This event also taught me that these people—the ones who stand at the gates of our dreams—are not automatons. They are just people. They are just like us. They are whimsical and quirky. They’re a little different every day, just as you and I are a little different every day. There is no neat template that can ever predict what will capture any one person’s imagination, or when; you just have to reach them at the right moment. But since the right moment is unknowable, you must maximize your chances. Play the odds. Put yourself forward in stubborn good cheer, and then do it again and again and again . . .
The effort is worth it, because when at last you do connect, it is an otherworldly delight of the highest order. Because this is how it feels to lead the faithful creative life: You try and try and try, and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens. You make the connection. Out of nowhere, it all comes together. Making art does sometimes feel like you’re holding a séance, or like you’re calling out in the night for a wild animal on the prowl. What you’re doing seems impossible and even silly, but then you hear the thunder of hooves, and some beautiful beast comes rushing into the glade, searching for you just as urgently as you have been searching for it.
So you must keep trying. You must keep calling out in those dark woods for your own Big Magic. You must search tirelessly and faithfully, hoping against hope to someday experience that divine collision of creative communion—either for the first time, or one more time.
Because when it all comes together, it’s amazing. When it all comes together, the only thing you can do is bow down in gratitude, as if you have been granted an audience with the divine.
Because you have.
Lastly, This
Many years ago, my uncle Nick went to see the eminent American writer Richard Ford give a talk at a bookstore in Washington, DC. During the Q&A after the reading, a middle-aged man in the audience stood up and said something like this:
“Mr. Ford, you and I have much in common. Just like you, I have been writing short stories and novels my whole life. You and I are about the same age, from the same background, and we write about the same themes. The only difference is that you have become a celebrated man of letters, and I—despite decades of effort—have never been published. This is heartbreaking to me. My spirit has been crushed by all the rejection and disappointment. I wonder if you have any advice for me. But please, sir, whatever you do, don’t just tell me to persevere, because that’s the only thing people ever tell me to do, and hearing that only makes me feel worse.”
Now, I wasn’t there. And I don’t know Richard Ford personally. But according to my uncle, who is a good reporter, Ford replied, “Sir, I am sorry for your disappointment. Please believe me, I would never insult you by simply telling you to persevere. I can’t even imagine how discouraging that would be to hear, after all these years of rejection. In fact, I will tell you something else—something that may surprise you. I’m going to tell you to quit.”
The audience froze: What kind of encouragement was this?
Ford went on: “I say this to you only because writing is clearly bringing you no pleasure. It is only bringing you pain. Our time on earth is short and should be enjoyed. You should leave this dream behind and go find something else to do with your life. Travel, take up new hobbies, spend time with your family and friends, relax. But don’t write anymore, because it’s obviously killing you.”
There was a long silence.
Then Ford smiled and added, almost as an afterthought: “However, I will say this. If you happen to discover, after a few years away from writing, that you have found nothing that takes its place in your life—nothing that fascinates you, or moves you, or inspires you to the same degree that writing once did . . . well, then, sir, I’m afraid you will have no choice but to persevere.”
Trust
Does It Love You?
My friend Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and an author who teaches environmental biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. Her students are all fervent young environmentalists, earnest as can be, desperate to save the world.
Before they can get down to the business of world-saving, though, Robin often asks her students these two questions.
The first question is: “Do you love nature?”
Every hand in the room goes up.
The second question is: “Do you believe that nature loves you in return?”
Every hand in the room goes down.
At which point Robin says, “Then we have a problem already.”
The problem is this: These earnest young world-savers honestly believe that the living earth is indifferent to them. They believe that humans are nothing but passive consumers, and that our presence here on earth is a destructive force. (We take, take, take and offer nothing of benefit to nature in return.) They believe that humans are here on this planet by random accident, and that therefore the earth doesn’t give a damn about us.
Ancient people did not see it this way, needless to say. Our ancestors always operated with a sense of being in a reciprocal emotional relationship with their physical surroundings. Whether they felt that they were being rewarded by Mother Nature or punished by her, at least they were engaged in a constant conversation with her.
Robin believes that modern people have lost that sense of conversation—lost that awareness of the earth communicating with us just as much as we are communicating with it. Instead, modern people have been schooled to believe that nature is deaf and blind to them—perhaps because we believe that nature has no inherent sentience. Which is a somewhat pathological construct, because it denies any possibility of relationship. (Even the notion of a punitive Mother Earth is better than the notion of an indifferent one—because at least anger represents some sort of energetic exchange.)
Without that sense of relationship, Robin warns her students, they are missing out on something incredibly important: They are missing out on their potential to become cocreators of life. As Robin puts it, “The exchange of love between earth and people calls forth the creative gifts of both. The earth is not indifferent to us, but rather calling for our gifts in return for hers—the reciprocal nature of life and creativity.”
