creativity – Process Peace

Filling the Well

March 29, 2023March 29, 2023 Suzanne Biro

My passport was declined the maximum three times at the new scanning kiosks at Canada customs. I left the wave of Canadians passing with ease through the machines to find a customs officer in the flesh, “Where are you coming from?” Looking me up and down, a middle-aged woman travelling alone, he was confused. “Mexico City” I handed him my passport. “And you didn’t travel in Mexico?” “Yes, I did, but not by plane. By bus. And taxis.” “It’s unusual for a Canadian (he paused here but did not say ‘woman’) to travel like that, from Mexico City.” Given the circumstances (trying to re-enter my country with as little friction as possible), I opted for the simplest, also the most honest, response, I said, “I’m glad to be back.” “I bet” he said.

I hadn’t travelled alone; I met my sister in Mexico City. She had flown from the Yukon. We travelled the two weeks together, visiting her favourite places—Mexico City, Tepoztlan, Acapulco. She’d lived and worked a whole decade in Mexico and returned to Canada five years ago. Her Spanish returned fluid, fluent, the moment she landed. She had asked me to visit so many times when she lived there, but my kids were small, I didn’t have the money, couldn’t secure the time away from work…so many excuses. Even when her partner died suddenly, in a dangerous town just north of the Belizean border where baggies of cocaine wash up on the beach and the people carry machetes and several sport missing limbs, I couldn’t go down there, to help her through that horror. My husband outright forbade it. With good reason, really. This trip was long overdue. And we didn’t have any epic blowouts or even anything more than mild disagreements. Maturity counts for some things. Acquiescing my movements to the pace of a cigarette smoker helped: walk a little ways, smoke break, walk a little further, smoke break.

Dropping into another culture, another climate (several climates really, because with every move we made the temperature, the way the air moved and touched my skin, the scents on the wind, changed), surrounded by a language I didn’t understand, kickstarted my mind. Thoughts, sensory experiences, sparked and fizzed. Released from the demands of work, of family, of regular life, I settled into being, allowing my tongue to bend around the new language, a different grammar, novel tastes.

I didn’t write much. Jotted a few fragments, impressions. I collected flowers—Jacarandas from the purple blossoming trees, bougainvillea, frangipani, others I didn’t recognise—pressed them between the pages of my notebook. I carried my pencil crayons but never drew anything. I didn’t quite feel settled enough. We were on the move. There was too much to look at, take in, make meaning of. Everything was fantastically loud: competing car radios, shop front music blasts, horns, bells, the screeching of brakes, the barking of dogs, the crows of roosters, birdsong, people yelling, begging, singing, whistling, babies crying, children laughing, and Mexican style fireworks which really sound just like cannon blasts. They made me jump. Every. Time. One expat suggested the fireworks—long baton-like sticks held in front of a person as if carrying a flag, gun powder stuffed in the top end and lit—as Mexicans reclaiming the fear they’d felt when colonial conquerors landed with their real cannons in centuries passed. Maybe.

It felt good to get my brain buzzed. To slow down. To simply feel.

I read four books, two by Mexican author Elena Poniatowska (an émigré from France). Her writing is gorgeous and, I imagine, even better in their original Spanish (the short story collections I read were translated by George Henson and Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez). Here is a good and very recent overview of her life as a writer, from The Washington Post, written by Kevin Sieff.

Amidst the concrete, the gates, the walls frothing barbed wire, shards of glass, the flowered vines spilled forth, the flowers rioted, the birds swooped and sang. In a place where even the laundry hung to dry on the rooftops is caged, there is art on the walls and parades of people celebrating. I spent my time ingesting it all. Feeling full.

Creating Observations

April 30, 2022 Suzanne Biro

I’m in the middle of a 4-week human figure sculpture class. I love the way the cool clay yields to my fingers, the weight of it. I love the way it feels wet, but dries to a chalky powder on my hands, leaving prints against my thighs when I accidentally wipe them there. I like to challenge my creativity using different mediums; I always discover deeper awareness for my writing practice this way.

This is a class in observation. We are creating “a study” of the human figure, in clay, using an armature (a stick like human figure made of bendy wires). There is a nude model instructed to maintain the “study posture”, but to rotate every 7-10 minutes. The study pose is a contrapposto, or counterpose, where the body appears to be in mid-step with a slight twist of the torso that signals a certain vitality to a finished sculpture. The model’s timed rotations mean students never stick to rendering one view but must rotate armatures to match the model’s stance, building out only the three-dimensional form from their unique viewpoint in the room.

