Selective Amnesia

Elizabeth Gilbert and excuses for creativity.

Now that I am a student, and a Masters one at that, I find that procrastination is expected, nay, even demanded of me. Not working 9-5+ and or doing things on my own, and without the life/friends/things I had in Madras, I have now time to actually catch up on my Google Reader feeds. That explains why I didn’t get to this video till now.

My first reaction on hearing Elizabeth was, when did TED do stand-up?
Seriously, I was sure this was an elaborate parody, and I was not clued in.
And then I realised she was actually serious. She actually meant to say those things in the tone she did.

I don’t know for sure where ideas come from (according to James Webb Young, an idea is “nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements“, which is what V.S Ramachandran terms “a sudden synthesis of two seemingly different knowledges/concepts into one” (TED 2007)) but sacrificing your role as the creator and giving away responsibility to somebody else, a mysterious being in the air?

Didn’t sound like Elizabeth was convinced of what she spoke, and came up with something purely as a contrarian/I will say something different because I need to.

More than anything else, it sounds to me like she is not proud (and doesn’t want others to be) of the work of the creator/herself/us. Without going into value-judging mode, I think it’s this attitude that leads people to take up drinking/drugging, not the success or failure of their work. No matter what I do later, I will be extremely happy and proud of the few pieces of work that I did. No matter what others talk of my body of work, and no matter how many rejections/refusals, I have my work I’ve already done, and nothing can change that. I like being a creator, and do not want to give away my hard-earned role as an ideator/creative/writer to a mythical being in the air.

Only when I sacrifice my role as a writer/creator and give mythical beings in the air the responsibility for my work will I have to be worried about drying up. If, on the other hand, I actually know that I am responsible for my writing, and want to derive economic/social revenue out of it, will I nurture that skill and take charge of my writing/creativity.

I am sorry, Elizabeth, but what you speak: does not compute.