The Creativity Room

Ok so this is a pretty big topic. Fear is creativity’s biggest enemy and fear comes in a million different forms and disguises, a lot of them very cunning and creative even. We each have our own bag of fears big and small.

I’ve just finished a short and very successful season of a show I’ve been working on as director for over a year. A lot of very interesting stuff has happened along the way, but the thing that is sticking out in my mind right now is that period, for about two days before opening night, when fear, in the form of near-panic, often rears its head. This is one of the times that it can be hardest to say  to the fear “yes, yes, I can see you there, but I don’t need you right now, so please go away.”

All the inspiration, all the hard work, all the wonderful creative ideas and all the structuring, polishing, bringing together of all the different elements, suddenly, when that panic sets in, begin to look like mistakes. For me, usually my main fear is that I have been too optimistic in my naive belief that anyone will think what I’ve made is cool, clever, relevant or moving.

And what can I say about this time of near-panic? All you can do is exercise blind faith. Whatever you have made is a unique reflection of you (this is a scary thing to think of too – all those people coming and looking so closely at this revelation of you-ness), your original idea was inspired and you have worked doggedly to express that idea as beautifully and clearly as you can.

The fear may have immobilised your brain, but by this stage in the process you probably don’t need it as much as you might think. Your legs keep on taking you down the path. Just keep walking, run a little when necessary, get to the finish line and see the faces of the crowd as they experience your creation. Phew. If you can stay open to their experience and what they choose to say to you about it, then you have completed your mission. Take a week or two off and then write down all those comments and have a think over your intention (what did you intend your audience to experience?), what was fun about the process and what you can learn now.

I have to say that I love the number 3. I love the idea of the “third thing,” something that came, I think, from a conversation I had over ten years ago, about the work of John Cage. The third thing is the magical idea or image that comes to the viewers/listeners/receivers of art when they are offered a metaphor. Two things are placed together in some kind of relationship to one another. Out of the rubbing up of the two, previously unrelated, things, the mind/imagination makes some kind of sense. Usually the sense, the image or idea that comes from the sparks created by the two things is something way greater, more complex and inexplicable than the two things by themselves seem to offer.

Cage was working with random juxtaposition of elements in live performance. Every night the audience would pick pieces of paper out of a hat and determine what order the pieces of the performance would be done and which bits of music would go with what action etc. This way the “third thing” was something that the artist had little control over. Each night, the audience would see new metaphors created for them and have their own experiece of magical, electric new meaning.

I liked the idea of the “third thing” so much that I had this picture of Tenniel’s from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tattooed on my left shoulder. Throughout Lewis Carroll’s provocative children’s book, very surprising items are juxtaposed with brilliant effects. I’ve always felt that Carroll used the ridiculous and absurd images and ideas in his stories to open children’s minds to the unexpected truths of the world, rather than allowing them to believe the school-day message that “1 + 1 = 2″ and it will always be so and that is how the world operates.

I love the liberation that is inherent in the very act of creating and receiving metaphor. Two things are known. The third thing is the unknown, the field of infinite possibility, the hitherto uncharted brilliance of your own mind, the scope of human imagination.