Big Ideas from Big Magic

by Katrina MacFarlane

I can still remember where I was when I first heard Shad’s CBC q interview with Elizabeth Gilbert about her 2015 book Big Magic - Creative Living Beyond Fear. I was cleaning my kitchen when I heard her say something to the effect that possessing a creative mind was akin to having a border collie for a pet, “you better give that dog a job to do or it’s going to find a job to do” she explained, “and you’re not going to like the job that it finds so you have to keep that thing occupied.” I instantly ran to the radio, turned it up, and sat listening at the kitchen table with rapt attention until it was over. She had me at the mention of ‘creative mind.’ I listened to that interview over and over again in the days following and was so struck by the way Gilbert spoke about creativity. I had always felt a compulsion to be drawing, sewing, designing, and making things but when large swaths of time passed when I wasn’t able to make things, I would go into what I called ‘withdrawal’ and become that collie dog who chewed the couch! She was so right!

Since the book was published, I’ve made it my practice to revisit it each January as I embark on a new creative year. It helps me remain focused, quells the fear (for a bit until it wells up again), and gets me excited to continue on my creative journey.

One of my favourite things about this book is what I refer to as Gilbert’s ‘theory of ideas.’ Seemly central to her assessment of the creative process, it’s completely brilliant, beautiful, and for sure, magical. I’d never heard anything quite like it. “Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form,” Gilbert says. They want to come to life and be realized but can do that only by entering into relationships with human collaborators. She describes it like this:

Ideas spend an eternity swirling around us, searching for willing and available partners…when an idea thinks it has found somebody — say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention.

We need to be open and willing to notice, receive, and be inspired by these ideas. If some of this ‘magic’ slips through, she tells us, the idea will ask, “Do you want to work with me?” You will then need to decide how to respond. I love this concept! She tells a curious story about what happened to her when she took too long to bring an idea to fruition.

Gilbert also addresses the idea of perfectionism calling it a “high-end, haute couture version of fear.” We want to make work that we believe represents our best abilities and we worry about being judged on our skills and choices. Most of us have looked back on things we’ve made in the past and shaken our heads in embarrassment at how naive and unskilled we seem. I speak as if much time has passed since we’ve done this but it could be as recent as last week or, dare I say it, yesterday. Perfectionism, Gilbert points out, is a “corrosive waste of time” because nothing we do is ever above criticism. It not only prevents us from finishing our work but also stops us from starting altogether. I think the quest for perfection mellows with age, the more experiences we have, and the more fragile life becomes. I love seeing what I’ve come to call ‘evidence of the hand’ — those little imperfections in a piece of work — it’s how you know a human being is responsible for the creation — to me, it’s what draws us closer to the artist. We need to be much kinder to ourselves and recognize that we will grow and change and so will our work. What we make today is a brief snapshot in time and will not define us forever.

I don’t want to give too much away but I will say that another strong connection point for me is when I heard Elizabeth mention a quote (in the video below) from her friend and research professor, Brené Brown — “Unused creativity is not benign.” Most of my previous education is in the biological sciences, specifically cytology. My work in cytopathology had me searching for minute cell changes detectable as cancerous or pre-cancerous. The word benign had been part of my daily vocabulary but when I heard it applied in this way to creativity, it struck a nerve such that I yelled out “YES!” I’ve always been a creative person but have not always been able to act on it (we often find ourselves in need of doing things outside the creative realm). She describes one’s creativity beautifully as “an enormous, powerful, muscular engine” that exists within us and if we’re not able to use it, it doesn’t simply sit in park doing nothing. Creative people need to create, or else!

One of my favourite passages in her book is this:

All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life — collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand. It’s a strange line of work, admittedly. I cannot think of a better way to pass my days.

When I read this, all I can think is… AMEN!!!

02.20