Having Genius vs. Being Genius

My experience of giving birth to a creative work typically includes long stretches of concerted effort punctuated by periods of both blissful rapture and excruciating despair. In the video below, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert shares some thought-provoking insights on how we might reframe our perception of the creative process to reduce its personally-destructive aspects.

Art and Ego

I feel best when my creative expression is a private dance between me and my emerging work. The intimacy of the process and the authenticity of the eventual work is diminished when my attention is drawn to an imagined audience. Twyla Tharp shares a few thoughts on the topic in this brief video clip.

Consuming and Creating

Breathing in. Breathing out. Simple physical pleasures an AI cannot enjoy. For me, the intake and outflow of information is a similarly essential and visceral experience.

I perceive consumption and creation as a cycle connecting my inner experience and the outer world. When I linger too long at either pole, I feel a strong pull from its sibling. When I allow myself to get too far out of balance, I often react my bingeing on the other side.

Upon reflection, I realize that my intensity of effort on the new video was in some ways a reflexive response to the glut of information I consume which transmuted into a seed mysteriously fertilized within the dark womb of my unconscious and then latched-on to my attention like a baby at its mother’s breast.

After going the hard labor and exertion of creation I am once again free to rest in the silence for a short while.