In 1997 I attended a lecture by Clive Barker, sponsored by the Learning Annex, at the ANA Hotel in San Francisco. His topic was creativity -- how it affects our lives, and how we can nurture the creative impulse. The following is a fairly accurate paraphrase of the lecture, with direct quotes.
Some reasons for making art:
Creating a place of refuge.
"I first went to these places in my heart as a place of refuge. I was an
overweight, nearsighted, soon-to-be-gay adolescent. I made the world my
way. Art can also be a refuge from hostility."
The attainment of power
". . . Any kind of storytelling is an attainment of power -- the power to
move, scare, confuse, and fascinate your audience."
The imparting of wisdom or knowledge
"I have something to tell which is profound and deep and belongs to me, because
it could only come from me."
Sacred experience
". . . There is nothing wrong with standing up and being counted as spiritual
beings, as artists."
Creating a life story.
"I look back at things I've written and say, 'I could not get to that place
now, and I'm so glad I wrote it down.'"
Showing off
". . . Like what you do. Celebrate it!"
Some suggestions about making art.
"Give the truth. Ask yourself, 'How do I get to be most purely myself?' The audience wants the real thing. Go and look for the real thing in yourself, however intensely unpleasant sometines that can be. Express the things mom told you you shouldn't say - sexual urges, anger, despair."
"Gather experience. . . Look at what you should not look at. A feeling of anxiety is the sure and certain evidence that you should do this." Barker performed a disection at a funeral home, for the sake of understanding death at close hand.
"Enjoy the freedom to be wrong. If you're driving a bus, you don't have that freedom." In other word, if your decisions are loaded up with family, friends, teachers and other critics you won't feel able to take a 'wrong' turn. Every move becomes freighted with responsibility.
"Pay attention to small details - they're important. Sometimes it's the small details that make an artwork more truthful."
"Be raw. The more slick, finished, pre-digested a thing is, the less likely it is to move you."
Barker believes that drugs and other mind-altering substances will interfere
with the creative impulse. He includes prescription drugs, and gives us an
example: at his most depressed, when working on the novella
Revelations, Barker tried Prozac. His mood leveled off, but he couldn't
write as well. The creative impulse seemed muffled. His experience, and there
was a general agreement from the audience, was that taking drugs or drinking
may give you an occasional flash of insight while you're enjoying art as
a passive observer (like smoking pot and watching a movie), but they
won't help you create that work of art. Your energy or impulse will
be sapped.
Barker found that writing was a much more effective
way to combat depression. His succinct analysis: "Prose: 1, Prozac: 0."
"Make it easy to begin. Break off in the middle of a sentence. If you are
at a difficult place, move on and start work in an easier place before
you break off. Leave your space clear and have your favorite music, your
tea or whatever, and your tools ready for when you come back. These are the
things that get me to my desk." Barker also suggests setting a time limit
for working. If it's open-ended it's harder to begin. And turn off the
phone!
"My touchstone is, 'You don't leave the desk.' I write
2,600 words a day, no matter what, good or bad. As Steven King says -'If
you write five pages a day for a year, you have a novel.' If my work is not
up to standard, can I be undefeated by that? I can survive the feeling
that my work today is inferior, because I know I will write again tomorrow.
Every day that you make something, that's what you made. It's probably
not as good as you think it is at the time. It's probably not as bad as you
think. It's from where you were that day. . . like a page from a journal.
'I am able to be, and my being is expressed by making this mark. Not that
mark or another mark, but this mark."
In his early twenties, the impossibility of achieving
an 'abstract excellence' made Barker self-destructive. The idea of comparing
his work to, say, Picasso's Guernica, seemed to defeat him from the
start. He says, "An abstract perfection is a moving target. Our business
is to make things. Let other people judge. There are days when you're not
writing a Mozart requiem. . . when what you want is a jingle. But there is
no abstract hierarchy with Mozart at the top, and the Supremes at the bottom,
with Cosi fan Tutti at one end, and the Ring Cycle at the other.
A jingle can be as truthful as a requiem. . . Hierarchies are antithetical
to the business of making art."
Barker took some time to discuss the relative quality
of 'success' for a creative person, depending on one's goal. He remembered
a quote, "The three T's are most important to success: Taste, Talent, Tenacity.
You need a minimum of two of these to make it."
-- Li Gardiner