Creativity is a total bitch.
I'm the third generation creative in my family and
it pre-dates even that because when my great aunt heard that I was going to
drama school she said "I've no idea where that notion has sprung from, but
the “others” were awful liars so it must be from them"
The others were my maternal grandmothers side of
the family. Including a great great great Uncle who moved from Shropshire to
America and built a railroad, which kept getting blown up.
My grandad was creative. An engineer all his life
he was also a poet and a writer who had a beautiful phrase plagerised. But I
won't take a walk down that memory lane just now.
My mum was a writer. Unpublished, she kept going
with submissions until Alzheimers crept into her brain and she couldn't string
a sentence together, let alone continue with her writing. Yet creativity still
kept trying and as I cleared her house I found many, many scraps of paper with
ideas and characters.
The problem with creativity and this is where I
know it's a little bitch is that it just won't leave you alone. Life for me had
been all about performance and expressing myself through acting until life took
over and so when I couldn't even try to perform, I wrote. Screenplays, dramas, a book, a sitcom another
screenplay, a play and on and on.
The ideas came and went and life put them on hiatus
and they'd fester but they never really went away. When I couldn't act or write
I'd sing, eventually only in my car because there was no singing allowed in the
house, but the car was fine.
The flip side of the bitch side of creativity is in
it's release and in it’s relentless pestering. It would be nice if it could
manifest in actual fact but as cruel as it is harbouring unembraced ideas
constantly, it's also in itself a joy.
This blog is a cathartic space to off load, stress,
fury, irritation and joy.
Ideas fill it and overwhelm it at times and instead
of just bawling my tear ducts raw, I can put it here in virtual space and
sometimes other people find a shared understanding. Creativity isn’t always art
or even approaching art, but it’s there, good or not and suppressing a creative
whisper is like trying to ignore a stone in your shoe, it’s maddening and
pointless.
But it’s also life affirming in many ways
That’s the most crucial and precious point of
creativity to me. Stronger than a political speech, or a sermon, creative
expression cuts straight to the meaning and the purpose of being alive.
To many, many millions discovering the shared truth
of existence, as baffling and terrifying, as it is joyous and engaging.
Creative expression can enrage and placate, can question and intrude in a way
that no other medium can. Irrespective of language, or perception creativity
through sung or spoken word, dance or sculpture, animation, film, music or
colour on canvass, either our own or others creativity is a companion to us all
on the path of life.
Whether we acknowledge this or not is another
matter, the creativity of those lucky enough to be paid to express it, is
everywhere. Technology ensures that the seemingly mutually exclusive
disciplines of art and science, can in fact dovetail to ensure accessibility to
all and new and inconceivable ways to bring creative visions to fruition.
Mum and grandad continued to express themselves
creatively, and for mum in the
early to middle stages of her Alzheimer’s, when she could no longer recall the
words she loved so much, she went art therapy classes and she learnt how to
paint.
Creativity waited, as it does to find a way
through.
I know for me the avenues are limited if not gone
entirely and the reality of realizing my own creativity is something I can’t
quite face. So creativity ensures, I remain optimistic, because it ensures I
have no choice.
Talent is not the net result of creativity, but
rather an end in and of itself. It doesn’t have to be good it just has to be
expressed.
As I said it’s a total bitch.
You express it beautifully every time you write your wonderful blog. You are very lucky to be so talented the words just seem to flow perfectly.
ReplyDeleteOh you are so lovely thank you. All love as ever, Nik xx
ReplyDeleteGreat piece Nicky, thanks.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great article, Nicky! You're a born writer, which is such a special gift. I wish I had half of your talent.
ReplyDeleteMaybe one day you could publish some of your mum's poems in her memory. What a wonderful tribute that would be.