
of our property.
In the
same way, a fictional story does not belong to you—you are simply the recorder.
If you receive a story line, and dutifully jot it down, it will, independently,
begin filling in the blanks. It will define the characters, give them
personalities, and put dialog into their mouths. Your job is to faithfully write
what you are shown and do your best to stay out of the way.
Creativity
is magical, but then everything is if you believe it to be so. Reminds me of
Peter Pan and Pixie Dust—sprinkle some on you and then spread those wings and
fly straight on until morning. Second star to the left…
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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