At the end of this class (which, due to covid-19 has been a bit bumpy with some classes cancelled and rescheduled), we will destroy our works by pulling the clay from the armature to be stored in a plastic bagged blob. The forced breaks, shifting viewpoints, and the fact that the finished product is nothing more than the end of a “study” process, has made me feel a light creative freedom.

I’m delighted working in the small class, listening to the murmurings of conversation, the shushing hiss of spray bottles and overplayed classical tunes. To be in the moment of “trying” for no other joy but to try. It is a focused peace.

In sculpting, I’m working to render gesture, observing the live, three-dimensional form, and attempting to replicate a scaled down version with my hands. I’m assessing volume and shape, curves and hollows, the points of bones and how the softness of body, muscles, skin, drapes over them. Expression is captured in the stance and gesture of how the body stands in place.

In drawings, gesture is captured in the line. A move from rendering “the study” from three-dimensions to two. A line can capture energy, a subject’s vitality, by how it is it rendered on paper – thin and fast, thick and slow, etc.

But the experience of observation captured on the page through writing transfers the three-dimensional world (even four or five dimensional if we start to add things like emotion and interior thoughts) into flat words on a blank page. Words are abstract symbols of representation. Each word sparks connotations and connections unique to our own experiences and interpretations. I guess this is why reading another’s words can feel so magically transportive. Just as my viewpoint of the art class model rotates on a platform in the middle of the sculpture class, my experiential viewpoint alters the interpretation of words. I witness – eyewitness – the object or the sensory experience – I interpret it (my own way) and render it into words to be able to convey my interpretative experience through writing. And if that sensory experience, imagery, or idea is understood and resonates with the reader, there is a frisson of recognition and pleasure in sharing these experiences and thoughts across time and space.

But getting the words to come through…not so easy.

Some observations from the last week:

I saw a porcupine. I thought it was a beaver at first because the animal was so round with a paddle like tail but as I passed (quickly – I was road cycling) – I realised the tail was not so big but rather narrow and flat– the animal was approaching the base of a large old oak with, I believed, an intention to climb it. It was mid-day. The sun was high and bright but the wind, blowing east, blew strong against my direction of travel, stole the warm huffing of my exhalations fast past my ears. But how to describe the porcupine’s unrushed perambulation? Its roly-poly demeanor? The animal wobbled.

And a swan, bending its neck, s-like, to its back, its wings, still folded, raised and what? Trembling? Quivering? Shivering…yes, shivered and fluffed.

A friend’s high-pitched reaction to one of my questions. A squeak.

The dairy farm’s manure and powdered milk smell that makes me want to gag.

The scent of pine sap needling the shade when I passed beneath their feathery boughs.

The friendly waves from motorcyclists as they passed me cycling. Is this a thing? Are we in solidarity somehow, riding through the fresh air with bodies exposed to the spring? Not just one, but three different motorcyclists at different points along my route. One even when they must have seen me gagging for breath on a long uphill. Maybe that is why they waved. For encouragement? I waved back regardless.

This is the process of art making: observing the world with loving attention, transferring that loving view as a gift for the viewer/reader to share in that joy and delight.

Facts into Fiction

March 31, 2022 Suzanne Biro

In the fall, I was writing personal essays. Well…they were less essays and more fragments of thought, ideas, fits and starts recorded on paper. But I strung them together. Discordantly. I forced the paragraphs to conform. To what? I wasn’t sure. Never a good sign.

The deep questioning I was trying to work through (thought I was working through?)…the essaying…wasn’t working. The process was deeply frustrating. I forced myself to the writing and it resisted by clenching up. I couldn’t figure out what lay at the heart of my exploration. Again, I’d fallen into my habit of going at the writing with my head instead of my heart. I thought…instead of felt.

Then the holidays and the requisite relaxing of routine, reinforced with another public health lockdown as Omicron rapidly spread. And New Year’s Eve I became symptomatic. It was two days before my scheduled booster (which I cancelled) and 6 months post vaccine number two when immunity wanes. It hit me hard. Not dire, but unpleasant and uncomfortable. I released the writing routine to reading. And healing. And then, after stumbling across Douglas Glover’s (DG) essays (I write about that here), I worked through some intense studying of the craft of writing mirroring his methods. This was healing too.

DG posted an exercise on writing emotions, and I challenged myself to write a fictional scene following his prompt. It flowed easily and felt fun. And here’s the weird part…when I studied what I had written in those 1-2 paragraphs, I recognised the seeds of exploration I had wrestled with in the fall. I still didn’t understand them…but I could see the concepts there.

I flipped back to writing fiction.

The writing progresses differently compared with how I have written in the past. Instead of sitting down to a timed write (30 minutes is my usual go to), and writing scenes from beginning to end, I’m writing in fragments untethered from a narrative timeline.

I’ll try to explain how these arise. I seem to be toggling through two different approaches. And they complement one another.

First, as inspiration, I read other writers – stories, novels, poems or essays – I choose a book from my shelf almost randomly and thumb through the pages letting my eyes rest where they get caught. I pay close attention to how the words pile up there on the page and then I work to copy the syntax or concept or the work a line or paragraph is doing (techniques) for myself, using my own words for my own emerging story. This gets the engine of writing going.

Second, I let myself sit and relax and try to let my mind go blank…and the images that move with the story appear. I write them down. Sometimes it’s a phrase or a word, often it is a picture. Sometimes it is a mood or feeling…these are harder to write down. Sometimes I write most of a scene and what I think I’m going to write about I never get to. Instead, it’s something related but tangential.

I toggle back and forth between these methods (I stop to wonder here…perhaps this is how other writers write and I’m only discovering this now because I’m so dogmatic and literal I’ve never relaxed enough to do this? Maybe. Probably. Ugh. But the ability to do this relies on gaining an understanding of how to read for specific craft techniques instead of reading for meaning (symbolism) and I have DG to thank for pointing this path in way I can finally understand).

There is a lot less knowing about how it will unfold (gasp! I have to release control!)…and I flip back and forth between liking what I have written and extreme anxiety about whether it’s working. Sigh. But fragments and phrases float to me throughout the day and I jot them down in my notebook, feeling them, receiving them as the precious gifts they are.

And here’s the thing, writing through fiction this way I have come to understand what I was exploring through essay in the fall—but didn’t quite get there—coming at it slant has illuminated meaning and a story line to tell it. For the first time I feel how it ought to come together to share the experience with a reader. This is a huge step forward for me.

Once the material and the order of it is fully drafted, I’ll shift into a similar but third approach, which is to study what I have written, try to understand the work each paragraph/section is doing for a reader ( in service of the story), then turn back to my bookshelf to study techniques again for how to do it better. Feels good to follow a path.

Being Seen

November 10, 2021November 10, 2021 Suzanne Biro

I have not written this last week or so.

Feeling not up to it following intense preparation and performance for in interview related to my day job.

The self-loathing that accompanies not writing creeps in fast. And I know there will be difficulty getting back into writing practice the longer I put it off. It’s exactly the same as working to maintain some level of physical activity…as soon as you ease off, skip a few workouts or runs, your muscles start to soften. Getting back to the practiced level is going to hurt, there’s no way round it.

Reading helps. So, I am reading.

I’ve been wrestling with writing. I’ve been trying to write a piece about marriage. How I feel about it. What erupts on the page is hard for me to face: grief. Alongside love, yes. These two emotions cradle beside one another and I don’t know how to rock them. In the writing, I start to shoehorn the paragraphs (long before they are ready) into a from that shows off my humour or intelligence. I am hiding. A tactic that works to control and manipulate and keep my softer self from being seen. Dazzling with language and laughter, I am skimming the surface again.

I read.

In an essay by Chloe Caldwell, The Red Zone: A Love Story, I copy down this line about her relationship with her partner in my notebook:

“I have never felt more seen-through, more transparent…”

On Facebook a friend comments in a thread,

“Dickinson is right, being seen is the heaven of heavens…”

In an interview between Leslie Jamison and Sarah Sentilles in Orion Magazine, How to Write Love, I read,

“Stranger Care [book written by Sentilles]is a tale not just of love but of grief, as if we could ever tell one of those stories without the other. That’s where I wanted to start, with the question of love and how many different strands any love holds. How do you write love? Whenever I try, it feels like staring straight at the sun.”

