Demon Muse

The fundamental truth about creativity and human selfhood has been stated to profound and beautiful effect by many people in history, but few have put it as concisely and effectively as Elizabeth Gilbert did at the 2009 annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California.

Gilbert, the celebrated author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, spoke to a rapt audience about the damage caused by the modern-day view of creative genius as a quality that a few privileged humans possess. She said this view puts enormous and undue pressure on us all, and that we would be better off regarding creativity in the way that our pre-Renaissance ancestors did: as an external force or entity that visits people to inspire and help with some creative act, and then moves on to visit somebody else. In other words, it’s not the case that a few special people are geniuses, but that all of us have a genius.

Here’s her entire talk, which I strongly encourage you to watch:

On being or having a genius

Some of the more potent highlights of Gilbert’s speech include:

• Gilbert’s description of the ancient Greco-Roman view of genius as “a magical divine entity that was believed to live literally in the walls of an artist’s studio and would come out and invisibly assist the artist with the work and shape the outcome of the work.”
• her lament at the loss of this idea, beginning around the time of the Renaissance, to the human-centered attitude that views artists as geniuses instead of as having geniuses: “Allowing somebody to believe that he or she is . . . the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, internal mystery is just like a smidge of too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche. It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all of these unnatural expectations about performance.  I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.”
• her relating of a story told to her by Tom Waits, who said he was once driving down the road when a burst of musical inspiration came to him. He had no way to capture the idea at the moment, and he entered a new phase of his creative life when he  spontaneously spoke to the sky, addressing the hypothetical creative force itself and asking it to go away and come back when he was in a better situation to greet it.
• Her insistence that our proper task is simply to do the work we have to do and let the inspiration come and go as it wants. “Just do your job,” she told the audience. “Continue to show up for your piece of it. If your job is to dance, then do your dance.  If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment for your efforts, then Ole. And if not, do your dance anyhow. Ole to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.”

For a richly detailed summary of Gilbert’s entire talk, along with a report on the occasion itself, see the article about it at Wired.

Negotiating with an external force

Again, no more concise, correct, direct, and exhilarating explanation of the bright-shining core of a deep and abiding creativity (or dark-shining core, depending on the tenor of your particular work) could be asked for. American television producer Steve Rosenbaum, who heard Gilbert deliver the speech live, later expressed the general sentiment shared by all of her listeners:

Viewing this as a writer, a filmmaker, and creative person, Gilbert’s evocative description of the creative process as both capricious and fleeting hits home. The idea that creative demons burst on the scene, often at wildly inopportune moments, and then dash off if not captured was such a visceral description that it caught almost everyone in the TED auditorium by surprise. While Gilbert was talking about writing and poetry, I got the sense that anyone who’s been taunted and haunted by the glimmer of something extraordinary could connect with her demon.

She even won over many skeptics. For example, Mark McGuinness of the creativity-and-productivity site Lateral Action enthusiastically asserted that although he and the site are generally, openly, and pointedly skeptical about the very idea of creative genius itself, Gilbert’s speech was “one of the most inspiring and practical talks I’ve seen about creativity for a long time.” Why? Because she’s wasn’t talking about being lazy but about taking on a new and even deeper kind of responsibility:

After all the high-flown speculations of her talk, Elizabeth Gilbert circles back to a point very close to where she began as a writer: having to show up every day and put in the hours at her desk.

. . . . In one sense, Gilbert’s concept of genius makes life easier for the creator – if your work is ultimately down to a Genius outside of your normal self, then you can’t be too crushed when your next novel turns out to be a flop. It should also mean you don’t get too carried away with yourself should it turn out to be a best seller.

But it also makes life more complicated. Instead of just you doing the work, you have to somehow accommodate and negotiate with an external force in your life. You may not like it. It may be difficult or interrupt you at an inconvenient time. And you may not like what it shows you, and wants you to express in your work.

And because of the “deal” Gilbert invites you to strike with your own Genius, you still have to show up every day and work just as hard as you ever have — if not harder.

In the words of artist Philip Guston, “I go to my studio every day, because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don’t go and the Angel came?”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the entire point in a nutshell. What we’re talking about here at Demon Muse, what Gilbert and Rosenbaum and McGuinness are talking about, is “striking a deal” with your own genius by coming consciously to terms with the fact that “Instead of just you doing the work, you have to somehow accommodate and negotiate with an exernal force in your life.” We’re talking about establishing a productive and harmonious relationship with clearly defined boundaries, roles, and responsibilities between you and your personal genius, muse, daimon.

If you want live a life of creative flow and success, then you would be well-advised to adopt the attitude that you’re collaborating with an invisible partner whenever you do your work.

The question of “truth”

Of course, this doesn’t have to entail a literal belief in muses or spirits. The idea of the externalized personal genius is an eminently fruitful conceptual model that embodies and exemplifies a real truth about creativity and the human psyche, regardless of what ontological value you assign to it. Is the personal genius, the muse, the daimon, literally real or metaphorically so, or does it perhaps inhabit some other category long devalued and rejected by our modern urban-technological consumer society? Answer: It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that the idea is fundamentally true in some sense, and that it has massive real-life implications for artistic creativity. To explore what it all means, and how to align yourself with it and use it to practical effect, is the raison d’être of Demon Muse.

Related posts:

1. A Writer’s Guide to the Psyche, Part 2: Daimonic Creator, Egoic Editor
2. Muse, Daimon, and Creativity Links for 7-22-10
3. An Unleashed Imagination: T.M. Wright on Creativity, the Muse, and Finding Your Writer’s Voice