Creativity And Its Unnecessary Discontent
Creativity is such a strange beast. For the most part, it appears to remain elusive, with what writers call "writer's block" being a lot more common than one would like. Having spent a number of years writing and photographing, I know that the reality of creativity is a lot more complex than this simple picture: it's not either "on" or "off". If anything, what I perceive as it being "on" or "off" merely is what I am able to notice.
For example, I now know -- and actively work with -- writing while not writing. That sounds like a strange way to talk about it. How can one be writing when one is in fact not writing? As far as I can tell, the process of writing is not driven by insane bouts of creativity. Instead, I have come to realize that in periods of outward inactivity, somehow my brain is processing things. I know that when I want to or have to write an article about something and I don't feel inspired or when I don't think I'm ready, I simply have to wait. Things will come. I need to give them time.
You'd imagine that this is a luxury position to be in, given that a deadline would set a hard boundary. But no, even with a deadline that's usually (but, alas, not always) how it works. I now have enough experience to firmly say that it works (in all my years as a writer, I haven't missed a single deadline).
Thus, I've come to completely reject subjecting my creativity to any criteria that have something to do with productivity or any of the other neoliberal tools that, sadly, so many people now tout as great ways to improve one's creativity. You're actually not improving anything when you do that. Instead, you're actually stifling what actually happens in your head.
Another way to express the above would be to say: if you want to be creative, you will have to give your own creativity the space it needs -- without mistaking its obvious outward moments for the whole. Creativity is like an iceberg: vast parts are invisible and unknowable.
It would seem that accepting one's creativity as something that is outside of one's control must be frustrating. I've come to learn that it's anything but. To begin with, it's your creativity: even if it might feel as something external, it's completely internal. It's your and only yours. Trusting it means trusting yourself.
But as a writer or photographer, you can (and I would argue: should) also nourish your creativity. You need to feed it. Given you can't fully understand your creativity, it's a mistake to try to feed it only with things that you think it needs. How would you know what it needs or responds to? Instead, feed it generously by exposing yourself to things you enjoy, things you don't understand, things that help you learn something, things that confound you... Anything works -- as long as you don't stay on a very narrow track, consuming (as is so tempting) all the very stuff you already know.
I had to think about creativity this past few days in part because the topic arose somewhere on social media (which had me write a very short something). But I also just experienced one of those rare moments in my own photographic practice where something I thought I was unable to do suddenly not only was very much doable, but also resulted in a surprisingly large number of photographs that I really like.
Ever since I switched to a digital camera almost six years ago, abandoning colour film and the square format, I had been unable to take decent horizontal photographs. You've seen my work, it's all vertical. At least so far.
I also had extreme problems seeing my work in colour. Much like in the case of black and white, I feel that the colour itself has to be considered. There has to be a feel to it. I didn't know how to get the feel. It seemed impossible. I hated all my attempts.
The other day, I took my camera with me on a walk -- reluctantly, given I felt I had thoroughly exhausted the photographs I can get out of where I live. I like the way they look. But they all came too easily, and I hadn't felt like I was seeing something I didn't already know. On that walk, I took two pictures. One was a vertical one. And then I thought I might as well force myself and see whether I couldn't get a horizontal picture out of the same scene. That was the second picture (I took two shots, given I sensed the first one's framing was off).
Back home, I processed the pictures (my usual black and white). The horizontal picture looked good. It didn't look off at all. This felt unusual. For some reason, I thought I might as well see whether I couldn't also have a colour version. I wanted the colour version to feel the way the black and white one did, and I arrived at something relatively quickly. It felt and looked good. In fact, I probably haven't been as excited about a single photograph in maybe four or five years.
Something had changed. The sense of not being able to take horizontal pictures, let alone in colour, had completely vanished. I did two more walks so far, along paths I have walked many times. I ended up making a relatively large number of pictures, many of which I really like. There was work involved -- of course, there was. There was looking and framing and walking. And I'm certain that I'm just at the very beginning of something. But suddenly there was this whole new thing in front of me.
Photographers typically don't share work in progress, and there are many good reasons for not doing so. But I gave up on posting my own personal work on social media (long story). That aside, though, I actually feel confident about these pictures here, even as I realize that they'll probably fall by the wayside at some stage. But that doesn't matter to me. I like what they're doing for me right now: on top of the visual pleasure they give me -- they don't quite look like my pictures yet: I am not very familiar with this photographer, they also are great examples of how creativity might work.
I'm sharing this experience not to brag about it or to make you think that these are the most amazing pictures. I'm hoping that sharing my experience might be encouraging to some of you. I know what it's like to be stuck, and I'm sure you all do. You can't force yourself to become unstuck. But you will become unstuck. Just be patient. You might become unstuck in the most unexpected moment. I just did.
I had felt incredibly unmotivated and uncreative for a few weeks (months?). Even as I know that creativity works in mysterious ways, that still didn't make feeling this way all that much better. But now my own creativity has opened a completely different door for me, allowing me to explore a lot of things and pushing me to work on it as much as I can.
By not allowing our creativity to do its magic, what we're doing really is to impoverish our own self. I think that's what this all comes down to.
What else is neoliberal capitalism other than a huge mechanism that impoverishes the vast bulk of humanity at the expense of a tiny number of select few? When we deal with our creativity, though, it's up to us to set our boundaries and parameters. And it's just so self-defeating to allow neoliberal thinking ruin the one thing we all have inside us.
Trust me: don't allow yourself to let this happen! Feed your creativity, give it the space it needs, and good things will happen.
And with that I'm going to conclude. As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg