My creative acts are feathery. Its heart beat sounds like risk.
Risk-taking in the creative process
The philosopher Martin Buber in his famous book I and Thou said, “something appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a [person] does with [his/her] whole being.”
There are risks, he explained, that have the ability to break things, including you.
But hold yourself back, and you’re holding the Thing back.
What’s become clear in my creative work and the work of artists I know and study is that there is a being-ness involved in our creative intelligence. To create something new, requires something new of you. And, I think, it’s a thing that wants to come through to speak to you about who you are in a more complete sense, and the world/situation in which you find yourself.
Anyone who has birthed a business, a book, a new life, a child out of their very own body knows this. In fact, I think they feel it in their bones. And it affirms that our creative power is not small or simple or compartmentalize-able—it is expansive and bleeds into all things. It does breaks us, as Buber said, and then we try and put ourselves back together, but in different, and hopefully, more open and forgiving ways.
If anything, we become more aware that the birthing process is not under our complete control. It decides, and we, all of us, surrender and fight for it, in equal measure. We uncover that there’s a deep beating heart in the process, the feeling that you’re holding on, and with whatever you can muster. And also, there’s the floaty feeling that you’re just a vessel—a container for the trying energy of this world—and when you connect and trust in your creative power, you know there is only a rhythm to follow, a breath to take.
The Holding On Part
Recently, an artist friend and I were discussing the holding on part. Really, I said, these have to do with the risks that are embedded in the process of making something new. I don’t think we can be creative without risk….Risk is necessary. So, Nadia, stop trying to play it safe. At which point my friend said, oh don’t worry honey, you’re coming across as fearless in your work. Well, of course, that’s a lie and purely performative, I replied.
What risks beat about in the creative process? Well, of course, the financial risks—the risk that your work won’t sell, won’t be valued—and the risks that you won’t be able to realize the work that is long, vulnerable and painstaking. These are true and real and can be debilitating. They need coaxing constantly. It’s normal, I say to myself. Be gentle, be gentle.
And no thing is one thing, right? Everything possesses a negative & positive charge scientifically, organically, spiritually.
The positive risks are powerful and invigorating. And they surprise you, every time. There’s the feeling that you’re creating new ways of seeing that unveils another layer of the human experience.
The best example I can think of at the top of my head are the Impressionist painters, whose experimentation and risk-taking have done the great service of capturing the glow and internal feeling of a field of poppies, a picnic in plein air—and the knowledge that this feeling and glow shifts all the time. “No feeling in finite,” poet Rilke has told us. The Impressionists were risk-takers, rejecting the traditional approaches of their time.
In writing, it feels like making your character chose the more unpredictable response, letting them surprise you. Or changing the structure of your piece, wherein you start with the ending and go backwards, compose a scene in the form of a letter, or suddenly write from a different point-of-view. There are so very many ways to play with risk.
My artist friend: Risk is devotion.
Me: Risk is freedom.
Friend: The risk of not doing is far greater…
Love the idea of “the trying energy of the world.” Beautifully put Nadia.