The path of most resistance: killing creativity, part 1.

[Hard to see, but insanely good Free People eyelash lace slip in black + a fringed navy suede jacket from Anthro.]

This is the first in a series I’ve written on the subject of creativity, broken up somewhat chronologically. Bear with me, and please share your thoughts, as it could help shape the direction of my figuring this all out. And, not to serve the cake before it’s done cooking, but, losing creativity in my own life can be blamed on no one but myself—the punchline in the first paragraph! But the fun part will be in the self-flogging. So, let’s begin!

Part I: Crack the Spine

“The book you are holding in your hot little hands is bursting with eccentrics, couturiers, obsessives, outliers, pickers, technical geniuses, bohemians, jewelers, denim-junkies, wig makers, and knitting gypsies… crafty artisans and unconventional thinkers with characteristic panache and insouciance. His message is simple: these people give a shit about how things are made, and why they are made[.]

When you have partaken of the heady nectar of this book… look at it every day. It is mystical. It is magical. It contains a message for our times: These creators are our national treasures. Simply put, without the thoughts and madness of these crafting mystics, design obsessives, and superfreaks, we are all doomed.”

-Simon Doonan’s forward in The Fashionable Selby, paraphrased.

At some point in my life, I decided being creative wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

I grew up fueled by creativity. It was my juice. I was even blessed to be nurtured to pursue it. Like bees in a hive, my brain was a noisy whirling place of creative possibilities I couldn’t contain or control: art projects, new uses for Scotch tape, short stories, forts, music, inventions, and ways to let my insides bleed out onto something—via Cray Pas, dioramas, carved block prints, charcoal pencils, markers, photographs, videos, cartoon strips, glazed clay sculptures, and maybe even actual blood. All of things these, however, have remained neatly packaged in my past like an anecdote.

I bought this book because I love Todd Selby’s drawings and weird interiors, but initially because it would look cool on the shelf next to my other Selby book. [Barf.] 

But the first two pages flipped a switch. They were stiff pages with drawings surrounded by dotted lines: paper dolls. Actual, cut-them-out-and-use-them paper dolls. A little watercolor-painted lady in futuristic Zanotti platforms with a cat-printed dress. And a thought started whirring to life somewhere in a hollow place, like a cricket firing up. I was going to actually read this book.

[Paper dolls.]

Settling into bed, I did a quick scan. A thought interrupted: “How do they make an actual living, though?” followed immediately by a biting: “Because they’re breathing the rarified air.”

Meaning, wealthy. Upper crust. The time, space, and money to imagine hologram moto jackets and the connections to sell them for thousands. Had I flossed my teeth with jealousy that morning? Or some NASDAQ ticker tape?

Consider that bit of foreshadowing.

I pushed the fiscally responsible worry down and started reading, garnering that, being from all different walks of life, these people had dedicated themselves to their art, clearly. Their impetus not being to make a living—but to make something. Hold your cynicism a sec.

“Most people agree that what distinguishes those who become famously creative is their resilience. While creativity at times is very rewarding, it is not about happiness. [A] successful creative person is someone ‘who can survive conformity pressures and be impervious to social pressure.’” – Jessica Olien, “Inside the Box”

I’m pretty sure I inherently knew that. Which is probably why I found myself doing a 180. I felt genuine respect.

[Spreads from the profile of Audrey Louise Reynolds, who—spoiler alert—was my favorite craftsperson in the book. She’s playful-meets-purposeful, creating dyes for Nike and Pamela Love, to offer a perfect contrast. She cares, she’s smart, she’s dedicated, and best of all, she seems so playful and buoyant. The last part being most important to me.]

With every captivating profile—messy rooms! A woman who makes her own dye from rocks, in her backyard! Carving tiny maggots from clay with dental tools to make tiny cast gold maggots! Sushi belts and chicken bone necklaces!—I grew more manic and delighted by these prodigies. It was like popping a plate of deep-fried flower blossoms in your mouth. “I don’t know what these are or how to describe them, but I shall eat this and only this, every day for breakfast, for the rest of my life. While wearing a tattered silk kimono. Surrounded by cats.”

Before shutting off the light, I melted away from who I essentially know myself to be—invoices, talking points and resumes—until I was an angry, nebulous little No-Face. 

[No Face from Spirited Away. We’ve all been both the good and bad sides of No Face, or differing degrees of No Faces. I’m no Buddhist, but accepting we’re part No Face and part ourselves makes the world seem like a pretty wide-open place. Learn more about No Face in the next post.]

“I want this,” I thought, turning the pages, “but I don’t even know where to start.” 

I think most people have felt that way at least once, creative or not.

In Sarah Kendzior’s article “Expensive cities are killing creativity”—subhead: “New York City, a traditional incubator for artists, has now become a ‘gated citadel’ for creativity”—I found my first bits of insight into why I’d shut a creative life down before it even started. [I’ll get much further into the professional part later.]

Finally, someone was appealing to my fiscal logic, while making a play for my withered passion:

“New York – and San Francisco, London, Paris and other cities where cost of living has skyrocketed – are no longer places where you go to be someone. They are places you live when you are born having arrived.

Over the past decade, as digital media made it possible for anyone, anywhere, to share their ideas and works, barriers to professional entry tightened and geographical proximity became valued. Fields where advanced degrees were once a rarity – art, creative writing – now view them as a requirement. Unpaid internships and unpaid labour are rampant, blocking off industry access for those who cannot work without pay in the world’s most expensive cities.”

In spite of this, what Todd Selby had managed to do was find plenty of actual working artists—people who, unlike me, hadn’t fallen prey to the stop-before-you-even-start syndrome that people like me mollify with articles about cost of living. They went for it.

It was a sharp realization that I had defensively killed off my creativity for years, cell by cell. In favor of something else. “Something harder,” I reasoned, but that didn’t make sense. “Something more acceptable?” To whom?

See, I made the No Face reference for a reason—and will again. It’s a character in an animé movie I watched a few years ago despite myself: Spirited Away. It came highly recommended by people who I wouldn’t normally consider to have anything in common with, which I think is the key. And I had this total awakening.

I’ve adapted—perhaps too well.

I’d always assumed I was pretty shitty at being an adult, but now I was worried I’d gotten too good at it.

I’d systematically eradicated creativity from my body like a disease—and, apparently, creative people from my life—and now I wanted it back inside me. A constant, healthy diet of safe choices had wiped me clean. 

And I had to know why.