Creativity and obligation

xpost gravel:
i do feel the obligation to be creative, and when i create it's very validating. at the same time, though, i am not constantly inspired and thus can't fulfill this self-assigned obligation all the time; at this point it gets very frustrating so i think i know where you're coming from. i know this doesn't answer any of your questions but just my two cents

I assume that isn't what you mean tho Greg :)

Hence, nanowrimo etc.

I like the story about that note by Joyce's typewriter, "Write! What the hell else are you good for?"

I know the feeling about what seems like a morally wrong choice, though. I've daydreamed about becoming, among other things, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a drag queen, or biologist, but to think about the time, money and energy invested into the Noble Pursuit of the Arts and all the romanticized bohemian anti-bourgeois jive... well, I've definitely been indoctrinated. It feels like I'd be giving up against the Fight, though what it is I'd be fighting is probably no more than some undergrad Marxian bogeyman.

(many x-posts soon soon)

i'm sitting on my voice degree and constantly bitching about how much i hated music school and people in the opera world, but if i listen to anything classical or there is randomly an opera clip on a tv show i feel guilty, like i'm denying this thing inside me or that i'd actually be doing something (as opposed to my crappy boring office job) that could, perhaps, touch someone or at least be beautiul. so every few weeks i think of going back to singing and doing a masters or at least trying to get some kind of chamber group together, then i say, 'but you'll never make any money and you'll be miserable trying to make something of yourself.'

it's not exactly the same because i'm not creating as much as interpreting, but i feel like it's the same sort of battle - i can't listen to music without feeling like you should be making it, but the practical side of my brain says, 'this shit is bananas.'

i have these crazy ideas about turning this set i did with piano, violin, viola, and cello into some cool performance piece. my roommate is great with visual arts and thinks it'd be fun, but it's so hard to get anyone to actually commit to doing anything.

Yeah, I think the key to that is not worrying about it being bananas. I know lots of people who have jobs they more or less like, in some cases love (in other cases endure), but they also keep the whole creative thing going on the outside of their daily paycheck -- bands, poetry readings, theater troupes, you know, whatever. Once you stop thinking about it as a professional choice -- like, I should be doing the music instead of the office job -- then you free yourself up to do whatever you want with your free time. And sure it's not that easy, and it's always hard to get even two or three people together to do something, but you can do things if you want to. I have major respect, e.g., for my sister, who when she had a baby decided she wasn't going to be only defined as a mom and bought herself a fiddle. The kid's now 6 and she -- by practicing every day when he naps -- has turned herself into an old-time fiddler who can get together and jam with other old-timey music types.

actually, i don't care much for choral groups, mostly because i was forced to sing in chorale for 3 years as part of my degree requirement and our conductor was so terrible. there's something very frustrating about taking 50 voice majors who are training to be soloists, putting them in a room, and telling them to "blend" to the beat of a conductor who couldn't even keep a steady 4/4 pattern.

i think part of why i'm not singing now is that i hate not being the best or in charge... i couldn't stand being in opera choruses because i wanted to go shove the director out of the way and tell everyone how to deliver their roles "correctly"! but, i am kind of a lameass because i don't think i could come up with staging and production i deas on my own, only "fix" others' ideas. not very creative at all!

ugh, i know. they can't fathom that their voices are serving the piece, not the other way around.

i guess the key is to start in small steps, but i often wonder if that would make me horribly frustrated and give it up all over!

(in case it's not painfully obvious, i'm really good at being my worst enemy!)

ugh, i know. they can't fathom that their voices are serving the piece, not the other way around.

-- bird-person-person (theundergroundhom...), November 7th, 2005. (Jody Beth Rosen) (link)

yes, there's that. i once remember yelling at our choir over a primadonna outbreak when we were singing student compositions - one of which was completely amazing and in polish or something and meant to sound like ice. they just could not stand that they were being told to sing straight tone and i ended up yelling at all of them that they were being selfish and this guy had put a lot into writing this piece and if they'd all just get over themselves they'd realize how beautiful it was, and didn't we owe him just one good recording?!

but, there's also the fact that we were, in fact, training to be soloists, and it's often dangerous to the voice to constrain it when in your lessons, your teacher is trying to get you to sing freely and naturally. humorously, the choir of non-voice majors sounded 10 times better than we did!

(sorry for the boring thread derail)

I'm thinking like, graphic artists, paid writers - maybe not fiction ones, but journos.

I think maybe I was more thinking "forced" in the sense, you are doing something you dont really want to/wouldnt otherwise/its just a job.

