Creativity is a Relief Valve
The relief valve and the Hope of Resolution
This article originally appeared on my personal blog, Clinsights, here.
Editor’s Note: In two days, this post will be locked and is available only to paid members because we don’t want this duplicate content on the open web in a way that might draw traffic away from the original post. You can always read the entire post here.
We are sharing this essay in The BoldBrush Letter because, though it applies primarily to writers, the underlying idea applies to all artists. Please enjoy.
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Creativity is a Relief Valve
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” —Ray Bradbury
When I don’t write, my spirit darkens and my demeanor becomes generally irritable and cranky (Not that I have a ‘sunny’ disposition, even on my best days. In fact, I’ve occasionally been accused of having contracted an industrial-grade case of stage-four resting-bitch-face).
The longer it’s been since I’ve sat down to a proper writing session, the more I feel as if I’m wasting my life, and, when I feel that way, I descend into sullenness.
Writing, you see, acts as a sort of ‘relief valve’ that vents the darkness that accumulates inside of me into the Infinity of Creativity. The very act lightens the load upon my soul. As Chesterton said, angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. They contain lightness — light — inside. And writing lets out that heavy darkness so that there is room for the light to flood in through the cracks, so that my soul too, may again fly.
We all go through seasons when we find ourselves busier than usual. Which, in this age of technocracy, is saying something.
Unexpected things happen. Tragedies happen. Tasks that we think will be simple and speedy end up being complicated and confusing. The car, or the air conditioner may break, taking a day (or more) of our time – time that we had planned to write. Perhaps we experience an unexpected dental issue. Or maybe we agreed to a time-consuming long term project when we should have had the courage to say ‘no.’ The vicissitudes of life, which threaten to steal our creative time, are endless and that simply is the way it is.
Even worse, sometimes, months swagger arrogantly into our lives and, like playground bullies, delight in wrecking our plans. They kick over our little sand castles and refuse to let us build new ones. Such months delight in collecting unexpected events and piling them up until they occur all at once, so that, despite our best efforts, we find it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to make time for our creative outlet. We find ourselves without enough white space.
Some may scoff at the idea that creatives require such white space (or, for that matter, they may scoff at my whole ‘relief valve’ theory of creativity). Those people say that real writers, real artists, always make time. Suck it up. Skip sleep. Do whatever you have to do, but put words on the page. Every. Single. Day. Maybe those people are right. Bastards.
I once saw a post by a guy who wrote an entire book by spending five minutes writing in his car before work every morning.
I suppose, even on the busiest of days, I could spare five minutes.
However, for me, five minutes isn’t enough to activate the relief valve. Forcing myself to write for only five minutes a day sounds like, well, hell. I’d have to force a stop before any truly good ideas occurred. Or worse, I’d have to force a stop when good ideas were flowing. I need much longer stretches of quiet time, to think, to read, to absorb, and to write.
And during those solipsistic busier-than-usual periods of life, the sacred stretches of solitude (so necessary for creative work) disappear.
Now, logically, I know that busier-than-usual periods are temporary. They will pass. White space will return. Life will go on.
But, logic notwithstanding, emotionally and spiritually, pressure builds…and builds….and builds, and when that relief valve isn't opened up through the real act of creation, through real writing, eventually, I explode.
When that happens, my creative shadow side takes over and my metaphorical skin rips open, falling away, leaving my humanity as a pile of forgotten flesh, and the Shadow, now a full-fledged demon, no longer constrained by a human container, expands outward, showing his true, dark leathery form. ‘He’ reaches out with his claws toward those around me and with his forked tongue of lies, lashes out and burns down my world. Once satiated, he dissapates, leaving me to attempt to rebuild from the ashes.
Art is certainly the Cinderella (of modernity)…if Cinderella is not allowed to go to the ball she will not stay quietly at home washing the dishes; probably she will set the house on fire instead. — Sangharakshita.
The Creative Act, you see, is a magic act that rehabilitates demons and defeats evil.
Writing, for many of us, is the alchemy that takes the grimy emotional pollution of everyday life — that nasty accumulation of darkness and trauma that builds up inside of us — and transmutes the gunk into something new, something good — even something divine.
Your pen is your magic wand and your rune-covered keyboard enables you to cast spells with your Words (that’s why we ‘spell’ words, of course). In the beginning was the Word — the ultimate spell.
But, unfortunately, when the accumulated darkness isn’t vented through writing, and it forces itself out in an emotional explosion, the escaped demon lashes out at whoever is closest to us, and that is nearly always a loved one; for who else is one close enough with to allow such shameful outbursts?
It’s a tragedy of life that we shit on the people we care about the most. And like a virus rupturing an infected cell, the darkness, if not transmuted through creative magic, seeks to spread from person-to-person. You can see this darkness living and spreading over modern society. I call it the ‘endarkenment.’ Everywhere we turn in modernity, the darkness seems to be covering the globe.
If there is any upside, at least our closest loved ones see the full spectrum of who we truly are, I guess. And, of course, if they choose to stay with us, demons and all, their love and devotion for us have been proven unequivocally. After all, Beauty doesn’t remain with the Beast unless she still sees Hope on the horizon.
The creatives who have graced my writings with their attention will be nodding their heads about now.
So, what to do about it?
I don't have an answer for you. I don't have a solution.
But I do have a resolution and it’s the only (new year’s?) resolution that makes sense for a writer: Write.
Use your Shadow’s talons to claw back some creative time instead of using them to shred those you love. Uh oh. It appears that I’m now one of those advice-giving write-every-day bastards.
It’s an unrealistic resolution, I grant you, but so are most resolutions, including everyone’s ultimate unspoken resolution of ‘don’t die.’
Resolutions don’t have to be realistic.
Resolutions represent Hope.
Optimism with a broken heart — that’s what Nick Cave calls hope. I’d probably say Hope is optimism defying a broken heart.
‘Resolution’ means ‘a breaking into parts.’ Through the Hope of Resolution, we sunder ourselves and create cracks in our heart, a broken heart, through which internal darkness may vent and allow the light back in. We need to break (open) our hearts if we wish to let the darkness out and the light in. Hope contains such power to inspire. And inspiration leads to action.
With Hope, even simply ‘writing’ in our own minds can sometimes be enough. Since, ultimately, you can’t truly control anything, there is no solution but resolution. And every resolution, at its core, is simply to hope.
This is the first real writing I've done in close to two months and so this piece itself has helped open that relief valve a tiny bit, and perhaps the pressure will now diminish and, as that pressure reduces, and negativity vents, Hopefully the Light of Creation will be uncovered again; for when the clouds finally dissipate, there is only the shining sun.
For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without it, the artist in us feels vexed, angry, out of sorts. If such deprivation continues, our artist becomes sullen, depressed, hostile. We eventually became like cornered animals, snarling at our family and friends to leave us alone and stop making unreasonable demands. - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Posts Referenced in this Essay
Ignoring Your Daemon Unleashes a Demon
The Parable of Anna Akhmatova by Ted Gioia
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