Love Letter

So I found a notebook entry the other day and it got me thinking about this creativity caper and how we get around to doing whatever it is we do. Some of us just do it (I am envious of these people) and the rest of us embark on a journey much like our little friend Frodo Baggins.

First, a few thoughts on journals. I’ve never been able to keep one. I am way too paranoid and more than a little fanciful the world is gagging to know my inner most thoughts. (A blog is entirely different. It’s edited.) Over time I have discovered that if I keep a Notebook rather than a Journal, I’m far more likely to scribble things down. Yes, call it something different and bibbity-bobbity-boo, suddenly I’m writing all sorts of things.

Random bits of research, pieces of ideas and other scribble merge with secrets and epiphanies (I think Oprah calls them ‘Aha! Moments’ which are not grand enough for my Frasier Crane-esque pontifications partying on inside my head). Plus, notebooks are mandatory. It took me a while to get over feeling that it was totally pretentious whipping out a little book and scribbling in the middle of the main road. However after enduring the forehead slapping, gut stabbing experience of the fabulous idea I had on the train disappearing because I’d felt too self conscious to write the bloody thing down, I began to whipping out that notebook with all the fervour and abandon of a man lost three weeks in the desert who stumbles across a crystal clear water fall.

For most of my life I had done everything I could to shake the need to sit down and write. This need always showed up as the same thing: being tapped on the shoulder. Not a ‘tap-tap’ and that’s it. We’re talking about a kind of tapping that just wouldn’t stop.

A few years ago I dramatised my unfair plight to a friend. I really let her have it. I cried, I shouted and did everything bar beat my breast and hiss, ‘As God as my witness’. Basically I behaved like a self indulgent tool. My friend exhaled the last of her Winfield Blue, stubbed it out and said, ‘Yeah, well, I’d love to have something that keeps me awake tapping me on the shoulder. Its called talent Fran.’ I’ve kept those words close to hand ever since and for a long time after that conversation, I ran even faster.

Lets just stop for a minute and dispel a few notions that may be flying around. Never have I wailed, ‘Oh God I’m so talented I just can’t take it anymore!’ It wasn’t like that and, hello, still isn’t. What’s that quote about the percentage breakdown between talent and hard work? Something like 10% talent and the rest is work? Its true. If that tapping was indeed talent, it didn’t bring me a whole lot of ‘success’ because ‘success’ involved me doing something about it. The tapping is just the call to arms….to the page, I mean.

All this belly-button gazing didn’t count however whenever the world felt like it was collapsing around me or I was incandescently happy about something. Whenever the feeling was strong enough, I forgot to run and the page was the first thing I reached for. Why I didn’t join the dots there I’ll never know.

I think we’re all ambling around with a purpose. It’s the acting on that purpose which proves tricky sometimes. Once I had a whiff my purpose involved writing I discovered I was in immediate need of more air, a brisk walk, food, sleep and shock therapy, preferably all at the same time. Not all of us run towards what we’re supposed to do. If you’re anything like me (a gutless turd), you are seen streaking away into the middle distance screaming your head off.

A few years after the breast-beating incident, I came across two fantastic pieces of advice. I’m always looking for quotes, tips, anything to out-fox my ability to conjure excuses faster than a cat tearing up a carpet during mad-hour. The first was: writing is not a party trick. The second was: no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to do this.

I got over myself and started to get on with it.

And the other day I discovered a love letter of sorts tucked away inside my notebook. Overflowing with relief and gratitude that this annoying thing - which for so long I wished would bugger off and leave me alone - ended up saving me in more ways than I can count, which has evolved into the most significant relationship of my life so far. This stout hearted partner, the keeper of this place I turn to, a place where I get to reach inside myself and unravel my insides. I’ll never quite understand my need to do that (pull out my the insides of my imagination and try and make sense of them, although it does have the same morbid fascination element as documentaries showing what a shark has inside its stomach). As a partner, I’m not someone who instinctively knows my worth. I’m clumsy, foul mouthed, impatient and cursed with an imagination that would frighten the bogey man. That’s the great thing about creativity: there are no curses or downsides. All it requires is you.

I couldn’t believe it stuck around and waited for me. It didn’t run away, make new friends or tell me how much of a crap person I was (that latter honour goes to my ego). No matter how badly behaved I was, it stayed. I wonder if the creativity guys inside us get together for weekly support groups by cyber link up. Hi my name is Nancy and I have a procrastinating writer. Hello Nancy….

As with any relationship, sometimes we need to do a whole lot of running away before we’re ready to sit down and show it - and ourselves – a bit of respect. Anything else we add is our own smoke and mirror machine amusing itself. The tapping on the shoulder, the running, the angst-ing and fist shaking is something we do until we are ready to sit down and get on with it.

So instead of running, I show up. Some days I get it. Some days I don’t. Some days I write without thinking and other days my pen is six feet tall, made of concrete and covered with angry wasps.

We’re all involved in a relationship with ‘that’ side of ourselves. How it comes out: painting, writing, knitting, parenting, landscape gardening, teaching, cooking or bee keeping is our expression. Our inner landscape is based on the same thing and when we dare surrender, it feels just like home.

