We are told that creatives must work as if they are lions: in great spurts of energy and intense focus when struck with inspiration. The rest of our time is to be spent on rest and reflection.
While this sounds logical and fitting for the irregularity of (divine) inspiration, I also wonder how much of this way of thinking about creative work is meant to keep a person from feeling terribly awful about themselves during the long periods in which they are producing nothing original.
I question this because aren’t we all having original thoughts every single day? And, if so, why can’t we write or create something pertaining to those thoughts every single day?
Is it because we don’t have enough time to create on a daily basis? And, if so, is our time being consumed by the habits and priorities we’ve been taught to idealize in a our capitalistic culture of nonstop work in order to attain visible signs of success in the way of monetary gain?
Following this line of thought, it makes sense that our superiors do not tell us to embody the work ethic of lions in our mundane jobs, that only applies to our personal creativity. With them, all of our energy is used to flip as many hamburgers as possible and sell tacky clothing to hurried, ill-mannered customers until we are left with no time or willpower to do anything meaningful when we return home each day. The people–CEOs, shareholders, etc.–at the top of companies, businesses, whatever, get our all so that we are left with nothing but a desire to sleep before starting over the next day. And the days after that. They profit off of us, and we know it, but we become too tired to fight it, to break the cycle, and become our own person.
So, realistically, we can’t be lions. We must be mules who make slow but steady progress–in our creative pursuits–until we have the luxury of behaving like lions.
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Hi Jordan Eve
Your thoughts about this issue of creativity in a capitalist society could not be more relevant. It’s more than fascinating to ponder all the techniques of mind (and spirit) control “The Machine” uses in order to turn everyone into cogs in the wheel. The last thing a capitalist system cares about is the personal fulfillment of the mass of its members, which is highly ironic since, without them, it can’t exist at all. Everyone has a creative side, not just creatives, although creatives probably suffer more than most when they are forced to endlessly labor at mind-numbing, meaningless tasks over and over again with no end in sight. Everyone suffers under such conditions, but to be a creative is by its very definition to be more sensitive spiritually than what Henry David Thoreau called “the mass of men” and women. I often take solace in the lives of poets like Wallace Stevens (insurance lawyer) and William Carlos Williams (doctor and pediatrician) who were able to work full-time jobs AND create huge bodies of work. On the other hand, times were very different then, and employees and workers were, often, not subjected to the same kinds of near-constant surveillance that they are now. As a doctor back then, Williams was able to make his own hours to a certain extent, and his office was in his own house. Medical doctors today, of any kind, in the USA, do not have that kind of freedom, at all. Thanks for interrogating this subject with your words. It goes straight to the heart of what society and creativity are all about. Real and true creatives these days are almost forced to act as spies in their own country, internal exiles who have to not believe in the system while often carrying too many of its burdens at the same time, just like everyone else! I think society MUST change and adapt itself to humanity more or there will be big trouble and collapse (even more than we already have), which will be change of a different kind. But the world, and real artists, will always go on no matter what…As Leila has pointed out, bad conditions often make for great artists…Because you start feeling like you don’t have a choice (to save yourself)…
Dale
PS
I also know from personal experience that not creating too much on the surface can just be a natural part of creation…it’s the soul getting itself ready for when the time will come…The most important thing in these fallow periods is to feed the soul in the right ways, with reading good books, studying good pictures, listening to good music, watching good films, etc. etc. etc. etc…
Hi Dale,
There are so many aspects to this. I have also thought that if we, as individuals, were more self-sufficient, we wouldn’t have to rely on other people for income–at least, not so much. I imagine that, on a very basic level, if we all had knowledge, motivation, whatever, to grow our own food, milk our own cow, raise our own chickens–all this for our own use–we wouldn’t have to buy these things at the grocery store. If we don’t have to be spending money at the grocery store, we wouldn’t have to be working a job we don’t like. I know I am oversimplifying things, but I am trying to say that that sort of work–work fulfilling our own needs–would make us feel much different. We may not have any more time on our hands, but I would imagine we’d feel less oppressed. And please don’t take my meaning wrong.I don’t mean to say we are oppressed now, but, to expand on your thoughts and my own, I do believe anyone who wants to really take advantage of their creative instincts would do much better when living a different lifestyle.
Dear Jordan Eve
You truly have great clarity of mind, original thinking, and clarity in your ways of expressing these things, too. Your ideas here are intriguing. I often think about the Native Americans such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Black Elk, and the Sioux Indians, or Geronimo and the Apache people (all four of these figures were medicine men first and warriors second). I think they lived their lives somewhat in the way/s you are discussing here, and from what I can tell from reading about them, studying their cultures, looking at their pictures (in the cases of Sitting Bull, Black Elk and Geronimo since Crazy Horse would never let himself be photographed), and visiting their lands in the Dakotas and the Southwest, I believe that they were able to turn their entire lives into works of art. Even though we can’t turn the clock back or sentimentally join a culture that isn’t ours, I do believe we can learn lessons about how to live from the likes of them. Anyway, again, your ideas are really intriguing and I will be thinking more about this today for sure. Thanks…
Dale