Big Magic
I received Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic when it came out last Tuesday. I had read it through by Thursday. The book was an easy read, similar in style to Eat, Pray, Love in that is was constructed by a series of connected essays. Content wise, there was much in there that I had heard in other forms, bits from her TED talks (thankfully that was not all the material she used), chunks of her personal experience, and comcepts covered by Julia Cameron. However, this is wholly in her own voice and comes together as a cohesive work that lends new insight to the creative life. I found it compelling in a way I find few books. The second I finished it, I turned back to the first page and prepare to dive into it and mine the touch points before I lost the feeling of it.
To do this, I decided to process what I’ve learned here. To take the book from the beginning and parse out what resonates with me. I want to take these ideas and dig into them to figure out where in my life I need an adjustment in thinking and what reminders I can use. From almost when I started these entries, this is what I have been after: my unique and personal creative life.
A further note on the text. After reading the book I went to look at a few reviews. There was one that was singular in missing the point of the book. The reviewer had commented something to the effect that it’s hard to swallow the proposal that monetary gain and art for art’s sake are not linked from someone who has made “35 million”. Setting aside that the book may have made that amount, I doubt that she did, the reviewer misses the point. In my reading, Gilbert asserts that to follow a creative life needs a bit of separation from the potential financial outcomes. It has to or it will destroy us. I believe this is because culturally the arts aren’t yet considered a real profession unless you are among the recognized as gifted. But Gilbert is careful to outline that art is subjective and prone to change, so to try to bank on success, financially or otherwise, may be a psychological and emotional disaster.
What she attempts to do instead is what Julia Cameron does, she encourages us to live a creative life for it’s own sake. Gilbert believes that there is a creative particle within us and that particle is not unique or special. It is the unifying essence of who we are, even at a genetic level. To be human is to be creative. The scale and interests are different as we are different. That concept may be the whole point. It’s time for us to own our creativity, whatever it may be, because it makes us whole and healthy. In that sense, financial and fame concerns are not relevant. They can’t be.
Living a creative life and valuing the creativity I inherently have is a struggle. But through this book, I begin to see that there may be a different way to look at creativity and live with it. So for the next entries, I will be going through the book, taking what resonates with me, and discussing how this is interpreted against my experiences.