And I read a most beautiful essay about poppies written by Katrina Vandenberg, also in Orion [print Autumn 2021 edition] , a paragraph that steals my breath away,

“Perhaps the poppy itself is a door. It swings open-closed, life-death, pleasure-pain, freedom-slavery, remember-forget, suffer-release, and when not swinging, it lives on its threshold, ready. It knows how to be more than one thing at a time, even when those things contradict one another. It knows everything about living and dying that we struggle to understand.”

I love this paragraph. I love how the second sentence is gorgeous but doesn’t quite make sense. And yet, makes so much sense. Reading it, on the heels of the other fragmented gifts that have floated my way, I realise I am withholding my self in my writing. I am not writing enough of my own thoughts and worries and joys on the page…I am simply trotting out the scenes and stitching them together with wit. I am not sharing my self with my reader. In short, I am not loving. Too afraid of ridicule…too afraid of being seen and not being loved. Isn’t that it?

The reading helps me see that I must open myself up to be seen, as Leonard Cohen’s Anthem:

“Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”

And as I practice writing and work to gift my self on the page: trying, failing, trying, failing, I am comforted knowing that reading will always hold me, rock me with the lullabied lessons I long for.

Crack(s)

May 28, 2021 Suzanne Biro

I am a month or so out from completing a six-week online writing course. Another one.

I attend a couple of writing courses each year. A friend quips I’m addicted to them…as if they are a bad habit, or a catchy disease.

I do love them.

But my friend’s analogy is not far from the mark. It needles.

The weeks following a class are rough. I feel hung over. The sudden loss of structured deadlines induces the same vertigo one gets at the midpoint of a swing bridge…petrified by the choice of moving forward or going back, with all the freedom to simply tumble sideways and fall, fall fall.

The classes inject fresh creativity. My own writing spools effortlessly from the instructor’s prompts and exercises, surprising me always, pleasing me frequently. I love reading the diverse interpretations of the prompts, and the variety of voices from other writers in the class.

The act of reading to comment on other people’s writing forces me to engage intimately with their words, their sentences, their paragraphs, their structures. It’s an intellectual exercise that teaches me a lot about my own writing (and thinking) and how it might be improved. It also challenges me to use a framework of positivity, consciously eschewing the traditional critique approach that points out all the wrongs or picks apart a piece error by error.

But most enslaving—and this is where the shame seeps in—I crave the focused feedback about my own writing from my peers. I long for their comments. I’m curious about the phrases they are drawn to, about the places they feel stuck, about learning how I might improve my language, pacing, punctuation, structure, atmosphere, metaphors. This level of scrutiny detects and signals what may be missing.

So why the shame?

I’m addicted to the feeling of confirmation. I have such a hot desire to be seen, to be heard. To be loved? I’m supposed to be writing simply for the joy of writing, without any need for validation. The art ought be an end unto itself.

But that’s not right either is it?

Writing is communication. One does not write simply to put words on a page, fold the notebook closed and shove it in the back of a drawer. Though, most (all?) of my own writing suffers this fate.

Writing to share becomes a dialogue with the power to transcend time and space. Writing stuff down transforms thoughts to an object I can hold in my fist, paper or book, and hand it over to others. Here, I’ve dumped this beautiful tangle of words on this paper, what do you think? The difference is that the reader has no obligation to the writer. The reader may take and walk away. The reader must only feel entertained, provoked, and, one hopes, inspired. There is no contract a reader must respond.

So, the writer must learn to create in isolation. Must learn to dialogue with oneself. And this ought to be enough. For an addict, enough never is.

Writing Groove Part 2

July 23, 2020 Suzanne Biro

{Part 1 may be found here}.

I move through rituals. The routine movements coaxe the muse from the nether regions and help the lines of words unspool my thoughts, travel the length of my arm, cross my wrist, tickle my fingers and draw along the page of my notebook.

I light two candles to begin. This is supposed to symbolise an activation, but really mimic the action of lighting a fire under my bum. Though I love the glow illuminating the page, I love the sound of the match flaring, the scent of sulfur and smoke most. I love the sandpaper drag of the match head against the striker, the deep hollow shake of the matchbox with wooden sticks clicking away inside. I love the white magnesium ignition and the brief ripping sound in the air that quickly silences into a steady flame. I love the way the heat travels closer to my fingers in the long pause before the wick accepts the fire.

