In Dead Poet’s Society, Mr Keating takes the boys to the hallway to see the photos of past students and whispers the immortal lines, “Carpe diem. Seize the days, boys. Makes your lives extraordinary.”
A current television commercial runs the slogan, “Escape ordinary.”
What makes a life extraordinary?
People buy into this idea of your life having to be a Broadway extravaganza or a Hollywood blockbuster ALL. THE. TIME.
We are presented with hyper-idealised notions of reality. Do life BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, LOUDER, MORE DEMONSTRATIVE, IN YOUR FACE and (dare I use it because I hate the acronym) YOLO! It’s perfectly captured in the Selfie Generation: LOOK AT ME, I’M IMPORTANT AND I DESERVE YOUR ATTENTION.
It is the wrong perspective.*adjusts cardigan and puts on slippers*
What’s wrong with ordinary? Ordinary is where I live and find my inspiration. I joke my life is coloured beige for boring, making my life extra ordinary.
For the creative person, extraordinary is a way to burn out because it demands you give out so much more of yourself than is returning to you.
“The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
For me as a writer, the greatest stories are not the ones we see in films, the lives of movie stars, but in the embarrassing ordinariness of people doing things in their every day lives that benefits others. The ones who don’t see their work as anything important; they are filling a need, taking care of their community, advocating for the poor and disadvantaged. Living an extraordinary life is one lived in service of others and pursing your own dreams. Balancing the self with the care of others. Telling their story is an extraordinary privilege.
I like to think of the word as “extra-ordinary.” The one thing that defines the ordinary from the extraordinary is passion. Mr Keating exhorted his young charges to engage with the aspects of life that they were passionate about.
For the creative person, the passion manifests itself in the choice of medium whether it’s writing, art or music.
As it relates to creativity, to continually produce great art, to live an extra ordinary life, requires repetition, ritual and reflection.
Repetition
Not once, not twice, not even thrice but continually and habitually. Continue to produce art: write regularly; sketch, doodle, scribble whenever possible; practice scale and rudiments.
Repetition can become staid and uninspiring so it requires a dedication and committed work ethic to maintain your focus on being creative.
Early efforts will be complete and utter rubbish. But that’s the point of repetition: you do it until you get better.
Ritual
Setting aside an assigned time to work on your creative project is like attending church or settling onto the couch to watch your favourite television show or sport team compete. Like repetition, it is a repeated event but the goal is one of individual development.
Ritual provides structure and is an active reminder to develop a disciplined approach to our creativity.
Reflection
Movement without reflection will only end up with you moving in a circular fashion, only ever returning to the starting point without having learned or progressed.
Every once in a while it is important to reflect on your goals, your progress in terms of work produced and skills developed. Are you improving? Has anything weakened? What else do you need to know?
Creativity makes your life extraordinary because you have embraced repetition, ritual and reflection. You are taking the ordinariness of life and giving it meaning through creating great art.
This makes you extraordinary.
Addendum: This morning in the shower (place of many great epiphanies along with the kitchen sink while washing up) I had another idea to add. It was the one thing that makes a life extraordinary: Relationship.
Without relationship, we are merely individuals without community and connection. In relationship with other creative people we make our lives extraordinary because we have companionship, connection and community.We are no longer alone. This is fundamental in making our lives extraordinary.
Today sees the publication of one of my poems, ELIHU’S MEDITATION ON QUESTIONS UNANSWERED in Vine Leaves Literary Journal.
—“beautiful agony”—
Elihu was one of characters who came and sat with Job in the Old Testament Book Of Job. He said nothing while his companions lectured Job after his loss and suffering.
The origin of the poem came about during a staff retreat where I work. The focus of the day was on suffering and a colleague shared her remarkable journey of the last few years. It was heartbreaking yet imbibed with a sense of joy.
It made me think why we don’t simply sit with our friends when we are suffering; instead we try to offer platitudes and trite condolences. We are afraid of silence, afraid of our own suffering, or the threat of suffering. We conveniently limit suffering to news excerpts on television, subjects we can listen to and then forget about when the segment is over. It doesn’t bring about change in ourselves.
Suffering, when focused on the ones we love, is a time for mourning and contemplation. It is a time for identifying with their pain and suffering. It is a time to act, to comfort, to listen, to be silent, to make a meal, mow their lawn, fold their washing, buy them a coffee.
Sometimes it is the hardest thing to remain silent when everyone else is speaking.
You can read more in Issue 10 and a wealth of stirring poetry, vignettes and art.
The key to unlocking creativity is asking good questions.
There is no singular question, like having the key to a cupboard, to unlock creativity. It’s more like being given a set of keys to unlock many cupboards, boxes, safes, vaults and the little box you thought you’d forgotten about.
When you know which key unlocks which box, you have an opportunity to develop your creative skills.
Non-creative people, those who are yet to understand that they too, can BE a creative person, look on in wonder and ask, “Where do you get your ideas from?” They are looking at the key in their hand and using it to dig the wax out of their ears or stir the milk and sugar into their cup of tea.
The question is a default position where the person does not believe they can be a creative person, and they are seeking out a secret formula to unlock the means to creativity. The non-creative person thinks, “If only I had an idea I could be creative.” There is a two-fold belief system happening. First, I can’t be creative and second, I just need an idea and I’ll be creative.
These two belief systems stem from a lack of belief in a person’s ability to be creative. It gives the non-creative person an excuse NOT to do something, because they don’t believe they can generate an idea nor do they believe they have the skills to be creative. They compare themselves to others and think, “I can never be as creative as Person A or Person Z.”