Me, I don't think I'll ever be truly happy until I've written something close to what's in my head. I'd rather play games all day, but I've been nagging at myself since childhood. The older I get, the more afraid I am that I'll have to reconcile myself to the possibility that I don't got what it takes. And I mean that in terms of judging myself, not any outward token of success.

Also, there are so many crappy novels in the world already, and there are also so many great novels, that I wouldn't like to add something mediocre or crappy to the pile.

Then again, it would add to the sum of literary creativity in the world, which might be a good thing, even if it lowered the average standard. No wait, that would be a bad thing.

As they say, fish got to fly and birds got to swim. Or something like that. If you genuinely feel impelled to create, you'll create, depending on the strength of the impulse.

Your only true obligation is to be a reasonably decent, good human being.

I clearly recall that day in 1972 when I was 17 and I opened a letter from the good folks who run the National Merit Scholarship hoohah, informing me that not only was I in the 99th percentile of test takers and therefore might possibly get some money if I played my cards right (I never got any), but also informing me that my fabulous talents obliged me to become a prominent leader or a slambang scientist, basically a cerebral ox who would pull the USA oxcart to its destined greatness.

I just as clearly recall my reaction to this information: fuck you, NMSAT asshats, I'm not obliged to be anyone's ox.

haha this is like precisely the opposite of the "pay me to be creative" mindset but i love when writers say shit like this and mean it:

RICHARD POWERS

That was a Saturday. On Monday I went in to my job and gave two weeks notice and started working on Three Farmers.

INTERVIEWER

What did you do for money?

POWERS

I had been working doing computer operations for a credit union. It was a terrific time to be a programmer because there was so much demand that you could make a living as a freelancer. You could pick up a six-week job, build a war chest, go write, and after a few months come crawling back out and look for another short-term job. Once I worked for an exiled Spanish prince. He was the grandson of the old king before Spain’s civil war, which I guess made him a cousin to Juan Carlos. He had been in line to head the restoration, and when it went against him he ended up in the United States as a trader. Here was this socialist royal trying to find out ways of building options spreads. So I wrote one of the very first real-time options-hedge trading programs.

INTERVIEWER

You should have stayed with it. You might have been a billionaire by now.

POWERS

I had a book to write.

YOU TELL 'EM, RICH

If you genuinely feel impelled to create, you'll create, depending on the strength of the impulse.

I think a lot of the anxiety people feel, or at least I do/did, is whether the impulse is strong enough.

The way I look at it, you can't control the impulse, so don't worry over it. There are an infinite number of ways to go to hell and you'll always find one of them to your liking.

this whole thread is first world problems i guess

― bows don't kill people, arrows do (Jordan), Friday, October 22, 2010 10:30 AM (1 minute ago)

so?

so nothing? my first world problems are very important to me, clearly.

but i do go back and forth between albini-esque "making music is not a special thing, just regular stuff that people do" thoughts and the more darni3lle-esqe "music is magical and sacred, that's why we care about it so much, so don't take it for granted".

Albini is a dick.

okay.

sorry the "first world problems" thing bugs the shit out of me, unless it's in the context of a discussion about global politics where third world problems are at issue or part of the discussion. It just seems unnecessarily self-deprecating.

i think it's healthy to keep in mind that as much as i might obsess my creative frustrations/challenges/successes, it's not really that important in the grand scheme of things.

Albini is a dick.

― sarahel, Friday, October 22, 2010 12:59 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bullshit.

"it's not really that important in the grand scheme of things" = escape hatch

not worth arguing about m@tt - i'm just basing it on 2nd hand info

yeah, his whole thing is basically "don't be a dick", as i understand it. and i respect people who are totally committed to their artistic pursuits without being a dick about it.

yeah, his whole thing is basically "don't be a dick", as i understand it.

if it is, then he must make an exception for message board posts

You'd be very surprised to know how much that may seem small at first glance actually does matter in the grand scheme of things.

if it is, then he must make an exception for message board posts

Who doesn't?

I mean, look at here!

could we not turn this into an ilm thread

could we not turn this into an ilm thread

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, October 22, 2010 11:14 AM (13 seconds ago)

^^^

yeah, his whole thing is basically "don't be a dick", as i understand it.

if it is, then he must make an exception for message board posts

― sarahel, Friday, October 22, 2010 1:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if you're talking about the electrical audio board, most of those ppl deserve way worse that what they get

haha sarah1 since when are you one for staying on topic?

honestly - i think it's a bit of both - it is something that "regular" people do that is also magical and awesome.

this is what i am saying

oh ok - i thought you were posing it as some kind of dichotomy.

