Riffs – Process Peace

The Trades I Make

May 4, 2020 Suzanne Biro

The last week and a half, I let my creative writing time go. It’s a decision I seldom allow, making exceptions only when I am away on vacation or my routine becomes so disrupted it interferes with sleep. I don’t bounce back quickly after sleep is sacrificed.

These last years of early morning waking for quiet reflection and writing, I have learned that with any break in routine, the fear of inadequacy floods in, and the time to get back into routine, back into a free flowing creative state, takes me twice as long (at least) as the time that I “take off”. So, stopping the creative writing routine is not a decision I make lightly. It’s too costly.

I wish I could say it wasn’t due to COVID-19…I read so many artists explaining this time has robbed them of creative spirit. But it’s not like that exactly. No, in the wake of the pandemic my role at my job has swerved—a twist of irony that can’t be ignored—toward more writing. I’m writing for our regional medical officer of health. I write whatever and whenever he requests. I’ve ratcheted up my [work] productivity to a level I haven’t had to in years. And last week I worked against the clock to complete a scientific review of research literature to write a proposal submitted to the province requesting regional easing of restrictions in areas with lower incidence of the disease.

I’m enjoying the challenge at work. Though last week the hours were punishing, and everything slid sideways to accomplish it. But that productivity level won’t be the norm. This week should see things settling back into routine. But that’s not really what I wanted to write about here…sometimes the setup is too long to get to where you’re trying to get to. What I’m curious about and even somewhat ashamed to ask, is: why it is that I will put my head down and work that hard for “my job”, or for someone else, or …let’s call it something extrinsic to myself, and not do the same for my own creative writing projects? A fraction of that energy to my own creative work would have seen a list of publications or painted canvases.

Ah. But even writing that last sentence I see how easily I slip into chasing products again, instead of sinking into process, as one does into a downy pillow after a long day. Still, it would do me good to explore what it is (why it is?) that makes it easier to perform for others as opposed to for myself. Like a trained circus animal.

But that’s exactly it, isn’t it…a denial of one’s wilder instincts to ensure steady meals on the table. Avoiding the discomfort in the wilderness of unknowns; the unpredictable traded for an illusion of control, a fairy tale of certainty.

It amazes me always how the writing will get you where you need to get to, to answer questions. Part of the process is having the courage to ask questions. But also, a willingness to trample into the bare unknowns, where the answers are often harsh and unforgiving.

Word follow: Creativity

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 Suzanne Biro

‘I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one’
John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

I’ve returned from a week and a half vacation in B.C. Of course, I brought my notebooks, my computer, and some select drawing materials, believing I would have the much needed down time in order to create or work on expanding the draft of a short story I’m working on. That didn’t happen. The time change—even moving as little as three hours towards the sunsets—made me feel nauseous and exhausted. Wonderful visits with family and friends filled the days. The artistic practice routine I’ve guarded and carved at home, dissolved. I let it. Instead, I welcomed the laughter, delicious food and wine, the spectacular mountain views. It’s all essential.

Two weeks not practicing makes it hard to face a blank page. Like any exercise, I need to build back my muscles. Habits help. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit the tailspin of self-doubt and anxiety (again?! still?!) about my artistic abilities or my lack of productivity. It’s a comfort knowing most artists feel this way. Most creatives? And then, I wondered, why?

I attended a lecture at Queen’s University this week, a PhD student in the education department exploring how the concept of “creativity” is incorporated and has influenced the Ontario curriculum since the 1880s to now (no small feat) (1). His research demonstrated the word “creative” doesn’t enter common usage until the 1950s or so, an etymological fact that surprised me. The original use of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and a theological reference the student managed to track down, deviates from the modern definition we bandy about and follows an interesting progression through the next few hundred years.

In the 1640s, creativity was associated with “creationism” and the divine (read: God) ability to make all things, all of “creation”. This older concept of creativity became associated with the idea of a “God – given gift” and that association then became linked with “genius” and “ingenuity”. Read: reserved only for the special, “chosen”, few (and, historically, almost exclusively white males in Europe). Genius was reserved for those bestowed (by God) with the creative power and understood to be an innate gift, not something one might learn (through practice, for example). The tiny tinsel ring of recognition bells might be ringing in your mind….

From there, the concept of creativity grew and changed. But slowly. It wasn’t until the later 1800s that it slipped under a conceptual definition that was more inclusive, through the founding father of kindergarten, Fridrich Froebel, a German educator. He believed all humans are creative (not just geniuses) and ought to be left and encouraged, through play and exploration, to cultivate individual creativity. This seems closer to what we aspire to (and believe?) these days, but artists are still assaulted by imposter syndrome and fear…what happened?

