Your elusive creative genius Elizabeth Gilbert

[Music]

I am my writer writing books is my

profession but it’s more than that of

course it is also my great lifelong love

and fascination and I don’t expect that

that’s ever going to change

but that said something kind of peculiar

has happened recently in my life and in

my career which has caused me to have to

sort of recalibrate my whole

relationship with this work and the

peculiar thing is that I recently wrote

this book this memoir called Eat Pray

Love which decidedly unlike any of my

previous books went out in the world for

some reason and became this big mega

sensation international bestseller thing

the result of which is that everywhere I

go now people treat me like I’m doomed

seriously to whom doomed like they come

up to me now like all worried and they

say aren’t you afraid aren’t you afraid

you’re never going to be able to top

that aren’t you afraid you’re gonna keep

writing for your whole life and you’re

never again gonna create a book that

anybody in the world cares about at all

ever again

so that’s reassuring you know but it

would be worse except for that I happen

to remember that over 20 years ago when

I first started telling people when I

was a teenager that I wanted to be a

writer I was met with this same kind of

sort of fear-based reaction and people

would say aren’t you afraid you’re never

going to have any success aren’t you

afraid the humiliation of rejection will

kill you aren’t you afraid that you’re

gonna work your whole life at this craft

and nothing’s ever going to come of it

you’re gonna die on a scrap heap of

broken dreams with your mouth filled

with bitter ash of failure

like that you know and the answer short

answer to all those questions is yes

yes I’m afraid of all those things and I

always have been and I’m afraid of many

many more things besides that you know

people can’t even guess at like seaweed

and and other things that are scary but

when it comes to writing the the thing

that I’ve been sort of thinking about

lately and wondering about lately is why

you know is it rational is it logical

that anybody should be expected to be

afraid of the work that they feel they

were put on this earth to do you know

and what is it

specifically about creative ventures

this seems to make us really nervous

about each other’s mental health in a

way that other careers kind of don’t do

you know like my dad for example was a

chemical engineer and I don’t recall

once in his 40 years of Chemical

Engineering anybody asking him if he was

afraid to be a chemical engineer you

know it just didn’t come like get

chemical engineering block John you know

how’s it go

and it just didn’t come up like that you

know but to be fair right chemical

engineers as a group you know haven’t

really earned a reputation over the

centuries for being alcoholic manic

depressives and we writers you know we

kind of do have that reputation and not

not just writers but creative people

across all genres it seems have this

reputation for being enormous Lee

mentally unstable and you know all you

have to do is look at the very grim

death count in the twentieth century

alone of really magnificent creative

minds who died young and often at their

own hands you know and even the ones who

didn’t literally commit suicide seemed

to be really undone by their gifts you

know Norman Mailer just before he died

last interview he said every one of my

books has killed me a little more an

extraordinary statement to make about

your life’s work you know but we don’t

even blink when we hear somebody say

this because we’ve heard that kind of

stuff for so long and somehow we’ve

completely internalized and accepted

collectively this notion that creativity

and suffering are somehow inherently

linked and that artistry in the end will

always ultimately lead to

anguish and the question that I want to

ask everybody here today is are you guys

all cool with that idea like are you

comfortable with that because you look

at it even from an inch away and you

know I’m not at all comfortable with

that assumption I think it’s odious and

I also think it’s dangerous and I don’t

want to see it perpetuated into the next

century I think better if we encourage

you know our great creative minds to

live you know and and I definitely know

that in in my case in my situation it

would be very dangerous for me to start

sort of leaking down that dark path of

assumption you know particularly given

the circumstance that I’m in right now

in my career which is you know like

check it out I’m pretty young I’m only

about 40 years old I still have maybe

another four decades of work left in me

and it’s exceedingly likely that

anything I write from this point forward

is going to be judged by the world as

the work that came after the freakish

success of my last book right I should

just put it bluntly cuz we’re all sort

of friends here now it’s exceedingly

likely that my greatest success is

behind me you know um oh jesus what a

thought you know like that’s the kind of

thought that could lead a person to

start drinking gin at 9 o’clock in the

morning and you know I don’t want to go

there you know I would prefer to keep

doing this work that I love and so the

question becomes how you know and and so

it seems to me upon a lot of reflection

that that the way that I have to work

now in order to continue writing is that

I have to create some sort of protective

psychological construct right I have to

sort of find some way to have a safe

distance you know between me as I am

writing and my very natural anxiety

about what the reaction to that writing

is going to be from now on and and as

I’ve been looking over the last year for

like models for how to do that

I’ve been sort of looking across time

and I’ve been trying to find like other

societies to see if they might have had

better and saner ideas than we have

about how to help creative people sort

of manage the inherent emotional risks

of of creativity and that search has led

me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome so

stay with me because it does circle

around

but ancient Greece and ancient Rome

people did not happen to believe that

creativity came from human beings back

then

okay people believed that creativity was

this divine attendant spirit that came

to human beings from some distant and

unknowable source for a distant and

unknowable reasons the Greeks famously

