Fear, Loathing, and the Creative Process
Ah, creativity. The thing of self-help books, the typeface that launched a thousand scripts, and a driving force for all fields. There are tons of TED talks, books, plays, works, and musings on creativity. The realm of research illustrates the contradictions or at least our complex interactions with the concept of creativity: Teachers do not like creative students, happiness and creativity go together like two birds of a feather, people with certain types of bipolar disorder self-report being more creative during hypo/manic episodes, creativity is seen as a driving force for business, adult creatives have a higher than average rate of mental illness, people with higher intelligence allocate more cognitive resources to creative tasks, and we fear creativity as it makes us as a whole feel uncertain. So, we seem to have a bit of a creativity complex.
What do you think of when presented with the idea of creativity?
Turns out, it might be “vomit.”
“To uncover bias against creativity, the researchers used a subtle technique to measure unconscious bias — the kind to which people may not want to admit, such as racism. Results revealed that while people explicitly claimed to desire creative ideas, they actually associated creative ideas with negative words such as ‘vomit,’ ‘poison’ and ‘agony.’” — From People are Biased Against Creative Ideas, Studies Find (Catt)
In the same study, they essentially propose that people do not like creative ideas as they trigger feelings of uncertainty, people dismiss creative approaches for methods that have been previously successful, objective evidence supporting a creative idea does not actually inspire people to try it out, and people are so unaware of their own biases against creativity that they cannot recognize a creative idea. Whew.
How many times have we passed over ideas without taking the time to truly consider if they are innovative approaches? How have we subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) let fear drive us away from a creative idea? How many of our ideas have we disregarded in the subconscious pursuit of not feeling uncertain?!
Fear and creativity are good friends. There are lots of Pinterest quotes warbling out that fear is the ENEMY OF CREATIVITY, but to me it’s more a question as to how you balance the two. With creativity, comes fear. With fear, comes a creative solution. The real question for me is when you need to take a step in the direction of courage.
Henri Matisse was a wild beast. And, in the best sense, as being a Fauve, French for “wild beast” (which to me conjures up the vision of a fashionable lion smoking a cigarette sedately in front of a grand building), meant that he moved art to a new world of color, aesthetics, and technique. Fauvism (the movement of wild, fashionably artistic French lions per my vision and in reality the group of artists moving away from Impressionism) only lasted a couple of years from the early 1900s to around 1910, and was headed by Matisse and Andre Derain. Its beginnings came from the controversial use of color, leading an art critic and fare-weather friend Mauclair to remark that “a pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public!” (Subtext: Zut alors! L’horreur! Vos lions, fumant des cigarettes si soigneusement, peignant avec tant de couleurs affreuses!) Mauclair also harshly critiqued both Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec before their work found acceptance with the public at which point Mauclair decided that, hey, they were also pretty great and perhaps should forget all the terrible things he had said about the work previously. (Critique d’art. Ne peut pas leur faire confiance ou leur jeter de la peinture.)
Enter Matisse, wild beast in spectacles.
“There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover. An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc... Creativity takes courage.” (Matisse in His Own Words)
Creativity takes courage.
Courage is to do something that frightens you, a strength in the face of pain, grief, or uncertainty. Courage is also a habit, something that becomes easier with practice, time, and perhaps a renewed lease on life to not let critics slap you around before you find grand public appeal.
From Psychology Today, a few tips on how to become courageous — Decide what you think about things, speak from a place of conviction, notice every time you are scared to do something but you do it anyways, focus on the cause or the people for whom you fight, work with others for power in numbers, be aware of your own negativity bias and learn to listen to positive signals, and find courageous role models. And, go to Paris.
Well, metaphorically at least should the airfare be above your current wage.
“Suppose that what you fear
could be trapped,
and held in Paris.
Then you would have
the courage to go
everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.
Still, you wouldn’t dare
put your toes
smack dab on the city limit line.
You’re not really willing
to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
Just to be on the safe side
you decide to stay completely
out of France.
But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel
the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.
You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
‘See Paris first.’”
— M. Truman Cooper