Or, to put it more simply: Nature provides the seed; man provides the garden; each is grateful for the other’s help.
So Robin always begins right there. Before she can teach these students how to heal the world, she has to teach them how to heal their notion of themselves in the world. She has to convince them of their right to even be here at all. (Again: the arrogance of belonging.) She has to introduce them to the concept that they might actually be loved in return by the very entity that they themselves revere—by nature itself, by the very entity that created them.
Because otherwise it’s never going to work.
Because otherwise nobody—not the earth, not the students, not any us—will ever benefit.
Worst Girlfriend Ever
Inspired by this notion, I now often ask aspiring young writers the same line of questions.
“Do you love writing?” I ask.
Of course they do. Duh.
Then I ask: “Do you believe that writing loves you in return?”
They look at me like I should be institutionalized.
“Of course not,” they say. Most of them report that writing is totally indifferent to them. And if they do happen to feel a reciprocal relationship with their creativity, it is usually a deeply sick relationship. In many cases, these young writers claim that writing flat-out hates them. Writing messes with their heads. Writing torments them and hides from them. Writing punishes them. Writing destroys them. Writing kicks their asses, ten ways to Sunday.
As one young writer I know put it, “For me, writing is like that bitchy, beautiful girl in high school who you alwa
ys worshipped, but who only toyed with you for her own purposes. You know in your heart that she’s bad news, and you should probably just walk away from her forever, but she always lures you back in. Just when you think she’s finally going to be your girlfriend, she shows up at school holding hands with the captain of the football team, pretending she’s never met you. All you can do is weep in a locked bathroom stall. Writing is evil.”
“That being the case,” I asked him, “what do you want to do with your life?”
“I want to be a writer,” he said.
Addicted to Suffering
Are you beginning to see how screwed-up this is?
It is not only aspiring writers who feel this way. Older, established authors say exactly the same dark things about their own work. (Where do you think the young writers learned it from?) Norman Mailer claimed that every one of his books had killed him a little more. Philip Roth has never stopped talking about the medieval torments writing inflicted upon him for the duration of his long-suffering career. Oscar Wilde called the artistic existence “one long, lovely suicide.” (I adore Wilde, but I have trouble seeing suicide as lovely. I have trouble seeing any of this anguish as lovely.)
And it’s not just writers who feel this way. Visual artists do it, too. Here’s the painter Francis Bacon: “The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.” Actors do it, dancers do it, and musicians most certainly do it. Rufus Wainwright once admitted that he was terrified to settle down into a happy relationship, because without the emotional drama that came from all those dysfunctional love affairs, he was afraid of losing access to “that dark lake of pain” he felt was so critical to his music.
And let’s not even get started on the poets.
Suffice it to say that the modern language of creativity—from its youngest aspirants up to its acknowledged masters—is steeped in pain, desolation, and dysfunction. Numberless artists toil away in total emotional and physical solitude—disassociated not only from other humans, but also from the source of creativity itself.
Worse, their relationship with their work is often emotionally violent. You want to make something? You are told to open up a vein and bleed. Time to edit your work? You are instructed to kill your darlings. Ask a writer how his book is going, and he might say, “I finally broke its spine this week.”
And that’s if he had a good week.
A Cautionary Tale
One of the most interesting up-and-coming novelists I know these days is a clever young woman named Katie Arnold-Ratliff. Katie writes like a dream. But she told me that she’d gotten blocked from her work for several years because of something a writing professor had said to her: “Unless you are emotionally uncomfortable while you are writing, you will never produce anything of value.”
Now, there’s a level at which I understand what Katie’s writing professor might have been trying to say. Perhaps the intended message was “Don’t be afraid of reaching for your creative edge,” or “Never back away from the discomfort that can sometimes arise while you’re working.” These seem like perfectly legitimate notions to me. But to suggest that nobody ever made valuable art unless they were in active emotional distress is not only untrue, it’s also kind of sick.
But Katie believed it.
Out of respect and deference to her professor, Katie took those words to heart and came to embrace the notion that if her creative process wasn’t bringing her anguish, then she wasn’t doing it right.
No blood, no glory, right?
The problem was, Katie had an idea for a novel that actually made her feel excited. The book she wanted to write seemed so cool, so twisted, and so strange that she thought it might genuinely be fun to do it. In fact, it seemed like so much fun, it made her feel guilty. Because if something was a pleasure to write, then it couldn’t possibly have any artistic value, could it?
So she put off writing that cool and twisted novel of hers for years and years, because she didn’t trust in the legitimacy of her own anticipated pleasure. Eventually, I am happy to report, she broke through that mental obstacle and finally wrote her book. And, no, it was not necessarily easy to write, but she did have a great time writing it. And yes, it is brilliant.