called these divine attendant spirits of

creativity Damons Socrates famously

believed that he had a daemon who spoke

wisdom to him from far the Romans had

the same idea but they called that sort

of disembodied creative spirit a genius

which is great because the Romans did

not actually think that a genius was a

particularly clever individual they

believed that a genius was the sort of

magical divine entity who was believed

to literally live in the walls of an

artist’s studio kind of like Dobby the

house-elf

and who would come out and serve

invisibly assist the artists with their

work and would shape the outcome of that

work so brilliant there it is right

there that distance that I’m talking

about that psychological construct to

protect you from the results of your

work you know and everyone knew that

this is how it functioned right so the

ancient artist was protected from

certain things like for example too much

narcissism right if your work was

brilliant couldn’t take all the credit

for it everybody knew you had this like

disembodied genius who had helped you if

your work bombed not entirely your fault

you know everyone knew your genius was

kind of lame and this is how people

thought about creativity in the West for

a really long time and then the

Renaissance came and everything changed

and we had this big idea and the big

idea was let’s put the individual human

being at the center of the universe

right above all gods and mysteries and

there’s no more room for like mystical

creatures who take dictation from the

divine and and it’s the beginning of

rational humanism and people started to

believe that creativity came completely

from the self of the individual and for

the first time in history you start to

hear people referring to this or that

artist as being a genius

rather than having a genius and I gotta

tell you I think that was a huge error

you know I think that allowing somebody

like one mere person to believe that he

or she is

the vessel you know like the font and

the essence and the source of all divine

creative unknowable eternal mystery is

just like a smidge too much

responsibility to put on one fragile

human psyche it’s like asking somebody

to swallow the Sun you know it’s just

completely warps and distorts egos and

it creates all these unmanageable

expectations about performance and I

think the pressure of that has been

killing off our artists for the last 500

years and if this is true and I think it

is true the question becomes you know

what now you know can we do this

differently maybe go back to some more

ancient understanding about the

relationship between humans and the

creative mystery maybe not you know like

maybe we can’t just erase 500 years of

rational humanistic thought and 118

minute speech and there’s probably

people in this audience who would raise

like really legitimate scientific

suspicions about the notion of basically

fairies who follow people around like

rubbing fairy juice on their projects

and stuff like I’m not probably gonna

bring you all along with me on this but

the question that I kind of want to pose

is you know why not why not think about

it this way because it makes as much

sense as anything else I have ever heard

in terms of explaining the utter

maddening capriciousness

of the creative process a process which

as anybody who has ever tried to make

something which is to say as basically

everyone here knows does not always

behave rationally and in fact can

sometimes feel downright paranormal I

had this encounter recently where I met

the extraordinary American poet Ruth

Stone who’s now in her 90s but she’s

been a poet her entire life and she told

me that when she was growing up in rural

Virginia she would be out working in the

fields and she said she would like feel

and hear a poem coming at her from over

the landscape and she said it was like a

thunderous train of error and it would

come barreling down at her over the

landscape and when she felt it coming

because it would like shake the earth

under her feet she knew that she had

only one thing to do at that point and

that was to in her words run like hell

and she would like run like

held in the house and she’d be getting

chased by his poem and the whole deal

was that she had to get to a piece of

paper and a pencil fast enough so that

when it thundered through her she could

collect it and grab it on the page and

other times she wouldn’t be fast enough

so she’d be like running and running and

running and the she wouldn’t get to the

house and the poem would like barrel

through her and she would miss it and

she said it would continue on across the

landscape looking as she put it for

another poet and and then there were

these times this is the piece I never

forgot she said that there were moments

when she would almost miss it right so

she’s like running into the house and

she’s looking for the paper and the poem

passes through her and she grabs a

pencil just as it’s going through her

and then she said it was like she would

reach out with her other hand and she

would catch it she would catch the poem

by its tail and she would pull it

backwards into her body as she was

transcribing on the page and in these

instances the poem would come up on the

page perfect and intact but backwards

from the last word to the first so when

I heard that I was like that’s you know

that’s uncanny that’s exactly what my

creative process is like it’s not at all

what my creative process I’m not the

pipeline you know like I’m a mule and

the way that I have to work is that I

have to get up at the same time every

day and like sweat and labor and like

barrel through it really awkwardly but

even I in my mule ish Ness even I have

brushed up against that thing you know

at times and I would imagine that a lot

of you have to you know like even I have

had work or ideas come through me from a

source that I honestly cannot identify

and what is that thing and how are we to

relate to it in a way that will not make

us lose our minds but in fact might

actually keep us saying and for me the

best contemporary example that I have of

how to do that is the musician Tom Waits

who I got to interview several years ago

on a on a magazine assignment and we

were talking about this and you know you

you know Tom I mean for most of his life

he was pretty much the embodiment of the

tormented contemporary modern artist you

know like trying to control and manage

and dominate these sort of

