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
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