Whatever your art, make space for the unexpected

I was going to blog on keeping healthy as a writer but a quick round-up of my ailments warned me that I was in no position to advise anybody.   As I don’t want to sound like a poor, martyred whinger I’ll sum them up as;

Back ache

Awful knees

Occasional migraines

Traumatised fingers

The backache and the migraines have been my fellow travellers for more years than I can recall.  The knees and the fingers I can put down to two years of solid writing to get The Dress Thief from being a requested manuscript to a book on the shelves.   I have sat at a desk, typing words for more hours than nature ever intended.  And yes, I’m contemplating a stand up desk and have tried those kneeler chairs.  Neither is quite satisfactory.  My life-saver is walking three times a day, about 22 miles a week.  I keep telling myself to go swimming and to get my bicycle repaired.  And frankly, until I do either of these things, I’m nobody’s guru. 

Spot the bike; in there somewhere

So, thinking last night ‘what can I write about for the Firebirds’ blog?’ I decided to let my mind roam and it headed for its comfy sofa labelled, ‘Kicking creative ass.’   It’s a theme I return to often because, as a writer and occasional painter, I find myself sinking into well-trodden patterns of work.  That conflicts with my desire to keep my work fresh, for others and for myself.  The question is – how to allow in change without surrendering hard-won techniques?

In my old corporate copywriter days I worked for a huge company whose mission statement was ‘Creating a culture of continuous improvement.’   They paraded the philosophy but everyone was so busy shoring up their own mini-empire, they rarely looked over the edge of their desk to the company beyond.  As for customers  - what customers?  When it comes to creativity, maybe we should STAND on our desks and take a panoramic view. 

This is where the fun begins because the subconscious mind is a hungry infant.  Feed it often and generously and it gets more playful, more open.  I will give you an example.

Last Monday, at about 5pm, my dear friend Chrissie rang me and said, ‘I’ve got two free tickets to Snape*, for the prom concerts.  Do you want to go?’

Me (in head):  Nooooooo.  I spent all yesterday until 2 am finishing the first half of The Milliner’s Secret so it was in my editor’s in-box as she arrived for work.  I got four hours sleep.  And it’s Monday.  I never go out on Monday (hangover from school days).   What I said was; ‘Um … all right.  Who’s playing?’

Chrissie:  Something or other.  Not sure.  It’s part of their summer concert season, and I’ll pick you up at half six.

We went, no idea what we were in for, and were privileged to see Evan Christopher’s  ‘Django a la Creole’ which is a fusion of the hot jazz gypsy swing of Django Reinhardt, with a New Orleons, Cuban, reggae rhythm.  If that makes no sense,  here’s the link. Clarinet, two guitars and a double bass, sublime. I came away feeling that my creative tree, which had grown stately and inflexible, had been given a brand new branch.   It gets better.  

On Friday, at dinner with friends who were about to depart for India, leaving me their Labradors to look after, I was offered another pair of free tickets to the Snape proms.  I rang Chrissie, who to her credit, said, ‘Wow yes,’ then, ‘Who’s on?’

Me: ‘Um, not sure.  Penguin-Something.’

It was The Penguin Café, an ensemble playing a fusion of folk, Blue Grass, classical, rock, and many other things I would have to be a musicologist to describe.   Again, sublime and musically complex. Another branch sprouted from my creative tree.   As I sat in Row Z up in the Gods, a radical twist in the plot of The Milliner’s Secret suggested itself.  And last night, I dreamed that I was in my car, in heavy traffic, and couldn’t get the hand-brake to work.  I was sliding backwards downhill.  A panicky dream suggesting I’d stirred up issues of losing control simply by grabbing an opportunity to get out of the house.

Easy, isn’t it, to get locked into the processes of living?  Or to try and micro-manage the future out of fear.  Trusting to chance, letting in the random, can be worrying, but it’s often the agent of shift in the creative process. 

Do you have a favourite way of ass self-kicking?

Let me end by quoting Wiki’s entry for Simon Jeffes, the original founder of the Penguin Café Orchestra who created a fresh and original sound because he was dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by classical music.

 

“ In 1972  …. I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out ‘I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random’ and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what’s most important.  ”

 

*Snape Maltings, formerly a rambling malt  and barley warehouse for the beer industry on the River Alde in Suffolk. It was turned into a concert hall in the 1940s by composer Benjamin Britten and singer Peter Pears.  It now has an arts centre and a loft-living complex.  I intend to have a flat there when I’m rich and famous.