I crave the smell of melting bee’s wax with its hint of meadow flowers and honey. Sometimes I remind myself about the work it takes the bees to make a candle’s worth of wax. This is a comfort. Also, a reminder that writing a small amount each day will grow and build into something…not necessarily something bigger, but I do hope sweeter. At least, something formed.

I listen to music while I write. (Though, through these summer months I prefer the bird’s morning chorus, the subtle intensification of song that follows the waking dawn). Listening, a part of my brain becomes occupied – a cognitive necessity—and the muse tip toes out less fearfully.

Here’s a small selection of recent artist favourites:

Garth Stevenson albums Flying and Voyage (the deep and haunting sounds of his double bass are so beautiful)
Nils Frahm – albums Music For The Motion Picture Victoria, Empty, All Encores, Trance Frendz…others
Hilary Woods – album Colt

Over the years, I’ve collected writing tricks. Writing is trial and error. Trial and error. Trial and Error. Process.

It’s the magic I doggedly pursue. The magic = words and phrases that drop together on the page…that work together perfectly…that surprise me so much I don’t believe I wrote them, instead, some creative spirit breathed through me for a moment I was lucky enough to have a pen in my hand and paper before me to catch them.

The magic happens rarely. Like a gambling addict, I show up each day and try not to lose more than I have to spend. Of my self.

Writing tricks get to the magic reliably…sometimes faster.

Recent tricks:

I write questions on little squares of paper. I use red paper because it’s my favourite colour. The questions relate to the piece or project I’m working on. Some of them could be a prompt to dig into sensorial aspects of the piece e.g., what does a bed sheet smell like? Some questions are meant to dive deeper into character: why would my character believe in an afterlife? Some questions are conceptually abstract or even philosophical: Is education culture?

All the squares are tumbled into a small cloth bag and shaken vigorously.

Each morning I pull one out at random—it’s important I don’t know what’s coming—and set a timer for 30 minutes and write. The rule is to write without second guessing, without cross-outs, for the full 30 minutes. A writing sprint. I am often surprised by what’s uncovered using this technique.

If I’m disciplined, I’ll transcribe the handwriting into a digital file on the computer Often, I’m not disciplined. The writings pile up. Sigh. Process. But 30 minutes of writing regularly generate 700-1000 words. And usually one phrase or word or sentence that is magic, that I’ll use when the pruning happens later.

Growing A New Perspective

April 20, 2020April 19, 2020 Suzanne Biro

Outside the window, the robins criss-cross the soil of the newly turned vegetable beds, listening for worms beneath. The recent years, filled with appointments and meetings and what seemed so important, witnessed the plots disintegrating into a weedy mess. This year, I’m out there again, with this mixed gift of virus-induced-stay-home-time, edging the garden earth against the encroaching lawn. It’s heavy work but satisfying. It’s work that can only go at the pace that I can, my legs and arms and back complaining if I do too much at a time.

And it’s work that unfolds—can only unfold—as the temperature rises. It can’t all be done at once, but rather moves in a predictable and ancient pattern of seasonal shift; only cold weather seeds can withstand the sudden wet snow squalls, the winds whipping in from the north. The nightshade cousins like it hot, the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants, and it’s a month or more before those seedlings will be planted out. By that time, we will be harvesting the first lettuce greens and hopefully some sugar snap peas. Spinach and rhubarb will already have bolted, erecting obscene seed heads into the humid summer air.

Digging out there, with the grit beneath my fingernails, the worms squirming against the light and the scent of earth wafting round, I can’t help but read the metaphor so blatantly presented about artistic practice. Yes, I know the comparison has been made before a thousand times over, but when one discovers something for oneself, it retains the fresh surprise of truth.

For all these veggies to grow, I must work with them, nurturing them in concert with their environment, just as I do my words and sentences when I’m trying to write a piece. And the thing is, when the first twinned leaves of cotyledons poke through the soil, it’s hard to tell the veggie seedlings form the equally virulent weeds. One must be patient, observant. With experience one knows, but it’s seasons of trial and error for the neophyte. As a writer, I’m still in the spring stage, the early spring stage. But with continual care, attentiveness and nurturing, what I plant on the page will one day grow, be trained and weeded and shaped into something beautiful for others to consume. As the writer, I am the only person standing between the garden of a finished piece and the chaos of the word weeds. How and what will grow is really up to me and will only unfold at the pace that it can, that it will for me alone. No rushing how a plant grows; only solid dedicated care will bring it to fruit. Writing too.

