Notes from ‘Big Magic’

One of the books I’ve had recommended to me more than any other this year as I read many, many things is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I didn’t require too much persuasion to read the thing, as her TED talk on ‘elusive creative genius’ was something I found incredibly helpful, and I had heard that this book was an expansion on that idea.

One of the early moments of the book that struck me was the description of a creative icon in her life, a poet named Jack Gilbert who lived a fairly elusive life and held a position at the University which she took after he departed. Elizabeth Gilbert held the man in high regard, and describes how, though she never met him, a fictional version of the poet lived in her mind, often challenging and inspiring her in her own work. Yet there was a statement the ‘real’ Jack Gilbert made to a student that she will never forget:

This young woman recounted to me that one afternoon, after his poetry class, Jack had taken her aside. He complimented her work, then asked what she wanted to do with her life. Hesitantly, she admitted that perhaps she wanted to be a writer. He smiled at the girl with infinite compassion and asked, “Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.”

Asking ourselves if we have the courage to create may be one of the most important questions we ever ask, especially at the beginning of our journey. Gilbert herself recognizes this truth, and shares a story from her teenage years of overcoming fear:

Around the age of fifteen, I somehow figured out that my fear had no variety to it, no depth, no substance, no texture. I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note — only one word, actually — and that word was “STOP!” My fear never had anything more interesting or subtle to offer than that one emphatic word, repeated at full volume on an endless loop: “STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!” Which means that my fear always made predictably boring decisions, like a choose-your-own-ending book that always had the same ending: nothingness. I also realized that my fear was boring because it was identical to everyone else’s fear. I figured out that everyone’s song of fear has exactly that same tedious lyric: “STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!” True, the volume may vary from person to person, but the song itself never changes, because all of us humans were equipped with the same basic fear package when we were being knitted in our mothers’ wombs. And not just humans: If you pass your hand over a petri dish containing a tadpole, the tadpole will flinch beneath your shadow. That tadpole cannot write poetry, and it cannot sing, and it will never know love or jealousy or triumph, and it has a brain the size of a punctuation mark, but it damn sure knows how to be afraid of the unknown. Well, so do I.

At this point the book goes deeper — once we allow ourselves to be creative beings, we must recognize that creativity (and ideas themselves) come and go. How do we live with that? Well, she has an answer:

Because this is the other side of the contract with creativity: If inspiration is allowed to unexpectedly enter you, it is also allowed to unexpectedly exit you. If I’d been younger, the loss of Evelyn of the Amazon might have knocked me off my feet, but by this point in my life I’d been in the game of imagination long enough to let it go without excessive struggle. I could have wept over the loss, but I didn’t, because I understood the terms of the deal, and I accepted those terms. I understood that the best you can hope for in such a situation is to let your old idea go and catch the next idea that comes around. And the best way for that to happen is to move on swiftly, with humility and grace. Don’t fall into a funk about the one that got away. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t rage at the gods above. All that is nothing but distraction, and the last thing you need is further distraction. Grieve if you must, but grieve efficiently. Better to just say good-bye to the lost idea with dignity and continue onward. Find something else to work on — anything, immediately — and get at it. Keep busy. Most of all, be ready. Keep your eyes open. Listen. Follow your curiosity. Ask questions. Sniff around. Remain open. Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvelous ideas are looking for human collaborators every single day. Ideas of every kind are constantly galloping toward us, constantly passing through us, constantly trying to get our attention. Let them know you’re available. And for heaven’s sake, try not to miss the next one.

Gilbert calls the art of allowing ideas to come to us ‘big magic’, and gives an absolutely incredible story of this occurring between herself and another author and friend Ann Patchett. I won’t spoil that exchange because it’s incredibly interesting and told very, very well — but I am intrigued and impressed by Gilbert’s insistence that ideas are real, almost living things that have a mind of her own. This concept of ideas clearly shapes her work, and it’s worth considering.

It also helps her consider what it means to lose an idea. Is it just to be upset about it if the idea was never yours in the first place? Gilbert believes it isn’t, and she turns to some artistic greats to back this concept up:

One of the best descriptions I’ve ever heard of this phenomenon — that is, of ideas entering and exiting the human consciousness at whim — came from the wonderful American poet Ruth Stone. I met Stone when she was nearly ninety years old, and she regaled me with stories about her extraordinary creative process. She told me that when she was a child growing up on a farm in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields when she would sometimes hear a poem coming toward her — hear it rushing across the landscape at her, like a galloping horse. Whenever this happened, she knew exactly what she had to do next: She would “run like hell” toward the house, trying to stay ahead of the poem, hoping to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough to catch it. That way, when the poem reached her and passed through her, she would be able to grab it and take dictation, letting the words pour forth onto the page. Sometimes, however, she was too slow, and she couldn’t get to the paper and pencil in time. At those instances, she could feel the poem rushing right through her body and out the other side. It would be in her for a moment, seeking a response, and then it would be gone before she could grasp it — galloping away across the earth, as she said, “searching for another poet.” But sometimes (and this is the wildest part) she would nearly miss the poem, but not quite. She would just barely catch it, she explained, “by the tail.” Like grabbing a tiger. Then she would almost physically pull the poem back into her with one hand, even as she was taking dictation with the other. In these instances, the poem would appear on the page from the last word to the first — backward, but otherwise intact. That, my friends, is some freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic, right there. I believe in it, though.

