It Might Get Messy

Ooh. I got slapped around pretty good for last week’s entry. Commenters complained about my absurd whining about struggling to find creativity when I produce more “creative” shit—writings, paintings, cut papers, songs—than your average 61 year old cancer survivor. One person skewered me for slipping into self-pity when I’d managed to avoid it for the long years I’ve been battling cancer and its aftermath. 

Possibly I should have explained myself better. But let’s not go there yet. First, let’s talk about creativity as a practical tool for living. And one of the keys to applied creativity is improvisation. 

I went through a spell a few years ago of reading half a dozen quasi-scholarly books on improvisation. I’ve spent my life not only functioning primarily by improvisation, but really, really enjoying it as a way of going. For a time when I was younger, I worried about this. I suspected it was actually due to laziness and procrastination. Ignoring ubiquitous advice to “be prepared” for presentations, discussions, operations, etc. (by using notes, and rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing, memorizing and memorizing), I thought, must be symptomatic of indiscipline and shallow intellect. 

And, of course, I have indeed lived my life with maximal laziness and procrastination. Complicating this exercise in self-analysis. However. After careful thought, I concluded long ago that living on a knife edge, where the delta between success and failure via making it up as I went along was categorical and high-risk, was a real endorphin rush. 

Being a successful improviser is actually very hard work. John Coltrane is the Big God of improvisation. When he pitched into his tenor sax (or, later, his soprano sax, bass clarinet, or flute, the latter two gifted to him by Eric Dolphy’s mom after Dolphy’s death from insulin shock during treatment for an acute episode of diabetes while he was in Europe), he said the most profound and fascinating things that have ever been said. As we’ve discussed before, I’m basically non-, or a-, religious. But when I hear Coltrane play, a crack ripples across my atheism. While I’m listening to Coltrane thinking (which is what improvisational musicianship reveals), I feel the tendrils of gods reaching for me, exploring my being for worthiness. And Coltrane achieved his status as hammer of the gods by intense study and practice. He practiced constantly. When his band took a break between sets, he went backstage and practiced. He studied ethnic musics worldwide, dug deep into western classical music, and translated it all into the most creative conceivable improvisation.

Then there’s improvisational wedding photography. If you go to 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/russian-wedding-photos_n_4724608.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

you will see some of the most hilarious and creative wedding photos ever. And they were taken at a wedding in Russia! I guess Pussy Riot doesn’t have a lock on catchy creativity in the Land of the Great Proletariat. 

For me, creating by improvisation meant that I had to know as much as possible about the subject at hand. If you study up about, say, German wine production, you can deliver a dynamite impromptu lecture, with white board graphics and real time web examples, for someone headed for Germany (I bring this up because Ms. Linda, colleague from a prior lifetime, recently reminded me of my classroom session on German wines before she and others on my staff left for project work in Germany years ago). For another example, having spent a lot of time browsing books about Russian cuisine, I was able tonight to produce a nifty Olympics-oriented dinner of blini (yeast-raised buckwheat griddle cakes) with mushroom duxelles and a slather of Greek yoghurt with dill, and a casserole of sauerkraut, onions, apples, beets, potatoes, and sausages. Eminently edible, I was assured, by those members of the household still able to eat via the traditional process of masticating and swallowing foods ingested by mouth. 

So improvisation is not a recipe for shoddiness. Successful, creative improvisation is damned hard work. But the product burped up a good improvisation can be awesome, in ways that product yielded by plodding, systematic, detailed planning can not. 

Improvisation even has a role in cancer therapy. Dr. N, my radiation oncologist, recently told me that, for my second round of treatment, he gave me a far more intensive dose than other doctors would, because he had a feeling he could get away with it, that I could take it, and that it was necessary due to the awful prognostic odds against successful treatment. Dr. N’s improbably successful improvisational handy work, then, is why I’m here, breathing, watching Men In Black as a break between Olympics coverage, and typing up this blog entry. 

Anyway. Back to my creativity issues. I have two major complaints about my personal “creativity”. The first is that all my stuff is derivative. My art, my music, even my writing, sadly, are all grounded in work by my betters who actually COULD create. All I can do is apply their tools to my pitiful efforts. Knowing that my artistic products are directly linked to other people’s creativity is something of a bummer.

But the real bummer is the other complaint I have about my creative abilities. Nothing I produce has any remunerative potential. In other words, nobody’s gonna pay me for my papercuts, poems, pen-and-inks and songs. I have been able to eke out a living by prose. But the creative products that generate cash aren’t the most satisfying ones. The latter—like this weblog, for instance—aren’t generating revenue streams. Double bummer. 

In summary, I suppose I’m guilty as charged—whining about my lack of talent, and getting down and wallowing in the accompanying self-pity. But at least it’s more complicated than it seemed at first blush. Hopefully I can get a little slack cut on that basis. Not that I really object to being hammered about quirks and corners of my writing. That’s how I learn. Maybe, if I live long enough (potentially problematic given the rather fragile state of my post-cancer physiology), I’ll even learn to produce something absolutely original and state-of-the-art. That’ll be a good day. But I’m not holding my breath. Or putting a cork in my tracheostomy tube. 

I thank you all, once again, for being here for me. I know in my heart that without you, I wouldn’t have had the strength to survive to this point. You have my love and my gratitude. And, possibly, I can offer something more concrete by way of thanks. Did I mention that the drug carrier in my THC gel caps is sesame seed oil? I’m seeing a “magic” salad dressing one night at the beach this summer… .