For the creative person, the generation of ideas varies. Some have no problem finding ideas, others select their ideas judiciously while still others discover their ideas like diamonds, digging through layers and layers until they strike upon it.
Questions, Questions, Questions
The key to being creative lies in asking good questions. What those questions are will vary from person to person, and from medium to medium.
The writer may not ask the same question as the painter, or the photographer may not ask the same question as the musician.
There are two fundamental questions that all creative people ask:
What is the purpose of this work?
Who is my intended audience?
Beyond these basic questions, creative types need impetus and direction. To develop a creative life we need to ask questions that begin with “What…?” or “How…?” or “Why…?”
What will challenge me?
What have I not tried before?
Who can I collaborate with?
Why do I want to write or paint or draw or learn an instrument?
Can I try this piece in a different genre? a different form?
What inspires me?
What negates my inspiration and sucks me dry?
What do I want to achieve?
What have I not achieved yet?
Have I set a timeline for my goals?
What skills can I learn from experimenting in a different medium?
In the search for understanding about what it means to be creative, to understand how a creative person generates ideas, we must ask good questions; ones that provide momentum and direction to our creative endeavours. Good questions help us understand our creative processes and build good creative habits.
If you have ever wanted to be creative, learn to ask good questions to help unlock your creativity and have a fulfilling creative life.
What questions would you ask to unlock your creativity?
I like to write micropoetry on twitter, limiting myself to 140 characters (128 if you include the hashtag).
I collect my micro musings in a document with the aim of publishing a book of poetry (I’ve seen a review of a book of 140 twitter fictions so why not a book of micropoetry?)
But I shall share the more recent ones with you here.
Enjoy.
Which one(s) did you like best? Why?
First Date
an open packet of plain chips (you prefer Salt and Vinegar) we scrabble for the scraps and lick the grease from our fingers
Irony
In an act of irony I draw trees on paper And stick them On my wall An ecological conundrum Where I can’t see The forest for the trees
Unravelling and Resonating
The unravelling of each other Pulling at threads of fault Leaves only a mirror To reflect and resonate Our own insecurities
Trivial Dust
Death makes trivial objects of us all; dust becoming dust As I wipe my finger Along the photo frame My reflection echoes yours
Conscience
Hamlet declared Conscience does make cowards of us all For we ultimately fear What holds us back When it should Push us forward
When I was a child I devoured the books of Adrian Plass (The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37 /4, The Horizontal Epistles of Andromeda Veal, Stress Family Robinson, View From A Bouncy Castle, Cabbages for the King, The Theatrical Tapes of Leonard Thynn, to name a few). I haven’t read his later works, though not for lack of wanting.
What engaged me was the nature of his story telling. In his novels it was the humanity and humility of people that I engaged with, seeing the everyday flaws and faults, while coming to a greater understanding of people and their idiosyncracies. The people were real yet revealed to me an understanding of a greater truth or moral behind the story.
They were extended parables, stories that taught you something about yourself, about humanity as a greater whole. And I’ve come to realise lately that this parabolic structure has influenced and informed why I tell stories and my interest in writing, leading to defining my writing as “suburban realism.”
Parables
We are most familiar with parables from the Gospels as spoken by Jesus: The Prodigal Son, The Lost Sheep, The Mustard Seed. They often began, “The Kingdom of God is like…” and used images and illustrations familiar to the people as a way of explaining a greater moral principle or spiritual truth.
But should all stories be parables, demonstration lessons or didactic tools? I don’t think so.
We spruik modern parables today via social media; those feel good stories people post that go viral. For example, the Washington Post experiment featuring violin virtuoso Joshua Bell (I think the experiment has many flaws, but that’s for another time).
We watch it cycle through our feeds, read it story, understand the point it is making but are quick to click through and move on through our timelines.
We baulk when stories such as these, and by extension, a short story or novel, film or documentary, comes across as obvious preaching or didactic. However we understand in certain circumstances and settings, a parable is appropriate.
A parable helps us to understand something greater than the immediate world of the story. Yet it is a fallacy to see all stories as parables, as analogies of greater truths unless specifically intended by the author.
Parables serve a purpose but can be a limiting form and structure for a writer.
Parallels
I also see stories as parallels. Within the form of a short story, a novella or a novel, we see the life of a character transcribed and transformed before us. As we read, we walk alongside the character and watch the emotional ebbs and flows. At times we want to reach out our hand and hold theirs, laugh with them, embrace them in their sorrow or hold them at arm’s length in disgust.
As we parallel the character, we turn a mirror onto ourselves and perhaps see traits of the character we wished we had, or wished we could hide from others.
One purpose of fiction is to tell an engaging story, connecting them with the reader, transporting them into another world, another reality, and to perhaps learn from the experience; to ask the hard questions, even if we end up with more questions and fewer answers; to extrapolate possibilities and infer consequences.
Is all writing an attempt to write a parable, to tell a greater truth or are we writing stories to parallel our existence? The idea that it can be simultaneously a parable and a parallel excites me.
Do you really want an answer to the question, ”Who are you?”
I am an English teacher and drummer/percussionist with an interest in literary pursuits, creative endeavours, rhythmic permutations, theological amplifications and comedic outbursts.
Here you will find my creative detritus: articles on living a creative life and writing explorations.
And other ideas I have snaffled from the papers stuck on the fridge door.
A Fullness in Brevity - Adam Byatt 