Creativity - It’s Not About Quality, It’s About Permission
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 11:17PM A big thanks to writer, singer, cancer survivor and head hand and HEART facilitator Jo Hilder for our latest blog.
Almost everyone who attempts to operate in the creative realm does battle at some time on some level with the ‘demons’ of self-doubt.
Learning to master self-criticism is one of the keys to increased creativity and free flowing creative self-expression.
I once heard singer songwriter Kristina Olsen describe the creator's dilemma as a dance between the inflated ego crying - 'nobody understands my amazing talents' and the overactive internal voice of judgment shouting 'You are doomed, hopeless, you'll never be good enough'.
Many people are stifled in their quest to become more creative by these unrealistic voices - those that break free either silence them, choose to ignore them or use them as a source of creative inspiration.
I've known and worked with Jo Hilder for over 30 years and throughout that time have witnessed first hand her burning need to express and share her powerful life experiences with others. I've also seen her battles with fear, self-judgment and self-doubt.
Despite this, or perhaps because she’s chosen to fight and win those battles, Jo has become an accomplished creator, singer, songwriter and music teacher.
Jo is a gifted writer pouring her heart and soul into her daily blog and her recent insight into the world of cancer survivors and soon to be published book - What Not to Say to a Cancer Survivor.
Here's how it happens for Jo...
Paul Macklin - Creative Director head hand and HEART
Creativity - It’s Not About Quality, It’s about Permission
"Every child is born an artist, the problem is to remain one once they grow up."
Pablo Picasso
My most memorable creative moment happened when I was a small child of about five or six. It was a significant point in my life as an artist, but unfortunately, it’s been pretty much all downhill from there.
I was the kind of precocious youngster that liked to make sure everyone knew I was around. I liked to sing and dance and make up plays where I would parade around in my mother’s nightdresses, pretending to be Indian royalty. You get the picture. I didn’t realise that a significant thing was happening in the actual moment; it’s only now when I think back I really wish I’d held on to that flash of genius. If I had by now I’d probably have created a vast body of artistic work, but as it stands, I have wasted about thirty of the last forty two years not making the art I love so much. And why? Well, mostly because I was afraid it would not be any good.
I was singing, you see, just before it happened. I was singing my head right off, and by God, I was good, just about as good as a five or six year old can be. I was thinking how amazing it was to be able to produce such a wondrous noise just by opening one’s mouth and sending the voice out as big and wide as possible. Now, this was not just self expression or exuberance – this was technical. My big ‘ole voice could go up and down, and up and down again, and oh, what a wonderful feeling! I was quite lost in this place of pure joy, just being a small child singing its heart out, when someone who should have known better interrupted me. “Oh!” they exclaimed, actually putting their hands up over their ears, “What a terrible noise!”
That, by the way, was not the significant moment. It came immediately afterwards.
I looked up at the person who should have known better, and I thought, you know what? She’s wrong. She’s just wrong, because that was not a terrible noise. That, right there, was some mighty fine singing. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
And there it was. I’ve struggled to get back there ever since.
Oh, if only I’d been able to bring that six year old back into the room every time I put down my guitar because the inner person who should have known better said “Oh, what a terrible noise!” I wish I’d asked that little girl what she thought all those times I laid down the paintbrush, or pushed my chair away from the keyboard, or dropped out of the dance class. I wish I’d remembered my significant moment when I burned the romantic poems of my adolescence because I thought they were stupid, and when I refused to play my songs in public. I wish I’d listened to her every time my inner perfectionist refused to let me waste time making bad art, and made me get a job I was good at instead. Imagine what a musician, what a dancer, what a poet, what a painter, what a writer I’d be by now, if only, if only I’d never stopped every time I heard a voice say “Ah! That’s awful! For the love of God, stop it!” I wish that I’d remembered to say “Are you out of your mind? Of course it’s bad! Who are you - the friggin’ art police?”....and then just got on with it anyway.
I know now that it takes a long time to get as good as you’d like to be when you first begin. You learn to do something by doing it, says John Holt, there is no other way. A very wise friend of mine says you need about ten thousand hours to become proficient at something, be it throwing a pot, writing a sonnet, or probably even raising a child. Nobody can make something incredible right away. When it comes to creating art, it’s not about quality, it’s about permission. And permission to make your art, good, bad and ugly, is a gift only you can give yourself.
Creativity is subversive. It needs room to move. It needs to be allowed to rebel, to think, to explore, to explode, to sleep, to feed and to question. It will eat everything you feed it and eliminate its waste as its requirements dictate. Your creativity will boldly announce itself as having arrived, and then may sit by and do nothing. It may take over, it may undermine. It may sleep all day, and work all night. But in the end, creativity will be the essence of wonderful, because it is greater than all conventions. If you want to excel in convention, do just what has been done before and merely seek to improve upon it. But if you wish to be an artist, break faith with convention; starve it in the dark, smash it and crush it and put it outside while you fly around the room with paintbrushes and flugelhorns. Chase your convention screaming from the room and throw its pretentious crown out after it into the street. Take your creativity and kiss it with passion right on the mouth, then let it kiss you back. Give yourself permission to love that part of you that scares others to death; your muse, your thinker, your child, your dreamer, your explorer, your artist, your heart, your ideas, your creations. They are yours, they are you, and that alone makes them great and worthy.
Write the book you cannot find, the one that tells your story. Sing the song that haunts you in your dreams. Bring your wild vision forth and fill the hungry canvas. Get that art out of you, as if you could push your own heart right out of your mouth. Don’t worry about it being wrong; don’t worry about it being good enough. There is no art police but your own inner judge, your critic, your resistance to wrongness and imperfection and mistakes. It’s not an awful noise I promise you; it’s wonderful. Your creativity is not just what you do....it’s who you are. And I...I am the Queen of India. :0)
Jo Hilder - Facilitator Head Hand Heart
Have you ever been held back from fully expressing yourself by the voice of judgement? Are you missing out on a world of creative experience because something inside you claims you’re not creative, not good enough, won’t be able?
If so, join Jo and the team from head hand and HEART and gain a deeper insight into how to silence or ignore your ‘voice of judgment’ or better still, use it as a source of creative inspiration and in doing so liberate your creative self-expression and self-confidence.
Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st November 8am - 5pm Australian Technology Park Eveleigh - NSW
$295 per participant donation to Tabitha $230 early bird discount booked before October 22nd
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain
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