Have you gotten to know your creative demon? (If not, see “Getting to Know Your Creative Demon, Part 1,” and also parts 2 and 3.) Have you begun to learn the specific personality of the deep psychological force that organically motivates you to be passionate about, fascinated with, and energized by this instead of that and some things instead of other things? Have you experimented with reading your life’s trajectory, both inner and outer, as a work of art or literature that embodies central, recurrent motifs and themes, and have you recognized these as clues to the natural direction your creativity would like to take you?
If so, then you’re way ahead of the game. Many people never do these things, and you, by contrast, may be experiencing a new or renewed sense of creative potency and possibility. This is a heady and alternately (or reciprocally) frightening and exhilarating development.
It’s also an ongoing one. You can never exhaust the depth of discovery in your muse or genius. This is built into the very structure of human consciousness, since the unconscious genius lies perpetually “behind” the conscious ego. The harmonizing and integrating of these two selves in a quasi-Jungian process of individuation — which is really what we’re about here: individuation as experienced in or applied to artistic creativity — represents not a discrete, one-time accomplishment, like a finish line to be reached, but an ongoing, ever-deepening relationship in which communication flows with increasing freedom between you and your daimon.
In this process, getting familiar with your creative demon’s general nature is only the beginning: a (very) necessary step, but not a sufficient one. This is because you’ll soon discover that in addition to a general direction, your demon muse has specific habits and desires. These can sometimes pertain to things so seemingly prosaic and trivial that you’ll be tempted to dismiss them as meaningless. But that would be a mistake.
The experience of creative diminishment or full-blown creative block often arises from your unwitting attempt to force your genius to deliver through channels or means that it simply doesn’t like and refuses to comply with. Conversely, you can stoke your creative fire by finding and using the right approach for your genius.
In short, through trial and error you can learn exactly how your creative demon likes to work, right down to the most humdrum daily details of method and material. Read the rest of this entry »