What a pity, though, to have lost all those years of inspired creativity—and only because she didn’t believe her work was making her miserable enough!
Yeah.
Heaven forbid anyone should enjoy their chosen vocation.
The Teaching of Pain
Sadly, Katie’s story is no anomaly.
Far too many creative people have been taught to distrust pleasure and to put their faith in struggle alone. Too many artists still believe that anguish is the only truly authentic emotional experience. They could have picked up this dark idea anywhere; it’s a commonly held belief here in the Western world, what with our weighty emotional heritage of Christian sacrifice and German Romanticism—both of which give excessive credence to the merits of agony.
Trusting in nothing but suffering is a dangerous path, though. Suffering has a reputation for killing off artists, for one thing. But even when it doesn’t kill them, an addiction to pain can sometimes throw artists into such severe mental disorder that they stop working at all. (My favorite refrigerator magnet: “I’ve suffered enough. When does my artwork improve?”)
Perhaps you, too, were taught to trust in darkness.
Maybe you were even taught darkness by creative people whom you loved and admired. I certainly was. When I was in high school, a beloved English teacher once told me, “You’re a talented writer, Liz. But unfortunately you’ll never make it, because you haven’t suffered enough in your life.”
What a twisted thing to say!
First of all, what does a middle-aged man know about a teenage girl’s suffering? I had probably suffered more that day at lunch than he’d ever suffered in his entire lifetime. But beyond that—since when did creativity become a suffering contest?
I had admired that teacher. Imagine if I’d taken his words to heart and had dutifully set out on some shadowy Byronic quest for authenticating tribulation. Mercifully, I didn’t. My instincts drove me in the opposite direction—toward light, toward play, toward a more trusting engagement with creativity—but I’m a lucky one. Others do go on that dark crusade, and sometimes they go there on purpose. “All my musical heroes were junkies, and I just wanted to be one, too,” says my dear friend Rayya Elias, a gifted songwriter who battled heroin addiction for over a decade, during which time she lived in prison, on the streets, and in mental hospitals—and completely stopped making music.
Rayya isn’t the only artist who ever mistook self-destruction for a serious-minded commitment to creativity. The jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean said that—back in Greenwich Village in the 1950s—he watched dozens of aspiring young musicians take up heroin in order to imitate their hero, Charlie Parker. More tellingly still, McLean says, he witnessed many young jazz aspirants pretending to be heroin addicts (“eyes half-closed, striking that slouched pose”) even as Parker himself begged people not to emulate this most tragic aspect of himself. But maybe it’s easier to do heroin—or even to romantically pretend to do heroin—than it is to commit yourself wholeheartedly to your craft.
Addiction does not make the artist. Raymond Carver, for one, intimately knew this to be true. He himself was an alcoholic, and he was never able to become the writer he needed to be—not even on the subject of alcoholism itself—until he gave up the booze. As he said, “Any artist who is an alcoholic is an artist despite their alcoholism, not because of it.”
I agree. I believe that our creativity grows like sidewalk weeds out of the cracks between our pathologies—not from the pathologies themselves. But so many people think it’s the other way around. For this reason, you will often meet artists who delib
erately cling to their suffering, their addictions, their fears, their demons. They worry that if they ever let go of all that anguish, their very identities would vanish. Think of Rilke, who famously said, “If my devils are to leave me, I’m afraid my angels will take flight, as well.”
Rilke was a glorious poet, and that line is elegantly rendered, but it’s also severely emotionally warped. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that line quoted countless times by creative people who were offering up an excuse as to why they won’t quit drinking, or why they won’t go see a therapist, or why they won’t consider treatment for their depression or anxiety, or why they won’t address their sexual misconduct or their intimacy problems, or why they basically refuse to seek personal healing and growth in any manner whatsoever—because they don’t want to lose their suffering, which they have somehow conflated and confused with their creativity.
People have a strange trust in their devils, indeed.
Our Better Angels
I want to make something perfectly clear here: I do not deny the reality of suffering—not yours, not mine, not humanity’s in general. It is simply that I refuse to fetishize it. I certainly refuse to deliberately seek out suffering in the name of artistic authenticity. As Wendell Berry warned, “To attribute to the Muse a special fondness for pain is to come too close to desiring and cultivating pain.”
To be sure, the Tormented Artist is sometimes an all-too-real person. Without a doubt, there are many creative souls out there who suffer from severe mental illness. (Then again, there are also hundreds of thousands of severely mentally ill souls out there who do not happen to possess extraordinary artistic talents, so to automatically conflate madness with genius feels like a logical fallacy to me.) But we must be wary of the lure of the Tormented Artist, because sometimes it’s a persona—a role that people grow accustomed to playing. It can be a seductively picturesque role, too, with a certain dark and romantic glamour to it. And it comes with an extremely useful side benefit—namely, built-in permission for terrible behavior.
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