THINK INSIDE THE BOX

I HAVE MONKEYS IN MY HEAD. At least that’s what I’ve come to call the voices of self-doubt and anxiety that pester me, and I suppose everyone to some degree. Mine are particularly chatty when I’m trying to create. “You’re a fraud … last time was a fluke, this time it won’t be as good … you know this time you’re going to fail, don’t you?” Of course, there aren’t really any monkeys, but by personifying those voices of anxiety separate from myself, it’s easier to talk back.

On a good day, instead of monkeys I get a muse. Then I feel like I can do no wrong. Words flow, ideas steam up and stream out, my drummer’s hands do what I want them do before I even realize it and I create as if there’s no tomorrow. But there’s always tomorrow. And in between the monkeys and the muse the best I can ask for is to be a mule. That’s how Elizabeth Gilbert, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, describes her creative process. Between inspiration and anxiety attack you’re just trying to make words, ideas, music — name your poison (read: passion) — come into being by the force of sheer effort. On mule days the work is exactly that. When I try to write on days like that (and there are more of those days than any other) it’s as if my fingers are empty tubes of toothpaste and I’m trying to squeeze one last little sentence out of them one … letter … at … a … time.

That’s agony. And agony invites anxiety, which might as well be monkey chow.

For years I’ve accepted this as simply the way creativity is. But in a wonderful 19-minute speech at this year’s TED conference Gilbert wondered if indeed it does have to be this way. The question comes naturally to her as “Eat, Pray, Love” has been a stunning success and she acknowledges that it’s quite possible nothing she’ll ever write again may match it. So what to do with the monkeys in her head that now pester her with not only self-doubt, but even more dangerous whispers such as “why bother?”

Gilbert notes the dark history of so many of literature’s most creative writers who were driven to drink, depression, or suicide. Why did their monkeys win? Her answer comes in the form of a sweeping, articulate, and rapid-fire summary of Roman and Greek history, American and African cultures, encounters with the poet Ruth Stone and interviews with the musician Tom Waits. The problem, she suggests, is that we’ve taken too much responsibility for the creative act. For all our desire to parse it, explain it, capture it, and teach it, creativity still eludes our absolute control. What if we stopped thinking of creativity as coming from us, but rather through us? What if we accepted responsibility to be the mule, but not the muse? What if we regarded creativity as a partnership between ourselves and whatever nameless source has yet to be definitively spelled out in the creative process equation? For Gilbert, talking back to the monkeys begins by talking tough love to the muse. In her speech she relates having said the following in the middle of writing “Eat, Pray, Love” when she was filled with despair that it would be the worst book ever:

Listen you … thing … you and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see that I am putting everything I have into this. I don’t have anything more than this, so if you want it to be better, then you gotta show up and do your part of the deal. But if you don’t do that, the hell with it, I’m going to keep writing anyway, because that’s my job. And I would please like the record to show today that I showed up for my part of the job.”

For her, this was a liberating moment. This was a new “psychological construct” that she hopes will allow her to write for another 40 years without succumbing to the monkeys.

She ends her speech with a story about African ritual dancing, and transcendent moments when all can see that a particular dancer is filled with inspiration, and the accompanying shouts that meant “I see the divine in you,” which ultimately morphed into today’s Spanish word “Ole.” And she closes with this advice:

“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job,” she says. “Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, 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 through your efforts, then ‘ole.’ And if not, do your dance anyhow and ‘ole’ to you nonetheless … just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.”

It’s good advice. When we become convinced we are the muse, we set ourselves up for unrelenting panic. When we understand we are the mule and we can only welcome the muse, well, I’m hoping for me anyway, that that’s how you get rid of the monkeys.

If you haven’t done so already, click on the video link to Gilbert’s speech. It was the most thought-provoking 19 minutes of my week and I’m curious what you think as well.

© 2009 John Armato
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