I don't understand why we can't have both Albini's & Darnielle's POV that Music is special and magic but making it is just a thing that ordinary folks do. These view points are not that incompatible from where I'm standing.

But then again, I'm a "person who gots to do it" & sees something special about DOING it but nothing special about being a person who does it.

X-posts stupid iPhone typing = slow.

I agree that those points of view are not incompatible.

I clearly recall that day in 1972 when I was 17 and I opened a letter from the good folks who run the National Merit Scholarship hoohah, informing me that not only was I in the 99th percentile of test takers and therefore might possibly get some money if I played my cards right (I never got any), but also informing me that my fabulous talents obliged me to become a prominent leader or a slambang scientist, basically a cerebral ox who would pull the USA oxcart to its destined greatness.

I just as clearly recall my reaction to this information: fuck you, NMSAT asshats, I'm not obliged to be anyone's ox.

didn't mean to make it seem like they're mutually exclusive viewpoints, just that i think them at different times, depending on if i need motivation or if i feel like i'm getting too caught up/consumed by it. it's not a good thing to tie your self-esteem to your creative output btw, but sometimes hard not to.

I don't understand why we can't have both Albini's & Darnielle's POV that Music is special and magic but making it is just a thing that ordinary folks do.

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as necessity requires.

here's the point in all this meta-malarkey when i always think about going back to college for social work or joining the missionaries or something.

I can't go on. I'll go on.

me: "no, really, i mean it this time. shape up and devote my time to helping the planet."
brain: "shut up. you and i both know you're going to keep drinking beer and writing horror short stories."

aw guys, this is a good thread, but i have to go practice blast beats for an hour.

bsnowy, I see your quote and raise you:

Yet I have met people who have never said to life, "Quiet!", who have never said to death, "Go away!" Almost always women, beautiful creatures. Men are assaulted by terror, the night breaks through them, they see their plans annihilated, their work turned to dust. They who were so important, who wanted to create the world, are dumbfounded; everything crumbles.

see guys this is why you should make art: so people on the internet have something to dork out about together

keep drinking beer

ha this is such a factor.

If you genuinely feel impelled to create, you'll create, depending on the strength of the impulse.

see i sort of disagree, it's like if you said "if you genuinely feel impelled to exercise, you'll exercise" or something. yes the will and desire is important but you have to find ways of implementing things or changing your life so that you make it easier to do things that are difficult. as much as it's great to be content with yourself, i do feel that it's okay to want to improve too.

was thinking about this thread in the shower and i think a huge reason i want to create is that i can't actually communicate with more than a handful of people beyond making joke after joke. hence when i have flatmates or something where i'm forced to spend time with people i become ultra quiet/shy.

I have yet to find that being more creative, in the sense of creating art, causes one to improve as a human being. It may give one's better nature a chance to express itself, or it may just elevate one's obsessions to the point of worship. We all have to puzzle these things out. Art is just one avenue for possibly accomplishing this, but not to a certainty.

What do you think causes one to improve, if anything? And if nothing, what's the point in doing anything, or what makes someone a good human being (given you said that's what you believe we should strive for!)

self-knowledge re. how to be a good person is one thing but i'm coming to believe that putting it into practice is pretty much the great project of human adult life.

that and beer.

Engage with what is before you. Don't stop thinking or feeling. When you are unhappy, look for a better path. When you are happy, be grateful. Be patient always. Try to solve more problems than you cause. Be quick to forgive and compassionate with everyone, including yourself. That causes one to improve as a human being.

sounds so easy in general terms...

xp that and beer

interesting topic, wish I had time to read it all

my general philosophy is quit whining and just f'kn do it

creating art is not a very social pursuit imo...when friends of mine are really getting some serious work done, they can be pretty hard to interface with as human beings. i know the same thing is true for me, it takes some decompression time before i can turn off that part of my brain and honestly focus on someone else.

(beer helps)

Sure it's not easy. You want easy, go have a snack. But then, making art isn't necessarily easy, either. I'm just saying art isn't some panacea that makes your life better, however hard or easy that art might be. Art is just the externalization of certain thoughts you have.

Sure, I wasn't disagreeing as such by pointing out it's not easy, more stating the obvious minus an exclamation mark!

Baking a cake or knitting a scarf is creative.

cooking is v creative...one of the most enjoyable pursuits!