Friday, December 28, 2007

Ideas, people?

Here’s the thing about fancying yourself “creative”. As long as you have some sort of prohibitive factor in your life (say, your full-time job, your full-time relationship, your charity work with learning-disabled orphans that you'll really commit yourself to once your schedule clears) you can pretend that, and that alone, is the reason for your lack of fame, or worse, lack of daily greatness. I mean, it’s been working for me for over a quarter-century now.

But when you’re given the opportunity to showcase what it is, as the kids say, what you’re made of, and you can’t exactly produce it, this is where the trouble begins.

My full-time job, however glamorous and full of wine, has an end in sight. I knew this. We all did. But like the inevitable end of Titanic, didn’t you just hope there would be a Hail Mary pass that changed the outcome of history? I did. And that magic day, dear friends, has yet to come.

So there comes then that opportunity we were talking about, you and I, that free-as-a-bird, show-me-how-you think dare. From someone damn important. And you have forty other deadlines to meet. And your (my) brain freezes. It’s not used to being addressed to directly.*

So you shoot off a thought and you see if it sticks, and if it doesn’t, well, then it’s back to the drawing board to wonder why it's so hard to capture creative flow.

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*Would-be employers, can’t you mar up this request by adding that I need to make a thousand copies? My best thoughts come to me during the abysmal tedium of everyday entry life, I swear!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just keep writing, keep us updated and finish your book. Greatness follows people like you.

JUST ME said...

What did they ask you to do?

Fuck everything else and go for broke, girl.

Lock yourself in your room and make it happen!

Smerdyakov said...

Lock yourself in a room and make it happen? Hmmm, let's see..... Hemingway rounded up body parts as an ambulance driver in WWI, had sex with prostitutes and went of safaris. Langston Hughes quit his office job to be a busboy. Saul bellow moved to one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods at the height of his career.
Wanna know how to spur creativity? Live your fucking life. Talk to people you wouldn't otherwise mix with. Drive with your window open during a blizzard. Slap somebody. Grope your partner in public.
Then the creativity thing will take care of itself.

A Rambler said...

anon - defiance for the sake of is anti-creative. It's just as confining as driving with the windows closed. Spontaneous creativity cant happen when you're looking for it. It's essence is irony and maybe there's something perfect about being inspired to "create" while making copies.