Froebel’s ideas managed to influence curriculum development and implementation as far from Germany as Ontario, but in the early 1900s, it was believed too free and difficult to control alongside more traditional approaches to education. Two world wars with Germany on the opposite side did the conceptual definition no favours. It fell to the wayside. I wonder if it is any coincidence the surrealism, expressionism, cubist and art deco movements grew out of this time, following on the heels of impressionism? Did those artists as children attend kindergartens where they were free to explore their creativity?

J. P. Guilford, a psychologist, peppered his learning theories with “creativity” and the word took hold, sticking through a common usage from the 1950s onwards. Guilford’s conceptual definition broke creativity into component parts: as a problem that could be solved. In this way, creativity was recognized as a set of skills that might be taught. By the 1980s, curriculum had teased art making, “creating”, into a progression of increasingly complex building blocks (and why, perhaps, creative making is widely encouraged in primary schools, and then subtly, through omission, discouraged in secondary schools in favour of learning that supports social efficiency skills (those that will get you a job). This is my era of formative schooling and it makes me question whether my dogged pursuit of “learning to write” by searching and reading so many (too many) books on writing (instead of just getting down to the paper and practicing and exploring more freely, in the Froebel manner) is hindering my progress. I think it is.

More recently, the concept of creativity has embraced and shifted into the idea of creativity as social power: through creativity we are able to reform or revolutionize the world. I don’t know about you, but I feel an intense pressure to use my art toward the greater good. The pressure is immense. It can be, and has been, paralyzing.

The variety of conceptual legacies continue to percolate and bubble our modern sociocultural beliefs about what the definition of “creativity” is. Presently, we draw and squeeze together all five ideas. By looking backwards, following this etymological roller coaster, I’m beginning to understand the lenses I allow to cloud my artistic practice. If knowledge is power, then at least I can face the blank page with a little less reservation.

(1) Trevor Strong

Practice efforts from life drawing class. The one on the right I drew entirely with my non-dominant hand! Who knew one could do that!!

Searching for [the] write words

January 17, 2020 Suzanne Biro

“Words are the wings both intellect and imagination fly on.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week

I think about words a lot. Words are the atomic unit of writing. I obsess about how to cram an experience, capture the essence of something, get to the elemental idea of a thought, into as few words as possible [1]. Or better, one perfect word, e.g., laconic.

This week I stumbled upon [2] a wonderful art project, Leaning Out of Windows, a multi-year collaboration between artists at Emily Carr and physicists at the University of British Columbia “to open new pathways for the possibility of a much richer understanding of the human experience than can be attained separately”. I was fascinated to see the words, shared by both disciplines, in a photo of a concept map (one of several products of the art project), created by Ingrid Koenig, mirror the messiness of the creation/discovery/exploratory process.

In her latest book, Essays One, Lydia Davis counsels attentiveness to abstract words, often they disguise a real thing, such as “a herd, a seed, a rodent, a goat”. “Know what that concrete thing is.” This is interesting, from a writing perspective for a number of obvious reasons…but also, if I were to review my own writing—notorious for tracts of conceptual thoughts and reflections, and rife with abstract words—I might discover some underlying feeling, my soul speaking through some imaginative space of authenticity that I need to divine [3].

Winston Churchill’s essay, The Scaffolding of Rhetoric, lists “the continual employment of the best possible word” as the most important “element in the technique of rhetoric”. [A word] “must in each case absolutely express the full meaning of the speaker. It will leave no room for alternatives.” In this way, poets are masters of language.

But it’s daunting, isn’t it, to find the right word? The best I can hope for is recognition, in my own writing, for when a word is imperfect. That my brain catches the signal there’s more to be unearthed, more digging to be done. Refinement needed. The ripple of a misplaced word in the still waters of a sentence has the potential to wash out the larger piece. I take heart with this quote from Philip Pullman, in Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling “If you want to write something perfect, go for a haiku.” And this one too: “But you just try to do better next time.”

[1] inner critic notes: well, you failed with that loquacious sentence, didn’t you?!

[2] I read about it. The show is on in Vancouver later this month for those of you lucky enough to be close to that city. I will have to settle with reading about it and looking at the few pictures of the exhibition posted on the web.

[3] might be a good exercise to try …exorcise to try?