Creativity

 

A weeks or so back, at a very badly cobbled together work reunion (I know it was bad because I cobbled it), my lovely, yet challenging friend Ruth asked me to write something on creativity, in particular, difficulties surrounding being creative. My first response was ‘who the hell am I to write such a thing?’ Then I considered my long-standing love / hate and in / out relationship with creativity and that somehow my singer / songwriting glory days never quite got me to the Albert Hall, and well? Maybe I am capable of sharing something useful. Guess we’ll find out …

Quick pre-ramble disclaimer: I’m writing this with absolutely no hardcore shock and awe statistics or facts, it’s just my little life (super condensed don’t worry) and a bit of intuition. My tale of creative peaks and valleys and of trying to cope with the creative gene, and it’s many built-in destructive tendencies.

To begin at the beginning [insert 70’s time travel wibble-wobble here], my very first creative offering was a short story about a haunted farm, written on a clunky old typewriter at the age of around 7. Fast forward 40 (cough!) years and many words later, whilst I don’t still have the story, I do have memory of it, plot etc and a very good memory of the experience of making something. Of people reading my story and whether to avoid hurting my feelings or actually liking it, saying nice things. It felt good, as a stereotypical funny fat kid, to have done something useful, serious, perhaps even important?

I was hooked, both on production and performance, addicted even. Over the years I have come to make, present, often get paid and usually brutally discard many creative offerings, or as I now professionally call them, outputs. And across a number of disciplines; a word I use very loosely. In my so-called creative heyday, the ages of 19 to 25, then strangely, 30 to 37 there was a period of major fluidity, a lot of bohemia and some productivity. All mixed with several big bites from what those in the know call The Black Dog. Your doctor might call it anything from being run down to clinical depression. I mocked myself - I made for an easy target - with the ridiculous, yet perfectly self-fulfilling prophecy that I was as (self) destructive as I was creative, and as passionate as I could be disinterested. 

And what did that all mean? Well, it meant a lot more than just being a typical, unspectacularly polarised and rather depressed prima donna! With the benefit of some more life experience and a lot of painful reflection, it now means this. We become that which we tell ourselves. We shape our reality through our thoughts, and intention usually becomes action. Also known as ‘be careful what you wish for because you just might get it’.

Sound familiar? It seems the living a healthy lifestyle lady from Cosmo was not so far off the mark. Perception is reality and we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are and that can really have some serious implications. And complications for a creative soul who feels trapped in a modern, fairly twisted world. The creative soul (in my humble opinion) is by nature a sensitive, curious and highly perceptive thing, so why wouldn't it be adversely affected by the harsh and unjust realities of day to day life, perhaps wishing to escape it all through substances and/or isolation? How easy would it be to get so connected, wrapped up in it all, that you then have to just disconnect completely?

In 1993 [another quick time travel wobble-wobble-is this getting irritating for you?], whilst on one of several ‘escapes’ from day to day life, hitchhiking in France actually, I hit upon this idea about inspiration being like a river, flowing down from the mountain. You know, like the water cycle thing? Ideas constantly flowing past me and I get to pluck a few out as the rest keep going until they reach the sea, then get sucked up by clouds and make their way back to the mountain, rain rain rain, and back down the river they all come. The better an idea, the stronger it comes back next time, and so on ad infinitum. That was the theory anyway, and it helped me contain an anxiety I had nursed about ideas overwhelming me. Of missing a good one, THE good one. It also highlighted for me that being creativity puts you in quite an anxious state, dare I say, it’s a stressful process. Being just a tad paranoid (sensitive, see) I can already imagine you thinking, what??! You should be grateful for your ‘gift’ and all those opportunities it has presented.

Well, yes, and no. For sure I have met some incredible people (some pretty famous), had amazing experiences (often for free) and creativity ‘the concept’, can often offer me both solace and distraction. But it also takes from me, and at times is bloody hard work! Work that covertly takes up massive blocks of my time and emotional energy; you know how it goes, you start to get into something and the next minute it’s the following morning, you’ve not eaten and feel totally frazzled. Some of my great creative moments were like that, and by great, I mean something successful, well received. Conversely, or even perversely if I’m being honest, I struggle to understand where the output came from in the first place. It felt more like it was channeled through me and not even my work. When it came to me writing poetry, for example, my benchmark was that if it looked like something it could never have written then it was probably quite good. What a strange, contradictory and not particularly pride-inducing place to be? 

And in my music-making days [wibbl.. ok you get it] I dragged my self across the country, putting my fragile soul on the line for complete strangers. And ok, yes, I got paid. In fact I got paid very well, but how much actually translated into profit at the end of the week? Very little, because when the show was over and the lights went down, there was me still buzzing away like billy-ho, adrenaline levels sky high and super-pumped due to all the extra oxygen in my blood. Presume it’s from breathing in and out so hard as I sang. Don’t believe me? Try singing the Joe Cocker screamy-bit near the end of ‘With a little help from my friends’. But do it near to something soft, because you may well pass out.