uncontrollable creative impulses you

know that were totally internalized but

then he got older and he got calmer and

one day he was driving on the freeway in

Los Angeles

he told me and this is when it all

changed for him and and he’s like

speeding along and all of a sudden he

hears this little fragment of melody you

know that comes into his head as

inspiration often comes elusive and

tantalizing and he wants it you know

it’s gorgeous and and he longs for it

but he has no way to get it he doesn’t

have a piece of paper he doesn’t have a

pencil he doesn’t have a tape recorder

so he starts to feel all that old

anxiety start to rise in him like I’m

gonna lose this thing you know I’m gonna

be haunted by this song forever and I’m

not good enough and I can’t do it and

instead of panicking he just stopped he

just stopped that whole mental process

and he did something completely novel he

just looked up at the sky and he said

excuse me

can you not see that I’m driving do I

look like I can write down a song right

now you know if you really want to exist

come back at a more opportune moment

when I can take care of you otherwise go

bother somebody else today

go bother Leonard Cohen you know and and

his whole work process changed after

that not the work the work was still

often times as dark as ever you know but

the process and the heavy anxiety around

it was released when he took that Genie

the genius out of him where it was

causing nothing but trouble and released

it kind of back where it came from and

realized that this didn’t have to be

this internalized tormented thing it

could be this peculiar wondrous bizarre

collaboration kind of conversation

between Tom and the strange external

thing that was not quite Tom so when I

heard that story it started to shift a

little bit the way that I worked to and

it already saved me once this idea it

saved me when I was in the middle of

writing ate Pray Love and I fell into

one of those sort of pits of despair

that we all fall into when we’re working

on something and it’s not coming and you

start to think this is going to be a

disaster this is gonna be the worst book

ever not just bad but the worst book

ever written and and I started to think

I should just dump this project you know

but then I remembered Tom talking to the

open air and I I tried it so I just

lifted my face up from the manuscript

and I directed my comments to an empty

corner of the room and I said aloud

listen you thing

you and I both know that if this book

isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my

fault right because you can see that I

am putting everything I have into this

you know I don’t have any more than this

so if you want it to be better then you

got to show up and do your part of the

deal okay but if you don’t do that you

know what the hell with it I’m gonna

keep writing anyway because that’s my

job and I would please like the record

to reflect today that I showed up for my

part of the job because in the end it’s

like this okay centuries ago in the

deserts of North Africa people used to

gather for these moonlight dances of

sacred dance and music that would go on

for hours and hours until dawn and they

were always magnificent because the

dancers were professionals and they were

terrific right but every once in a while

very rarely something would happen and

one of these performers would actually

become transcendent and I know you know

what I’m talking about because I know

you’ve all seen at some point in your

life a performance like this you know

and it was like time would stop and the

dancer would sort of step through some

kind of portal and he wasn’t doing

anything different than he had ever done

you know a thousand nights before but

everything would align and all of a

sudden he would no longer appear to be

nearly human you know he would be like

lit from within and lit from below and

all like lit up on fire with divinity

and when this happened back then people

knew it for what it was you know they

called it by its name they would put

their hands together and they would

start to chant Allah Allah Allah God God

God that’s God you know curious

historical footnote when the Moors

invaded southern Spain they took this

custom with them and the pronunciation

changed over the centuries from Allah

Allah Allah to all a Olleh Olleh which

you still here in bullfights and in

flamenco dances in Spain when a

performer has done something impossible

and magic Allah Allah Allah Allah

Magnificent Bravo incomprehensible there

it is a glimpse of God which is great

because we need that but the tricky bit

comes the next morning right for the

dancer himself when he wakes up

and discovers that it’s Tuesday 11 a.m.

and he’s no longer a glimpse of God he’s

just an aging mortal with really bad

knees and you know maybe he’s never

going to ascend to that height again and

maybe nobody will ever chant God’s name

again as he spins and what is he then to

do with the rest of his life this is

hard

this is one of the most painful

reconciliations to make in a creative

life you know but maybe it doesn’t have

to be quite so full of anguish if you

never happened to believe in the first

place that the most extraordinary

aspects of your being came from you but

maybe if you just believe that they were

unknown to you you know from some

unimaginable source for some exquisite

portion of your life to be passed along

when you’re finished with somebody else

and you know if we think about it this

way it starts to change everything you

know this is how I’ve started to think

and this is certainly how I was thinking

about it in the last few months you know

as I’ve been working on the book that

will soon be published as the

dangerously frightening Lee over

anticipated follow-up to my freakish

success and and and what I have to sort

of keep telling myself when I get really

psyched out about that is don’t be

afraid don’t be daunted just do your job

continue to show up for your piece of it

whatever that might be if your job is to

dance do your dance if the divine

cockeyed genius assigned to your case

decides to let some sort of wonderment

be glimpsed for just one moment through

your efforts than Olay and if not do

your dance anyhow and dole a to you

nonetheless I believe this and I feel

like we must teach it oleh to you

nonetheless just for having the sheer

human love and stubbornness to keep

showing up thank you

[Applause]

thank you

[Applause]

[Applause]