All my life, I've been pulled by two opposing forces.
One of them is the chaos-brain I described in yesterday's post, which I seem to have been born with. The other is a ferocious attempt to counteract that tendency by controlling the absolute hell out of my surroundings. I know a lot of this came from the way I was raised; throughout my childhood, nothing I ever did was good enough, and any compliments came along with an appended list (notarized and in triplicate) of all the things I should have done differently and/or could have done better.
The result is that I do a great deal of overcompensation. I became fanatically neat, because organizing my physical space was a way of coping with the fact that my brain is like a car with bald tires and no brakes. My classroom was so organized and clean you could just about eat off the floor (and keep in mind that it was a biology lab). As a teacher, I strove to make use of every moment we had, and faulted myself whenever things didn't go well or there was an eventuality I hadn't planned for.
I didn't expect perfection from my students, but I did from myself. And, in some parts of my life, it served me well enough.
The problem is, that approach doesn't work when you apply it to the arts.
I'm not even talking about the "learning curve" issue, here. Even when I've attained some level of proficiency, I still expect nothing less than perfection, excoriating myself for every scene in a story that didn't come out the way I wanted, every slightly lopsided piece of pottery, every missed note when I play music.
In theory, I'm one hundred percent in agreement with the quote from Ludwig van Beethoven -- "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable." Or, more accurately, I believe that for everyone else. It's much harder to treat myself so forgivingly.
The result has been an overwhelming case of impostor syndrome, coupled with fear of criticism -- which will, in my warped way of looking at things, only confirm what I've thought about myself all along. I'm at least working on getting my writing out there under the public eye, despite the inherent risks of poor sales and/or bad reviews, but it's been harder in other aspects of my creative life. I'm still at the stage where I had to have my arm twisted (hard) to induce me to join as a flutist in a contradance band, and it's damn near impossible to get me to play the piano in front of anyone else (including my wife). But I'm harshest about my own skill when it comes to my artistic work, which is pottery. I keep very little of what I make, and most of what I do keep are the pieces that are simple and purely functional -- bowls and mugs and the like. The vast majority of the sculptures and other, more unusual, pieces I make end up given that dreadful label of "not good enough" and are smashed against the concrete wall of the back of our house.
All along, I had the attitude -- again, directly consonant with my upbringing -- that this is how you improve, that constant self-criticism should act as some kind of impetus to getting better, to ridding your work of those dreaded mistakes, to attaining that fabled ability to create something with which others could not find fault.
It's only been recently that I've realized that this approach is completely antithetical to creativity.
I got to thinking about this after watching an online pottery workshop with the wonderful New Hampshire potter Nick Sevigney, whose pieces are weird and whimsical and unexpected. A lot of his pottery has a steampunk feeling, a sense of having been put together from a random assemblage of parts. It was a revelation to watch him piece together cut slabs of clay, not caring if the result was a little uneven or had a rough edge. In fact, he embraces those seeming imperfections, turning them "from a bug into a feature."
So I decided to see if I could do a few pieces that riffed off of his approach.
I'm most comfortable on the potter's wheel, so I started out throwing three medium-sized white stoneware bowls. I've gotten pretty good at getting that smooth curve and rounded profile, with a perfectly circular rim, that is what most of us shoot for when creating a bowl.
Usually, that's where I'd stop. If it passed my critical assessment -- not lopsided, decent weight, evenly thick walls, nice smooth surface -- I'd keep it. Otherwise, into the scrap bucket it'd go. But here... that was only the first step.
One of the techniques Nick does is taking a piece, cutting chunks out of it, adding texture to the chunk, then reattaching it. You'd think that because you're putting the piece back where it had been, it'd fit perfectly; but the problem is that adding texture (usually using stamps or rollers) stretches and flattens the clay, so inevitably it ends up larger than the hole it came from. Nick just forces it to fit, warping the piece's profile -- and instead of worrying about that, he often adds some circular marks that make it look like the piece was inexpertly riveted or screwed back on.
He leans into the unevenness hard. And the result is something magical, like a relic you might find in a demolished nineteenth century mad scientist's laboratory, something stitched together and broken and reassembled upside down and backwards.
So I took my three smooth, undamaged stoneware bowls and gave it a try.
The hardest part -- unsurprising, perhaps, given my personality -- was making the first cut. Even knowing that if I didn't like the result, I have more clay and could always make another plain, boring, but "perfect" bowl, I sat there for some time, knife in hand, as if the Pottery Gods would smite me if I touched that sleek, classic profile. Slicing and pressing and marring and deforming it felt like deliberately choosing to ruin something "nice."
But maybe "nice" isn't what we should be shooting for, as creatives.
Maybe the goal should be somewhere out there beyond "nice." The point, I realized, is not to retread the safe, secure footsteps I've always taken, but to take a deep breath and launch off into the shadowlands.
So I cut a big chunk from the side of the bowl, got out my texturing stamps and rollers, and set to work.
I was half expecting to give up after a few attempts and throw the whole thing into the scrap bucket, but I didn't. I found I actually kind of liked the result, as different as it is from what I usually make. And what surprised me even more was that once I got into it, it was...
... fun.
I've never been much good at "having fun." In general, I give new meaning to the phrase "tightly wound." Letting loose and simply being silly is way outside my wheelhouse. (I know I shortchanged my boys as a dad when they were little simply by my seeming inability to play.) But I've come to realize that the spirit of playfulness is absolutely critical to creativity. I don't mean that every creative endeavor should be funny or whimsical; but that sense of pushing the boundaries, of letting the horse have its head and seeing where you end up, is at the heart of what it means to be creative.
I was recently chatting with another author about times when inspiration in writing will surprise you, coming at you seemingly out of nowhere. When it happens, the feeling is honestly like the ideas are originating outside of my own brain. There are two examples of this that come to mind immediately, cases where characters to whom I'd never intended to give a big role basically said, "Nuh-uh, you're not sidelining me. I'm important, and here's why." (If you're curious, the two are Jennie Trahan in my novella "Convection," and most strikingly, Marig Kastella in The Chains of Orion, who kind of took over the last third of the book, and became one of my favorite characters I've ever written.) When that happens, it means I've loosened my death-grip on the story, and given my creativity space to breathe.
And it always is a hallmark of things going really right with the writing process.
So I guess the point of all this is to encourage you to stretch your boundaries in your own creative work. I won't say "lose your fears" -- that's hopeless advice -- but try something new despite them. (Either something new within your chosen creative medium, or something entirely new.) Be willing to throw your creative life out of round, to press it into new and unexpected configurations, to turn in a new direction and see where you end up. There's good stuff to be found there outside of the narrow, constricted, breathless little boundaries of what we've always been told is "the right way to do things." Take a risk. Then take another one. The goal of creativity is not to play it safe.
As French author and Nobel laureate André Gide put it, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore."
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NEW! We've updated our website, and now -- in addition to checking out my books and the amazing art by my wife, Carol Bloomgarden, you can also buy some really cool Skeptophilia-themed gear! Just go to the website and click on the link at the bottom, where you can support your favorite blog by ordering t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, bumper stickers, and tote bags, all designed by Carol!
Take a look! Plato would approve.