So, in short I really needed to wind down after a gig. If I’d had more ‘wholesome’ friends or a stable, mature attitude I might have just headed back home, or to the hotel and got some rest. But I didn’t, I chose to rage on through the night and let off a little steam, with the end result being that whatever money I made, I blew, and usually within hours of making it. But hey? If there were no valleys how could you appreciate the peaks, right? Highs and lows, swings and roundabouts, you got go there, to know there, right? Only it’s not like when you know how it’s going to play out, hence the ‘as destructive as I am creative’ philosophical rationalising. I noticed it in everything I did, like a recoil mechanism; you make something, then you break something, a vicious circle. I do it with relationships, burning those bridges as fast as I can make them, becoming even more isolated and still no better off.

During a particularly productive period as a freelance photographer, with a little money to enjoy, I went to volunteer at St Martins Connection, a charity supporting homeless folks in central London. I wanted to introduce some kind of basic photography skills workshop and so I sat in on their arts programme to get familiar with the setting. Right away the standard of creative thinking and skill blew me away. There wasn't much technical knowledge, it was more about experience, being drawn (literally) or built from a diverse set of frozen, messed up hands (and heads). And it was about therapy, more than just having a warm place to sit for a couple of hours. I saw very real, albeit fleeting, joy and relief, of a something going on within my classmates. It was inspirational and at the same time distressing, I left the class feeling like a fraud, undeserving of the rewards creativity had given to me.

2010 [and one last little wibble-wobble, honest!] finds me bored with London life, so I strap a camera, computer and some spare pants to the back of my motorbike and just kissed it off. “When a man tires of London, he tires of life’, according to Samuel Johnson and I’d felt for sometime that if nothing was going on for me personally or professionally by the time I hit 40 then I’d throw my cards up in the air, see how they might fall. One person’s mid-life crisis is another’s existential act of creativity. Or maybe I just felt better being alone out on the road? Whatever the motivation was (I had had several genuine crises up to this point), the Fates stepped in and I was soon off doing a training project across the Balkans which paid for my fuel and hotels. It got me moving again, and for a short time, really living a life behind a lens, out seeing the world. Or so it might seem, in truth I rode that bike ragged for 10,000km, half killed myself with excess and idiocy and along the way managed to pretty much miss every really great shot presented to me because I was too preoccupied getting ‘somewhere’ or being ‘someone’. Ah the irony of the creative soul, like happiness, it seems to all be going on when you’re not watching. There is a happy ending to this, so far. On the way I met my now (ex)wife, a young and vivacious mother of our two beautiful, super-cute children, one boy and one girl, a complete set!
 

Want some pointers for managing the creative / destructive soul? I’m no doctor, I’m not even a particularly competent person, but these articles usually end up with pointers or a how to list, so here goes…

Accepting fully who you are, where you are in life and what you are capable of is not easy, certainly not as easy as the Doris from Cosmo would have you believe. But, even for a 4D multi-faceted person it will come if you just let it flow past you. A watched kettle never boils, apparently?
 
Surround yourself with good people (one will do) and actively reject toxic types. If that is not doable, just choose to be alone ‘for now’, no company is better than bad company and the good people will help you with the above. Just don’t abuse their energy and be mindful of the service they are giving you.

There has been a significant, alarming rise in mental health cases recently and now well accepted that dementia, in all its forms, represents a major healthcare challenge for our generation. This means most of the stigma that came with depression and, for ease, let’s call it, life disorientation, has lessened. Just 5 years ago two blokes may have sat in a pub and if one said he felt depressed the other might suggest he needed time out, before then exiting stage left and going to drink elsewhere. Not so anymore, it may seem incredible but even out here in the Balkans, where men really are men (as are some women), the talking about how shitty you feel is not a problem and a general acceptance of being ‘low’ runs so much deeper these days. 

Pretty much everyone knows someone who’s been depressed, or even sadder, has lost a fight with mental health and ‘popped off’. We are no longer expected to put up or shut up so if you do want to talk about, talk about it. Or write about it, paint or draw about it, there’s even a funky little old school karaoke place on Old Street to go out and sing your head off about it.

My creative disciplines, term used loosely, included music, writing and photography and to give myself some semblance of stability (ha!) I learned the value of structure, of having a defined creative process to fall back on. It supported my thinking, it gave me something to focus in on when I got anxious or had the dreaded ‘block’ and allowed me to quantify time and effort, which comes in very handy when you are quoting on a project! I also learned to be more disciplined about recharging my batteries and to do so whenever possible. Like a goddamn warrior, eating, sleeping and whatnot-ing on the run.

Am I still anxious about things? Well yes. My children are without a doubt my greatest act of creativity, even though I only played a bit part in that process. Now my anxiety is about them, what kind of future we create. I accept that a lot of nervous energy goes into what I do, and that giving a shit about my work is what gives me an edge. Do I still suffer with the black dog?' "Woof woof baby!", but right now I’m just givin’ the dog a bone!

I close by saying, although one artist might get paid millions for a squiggle and another dies penniless having painted his work in blood, there is no real measurement to being creative. It’s just too subjective a field. As a reluctant artist and serial screw up, I offer my heartiest and most massive respect to anyone and everyone that gives it it go. Stay sharp, be strong, and get a few early nights x

N.B. This was originally written in October 2016, I revisited it on Nov 27th 2023 (not much has really changed)