…and another, (this one was my favorite part of her TED Talk), of Tom Waits:

Years ago, I interviewed the musician Tom Waits for a profile in GQ magazine. I’ve spoken about this interview before and I will probably speak about it forever, because I’ve never met anyone who was so articulate and wise about creative living. In the course of our interview, Waits went on a whimsical rant about all the different forms that song ideas will take when they’re trying to be born. Some songs, he said, will come to him with an almost absurd ease, “like dreams taken through a straw.” Other songs, though, he has to work hard for, “like digging potatoes out of the ground.” Still other songs are sticky and weird, “like gum found under an old table,” while some songs are like wild birds that he must come at sideways, sneaking up on them gently so as not to scare them into flight. The most difficult and petulant songs, though, will only respond to a firm hand and an authoritative voice. There are songs, Waits says, that simply will not allow themselves to be born, and that will hold up the recording of an entire album. Waits has, at such moments, cleared the studio of all the other musicians and technicians so he can have a stern talking-to with a particularly obstinate song. He’ll pace the studio alone, saying aloud, “Listen, you! We’re all going for a ride together! The whole family’s already in the van! You have five minutes to get on board, or else this album is leaving without you!” Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Gilbert considers the concept of creation to be a unique and important part of humanity. She challenges us (just as Erwin McManus does in ‘Artisan Soul’) to understand that we are all creative beings, and are made to make:

If you’re alive, you’re a creative person. You and I and everyone you know are descended from tens of thousands of years of makers. Decorators, tinkerers, storytellers, dancers, explorers, fiddlers, drummers, builders, growers, problem-solvers, and embellishers — these are our common ancestors.

Gilbert shares a story of her friend complaining about his creative work to, of all people, Werner Herzog:

I have a friend in Italy who’s an independent filmmaker. Many years ago, back when he was an angry young man, he wrote a letter to his hero, the great German director Werner Herzog. My friend poured out his heart in this letter, complaining to Herzog about how badly his career was going, how nobody liked his movies, how difficult it had become to make films in a world where nobody cares, where everything is so expensive, where there is no funding for the arts, where public tastes have run to the vulgar and the commercial . . . If he’d been looking for sympathy, however, my friend had gone to the wrong place. (Although why anyone would turn to Werner Herzog, of all people, for a warm shoulder to cry on is beyond me.) Anyhow, Herzog wrote my friend a long reply of ferocious challenge, in which he said, more or less, this: “Quit your complaining. It’s not the world’s fault that you wanted to be an artist. It’s not the world’s job to enjoy the films you make, and it’s certainly not the world’s obligation to pay for your dreams. Nobody wants to hear it. Steal a camera if you must, but stop whining and get back to work.”

Though Herzog’s advice is much more pragmatic and overtly rational than Gilbert’s, is the concept not the exact same? Stop making excuses. Stop blaming something else. Just do what you are called to do. This is advice we should all remember. The details aren’t important to Gilbert, and I agree:

Somebody said to me the other day, “You claim that we can all be creative, but aren’t there huge differences between people’s innate talents and abilities? Sure, we can all make some kind of art, but only a few of us can be great, right?” I don’t know. Honestly, you guys, I don’t even really care. I cannot even be bothered to think about the difference between high art and low art. I will fall asleep with my face in my dinner plate if someone starts discoursing to me about the academic distinction between true mastery and mere craft. I certainly don’t ever want to confidently announce that this person is destined to become an important artist, while that person should give it up. How do I know? How does anyone know? It’s all so wildly subjective, and, anyhow, life has surprised me too many times in this realm. On one hand, I’ve known brilliant people who created absolutely nothing from their talents. On the other hand, there are people whom I once arrogantly dismissed who later staggered me with the gravity and beauty of their work. It has all humbled me far beyond the ability to judge anyone’s potential, or to rule anybody out.

So how do we tap into our own creative side, and let ideas come to us? One little secret (and there are very few) is to be a curious being:

I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone. Passion can seem intimidatingly out of reach at times — a distant tower of flame, accessible only to geniuses and to those who are specially touched by God. But curiosity is a milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity. The stakes of curiosity are also far lower than the stakes of passion.

The point is not how, the point is why, and why is the crux of Big Magic. We create because we are built to. Nothing more, nothing less:

Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.

An Ecclesiastical ending, that I appreciate very much. What a book.