Stop being useful
Creativity and the Lesson of Mary's Alabaster Jar
It’s funny how we start out so pure as kids…
We create out of the wonder of this thing called color, dunk our fingers into paint as if it’s a jar of Nutella, smear it all over our clothes and giggle in glee.
We thrash pots and pans together with a wooden spoon, sway our body to the beat and delight in the cacophony.
We lay on the lawn, reach down to a blade of grass and watch in amazement as a ladybug gently crawls onto our hand, relishing in the red and black dots on its body and gasp ‘this is so COOL!’
Years go by…
And then it gets just so bloody serious.
Your paintings get compared to others…
Music becomes competition…
Life and nature becomes background wallpaper.
The mind polluted. The spirit flattened.
A dulling of the senses has occurred and retracted the mind from the thrill of creation to its shadow self based on something else.
But what is that ‘something else?’
For a while I have been pondering the dark side of creativity and why it sneaks up on artists, tainting the mindset from joyous discovery to incessant self doubt. I felt it on a personal level.
Questions start to take over that are so very practical:
Will it sell?
Will people like what I make?
What if I fail?
It is precisely this practicality that kills the art.
Three years ago I had a phone call with a journalist friend from high school and college, Diana Rojas. After around a decade of not communicating we were gushing about all the standard domestic topics…kids growing up and going to college, aging parents, husbands.
But then she said something to me that hit me over the head like a ton of bricks.
“I decided to finally write my first novel but I made one vow to myself:
I don’t want it to be useful.”
Eureka!
I knew Diana was onto a revolutionary idea and had to explore this further. I begged her for an advance copy of her debut novel A Litany of Saints and dug in.
I was sure I’d find a clue there to why I was feeling so trapped in my creativity.
Usefulness and Art.
I had never stopped to think about those two concepts and how they work together.
A curious question rose to the surface of my mind on this strange coupling:
Does usefulness even belong in the realm of art?
Could this be the hidden string that has been blocking the authentic flow of so many of my creative endeavors until that point?
Was the need to be useful, probably embedded in me as a mother, caretaker, oldest daughter—so entangled with my identity that it became a dictator, choking the part of me that desperately needed to be free as a creative?
As I read Diana’s book I was struck by something:
The writing sang! It just felt so free as if the words were tumbling out like kids streaming out of the brick building on the last day of school.
Of course, there is mastery and technique to anything in art that seems simple…That is the paradox.
But beyond that I could tell that by giving herself permission to not be useful, Diana was cutting the chains to all the toxic chatter that infiltrates during the creative process. Will it be published? Will it sell? How about the numbers on social media, NY Times best seller lists etc…
Alabaster Jar
“…A woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table” Matthew 26:7
What if the creativity inside is is like the oil described in this verse of the Bible?
Precious, fragrant, rare…
What if this oil is a metaphor for our creativity, meant purely as an intimate expression of love, a reflection of our Creator to be shared openly and joyously?
What if part of this process is that we must ‘break’ and shatter the ego part of ourselves that demands attention, validation and adulation for this thing called talent that at the end has nothing to do with ourselves but everything to do with the endowment given to us from God?
What if, after all, we are meant to create for an audience of ONE?
When I think of the great composers, JS Bach is one who wrote for an audience of ONE. He dedicated each work to God by signing off with the initials SDG: To God Alone the Glory.
At the end of his life, there was no fanfare about his great music. He was no rock star. In fact he was poor and forgotten, his precious manuscripts used as wrapping for fish and kindle for the fireplace.
Yet he kept writing and giving God his very best…The alabaster jar of oil was bursting despite the bleak circumstances.
We think of JS Bach now as a god of music—but the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter. He wrote regardless of legacy…he just knew that he had to break open the jar and let the oil spill out.
So today…what is God asking you to create? Will you do it even if nobody else is looking, even if nobody will care, even if nobody will listen?
If the answer is yes…let me know how that good oil flows.
90 Days of Creativity Challenge
On tomorrow night’s Love Notes livestream we are kicking off 90 Days of Creativity Challenge.
The idea is simple: Create one thing during the next 90 days. Nothing is too big or too small. At the end, it’s less about what you create, but who you become in the process.
The group is a place where we support one another and keep inspired during this challenge. Of course classical music and its wisdom is always a running thread in every conversation.
Tomorrow night we are diving into the all important topic of mindset and overcoming the obstacles in the path. I’ve been reading Brianna Wiest’s fabulous book: You are the Mountain and can’t wait to share lessons from her book with a tie in from a pivotal moment from life of Beethoven where ego gave way to the purity of the alabaster jar.
Usually this group is private for members, but tomorrow’s session is open for all.
You are invited to join at 7 pm EST on Wednesday June 24 using this link
»»>LINK
For my 90 Day Challenge I am recording an album of the mystical music of Franz Liszt. Yesterday I recorded this video. The way Liszt wrote the shimmery opening of this piece ‘Benediction of God in Solitude’ reminds me of the golden oil spilling out of the alabaster jar bringing renewal and fresh energy. I hope you enjoy it!