Is this thing on?

Oh to cleverly conjour a quirky opener and boot piffling introductory waffle off the page and into the garbage where it belongs. Yes, garbage. Trash. Wheelie bin. Waste paper basket. Not the recycling. ....what would you like to see piffling introductory waffle come back as? Piffling introductory waffle is no good for anything. Not even removing evidence of gastric flu.

.......Or maybe piffle makes the world go round and we bin the quirky openers?

Like a beer gut gone AWOL as its master sleeps, I'm exhaling. Hanging out. Exploring what happens when I keep the corner of my eye fixed on what lumber jacks deep in the forest like to refer to, in reverential whispers, as 'my creative self'.

Those lumber jacks - aside from their crazy shirts and groovy signature tune - are on to something. The problem is the volume. Creativity is a roar, not a whisper. We've got to push it through so much shit to safely make its way into the world. That's just the way it is. The amount of shit (texture, weight and depth) depends on our approach: we either stop at the first whiff of trouble and look for piffle to help us wipe our asses, or we grab the nearest peg and keep on pushing.

Creativity is work. Its incredible, awe inspiring, mountain moving stuff, but its still work. Eye meet needle meet drive, instinct, passion and perseverence.

Think of the lumber jack taking off-cuts of wood home to carve itty bitty figurines so spectacular in their detail, it defies belief. He doesn't have a five year plan on how many itty bitty figurines he needs to make before he'll be ready to turn a profit. He hasn't googled every other itty bitty figurine maker to compare himself with. And I bet you on more than one occasion he's felt a little silly and muttered, "Itty bitty figurines? Why can't I make itty bitty power tools?"

Every mean thing someone ever said to you, about you, about someone else doing something similar to what you're doing is going to dance about madly in front of you, beside you and its up to you how distracted you get. Stare at these pranksters long enough and you start dressing them in different outfits or, bottom of the barrel, you actually start making requests and getting involved with this tripe as some form of reality. You do not remember what your mobile number is, but you can remember the smell of the horrid music teacher when you were ten (oops, did I say that out loud)

In case you're tempted to wonder about balance and the whole yin/yang thing, it works just as shittily in the other direction because every wonderful thing someone said about someone else doing what you're doing which makes it impossible for you to continue because hey, you're crap is going to be doing the dance of joy inside your head cheering you on to putting down your pen, paintbrush, lino cutting tool or carving knife.

Basically these critters are there to distract, deter and dance you away from any kind of creative endeavour.

Our figurine carving lumber jack hears the voices alright. He sees the little bastards dancing. The trick is not to pay any attention. Seriously. Because that particular voice belongs to the teacher who picked on you, the deranged school bully, everything that ever hurt your feelings or freaked you out (clowns, stuffed teddy bears....oops sorry, my stuff) and all other warty beings who thought it sporting to make your life a misery.

Why would you listen to someone you don't respect?

Maybe its because everyone you do respect was lifted up on high, carefully and reverentially set upon a spectacular pedestal which looks fancy but does nothing to amplify, inspire or promote the 'creative self' of the person on the ground.

To 'be creative' you need to kick ass, get everything down off the shelf and - horrors - risk your precious cargo getting a little bumped and smudged by enthusiastic enquiring minds. We're not here to sit pretty and not get dirty. We're here to experience everything. Get our hands dirty. Roll up our sleeves. Work a good old sweat. Risk something - anything!

I think I can safely handle my creative lumberjacking self and not drop it on the floor. I can't guarantee anything but a life spent dusting some efigy of a creative genius from the past tucked away high on a shelf doesn't appeal to me. I'm sure Austen and Shakespeare didn't aspire to a legacy of being gazed at, analysed and dusted every once and a while. Seems to me they did what they did to escape the threat of gathering dust. And whatever 'legacy' they aspired to was perhaps overtaken by the drive of their own creativity.

Imagine being 'taken over' by something so wilful, honest, courageous and completely and utterly untrainable, uncontrollable and unquantifiable?

Now imagine trying to stifle all that into a neatly ordered existance. The need for high shelves out of the reach of prying hands, eyes and minds makes sense. But how is that a life?

And, just when you thought this was going to be a lumber jack's tale of woe......enter Belief and Faith stage right. These righteous sisters form the strongest allies we could ever dream of. All we need to do is ..... you got it, and they'll show up each and every time.

She may have been tiny, but Mother Theresa kicked ass. This was a woman who went out and did what she believed in. Sure we emphasise her incredible goodness and humility however at the same time we must acknowledge the strong foundation of practicality fuelling her endeavours.

Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela weren't asking permission from anyone to do what they did. Can you imagine them listening to all the shouting and dancing going on inside their heads? They just went off and did it. Bugger the consequences. They believed in what they were doing.

Until you do, no one will.

As Mother Theresa said: Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Lets take these bastions of brilliance off the shelves and put them firmly in our eye line where they belong. Person to person.

Enjoy the huge grin stretching across your face.

Feels good that we're equal, doesn't it?