One of the really inspiring books I'm reading at present is The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp. She's an American dancer and choreographer who became a great force in her field in the latter part of the twentieth century. As one review of the book says:
Perhaps the leading choreographer of her generation, Tharp offers a thesis on creativity that is more complex than its self-help title suggests. To be sure, an array of prescriptions and exercises should do much to help those who feel some pent-up inventiveness to find a system for turning idea into product, whether that be a story, a painting or a song. This free-wheeling interest across various creative forms is one of the main points that sets this book apart and leads to its success.
I guess for me, the great power in the book is its practical nature and clear metaphors. She talks of creative troughs and peaks as Ruts and Grooves. That chapter alone is worth the price of the book. But a little gem towards the end really spoke to me. She talks of The Bubble, that self-contained and single minded isolation chamber into which artists seek to find their creative centre and produce their great works.
All of us who have produced creative works have at one time or other been in this Bubble, however fleetingly. For some it's a type of artistic autism that can be purposefully applied. For others it may be a totally involuntary state that they enter. Whatever the case, it can be observed and identified through artists of every ilk.
My particular interests are of creative practioners who because of their developing career roles (perhaps as CI managers) no longer actively practise their craft. What happens to them? In the course of their work, the ability to find time and space for the Bubble may be impossible. As creatives do we need time inside our isolation chambers to renew ourselves? And how do we do that?
With the ongoing commercialisation of the creative industries, the likelihood of 'ex-creatives' (if there's such a thing) inhabiting the expanding business levels of these companies will increase. Are they all to turn into grumpy and creatively dried-up old men and women because they can't find their Bubbles anymore, or worse still they can see them but don't have time to enter them?
Maybe there are other ways. Certainly after reading Tharp's book you sense that the essence of creativity need never be lost.
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