Present Time & Process Time

April 6, 2020 Suzanne Biro

Adapting to this new way of living. We all are. Home now, I’m learning to inhabit altered intersections of time and space. Following various veins of social and news media, the cry of despair and boredom can’t be ignored. But it isn’t my own experience.

I suspect it isn’t for many people, continuing to work so very hard to keep supporting the planting of food crops, vital food chains, addictions services, police services, online education, delivery services of all kinds, old and emerging, policy work at every level of government, shifting arts and entertainment strategies, and of course, health services of every sort, from long term care homes to paramedicine to emergency departments and intensive care units to public health units. The list is long. I’ve missed too many I’m sure.

And people continue to do this work from their homes, as they can, attending virtual meetings and using VPNs, with their children and partners and extended family members to care for, in the same, increasingly restricted spaces. And some people are working from a home where they are completely alone. And some people don’t have a home to go to.

The cry of despair and boredom wailing from the internet is hard to ignore, hard to sympathize with, and also, hard to believe. But the internet is never a good representation of universal truth is it? Except to say that humans love cats and pornography the world over.

More problematic is the internet’s shriek of boredom paired with another pressure: to be creative. The message has been clear: use these yawning weeks of time to finally work on the projects we’ve always wanted to. But if spare time is a myth for so many, then creatives need recognise the promise of creative productivity, in the time of coronavirus, as what it is: a wispy curl of mist on a receding horizon.

Instead of choking ourselves on the smoking embers of our creative fires, so suddenly doused by the pandemic, we need to forgive ourselves. We need, instead, to be present and engaged. Creatives need to witness. Creatives need to experience.

Before now, communities lived through disruptions not unlike this one: other disease outbreaks; weather related calamites; earthquakes; tidal waves; wars. People suffering those situations were similarly stunned by their forced submissions. More so, by the tragedy of lives lost. Right now, we are in crisis. And crisis demands attention, vigilance and focus.

In time, and with distance from the here and now, as with the slow turning of the seasons or the harvesting of meaning from memory, art will bloom again.

Forgive ourselves for not forcing what cannot happen right now. The spark of creativity glows in all of us. It will fire again, in a time which is different for each and every one us. Process—the way we make meaning of our experiences by creating something new, something that moves through us as synthesis—is as unique as our fingerprints.

Broken into Beauty

March 30, 2020 Suzanne Biro

Within the span of weeks, society’s scaffolds have fallen away as nations kneel before the new coronavirus. No one wants to talk or read about Covid-19, but at the same time it’s all we can talk and read about. The sudden brokenness, for me, has cracked open a different way of thinking about my own creative writing.

Each morning I wake there is a moment, while still suspended by sleep, I forget the new realities: isolating at home; the essentialness—and shortage—of masks and gloves; the importance of physical distances between people. As the bliss of sleep-induced amnesia evaporates, the realisation crashes in: the world we moved in no longer exists.

As a public health professional, these last weeks commanded almost all my waking hours. Creative writing practice was impossible; there was neither time nor peace of mind to do it. Remarkably, the guilt that normally accompanies a break in practice (and eclipses better thoughts) didn’t happen. Instead, it has been a relaxed fall into inevitability; there is no controlling the uncontrollable. I feel resigned. I feel forgiven.

So, when I returned to my writings the other day, for solace, to begin with, I reviewed the writings of the last half year with openness and possibility. Only in this way, was I able to see how much of my writing practice circles round a central theme. What I had taken to be sperate, disparate ideas, are really pieces of something whole… something I haven’t quite figured out yet, but clearly, I’m moving toward (or through). It feels like an epiphany. It feels like I’m on the right path, even though I don’t know where it’s going.

It has also changed my world view. For the first time, I feel optimistic about how, when the virus crawling continents relaxes its grip on our communities, the world might put itself back together differently. Perhaps in a way that is healing to the earth. Perhaps in a way that is inclusive and fair. It is up to us to imagine it and build it. For the first time, in a long time, I feel it’s possible to do so.

While dealing with the stress of sudden change, I couldn’t write or draw so one evening moulded bee’s wax into this little sculpture. The smell of honey wafts up from between your fingers working with bee’s wax, it’s lovely. I call this little piece, Horny Lady.

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