http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA
I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Gilbert, and i Especially LOVE this speech that she gave
i have watched this over a dozen times, this speech has fed me inspirations times and times over.
all the while as i watched this video, i always felt that her speech was so beautiful there must be somewhere on the world wide world of the internet that has it completely written out. surely there is a hardcopy of this where i can print and stick to my wall!!
unfortunatly, there wasnt.. so i took it upon myself, and my sheer love of her beautiful words to sit down here and watched her video small segment by segment and typed out every single word she said.
..it took me 6 hours and 25 minutes.. and now it's done. it was well worth it.
and i hope who ever gets to watch the above link and read along, will get as much fulfilment from this as i do..
Also.. i know there are alot of typos.. it's been many hours here, i must peel myself away form this.. for my own mental sake lol
"I am a writer. Writing books is my profession but it is more than that of course. It is also my great lifelong love and fascination, and i don't expect that that's ever gonna change. But, that said um.. something kind of peculiarity has happened recently in my life and in my career which has caused me to sort of have to recalibrate my whole relationship with this work. am um.. the peculiar thing is that i recently wrote this book..this memoir called "Eat, Pray, Love" ..um which decidedly unlike any other of my previous books ..um.. went out in the world for some reason and became this big mega sensation international best seller thing, the result of which is that everywhere i go now ..people treat me like im DOOMED..
um.. seriously ..DOOMED... ::chuckles::
doomed like they come up to me now all worried and say "arent you afraid.." um.. "arent you afraid you're never gonna be able to top that?" um.. " arent you afraid you're gonna keep writing for your whole life and you're never again gonna create a book that anybody in the world cares about at all..ever ...again?"
...so that's reassuring you know .. um but it would be worst except for that i happen to remember that over twenty years ago when i first started telling people .. when i was a teenager that i wanted to be a writer i was met with the same kind of sorta fear based reaction .. and people would say..
"arent you afraid you're never gonna have any success ...arent you afraid that humiliation of rejection will kill you...arent you afraid that you're gonna work your whole life in this craft and nothing's ever gonna come of it .. and you're gonna die on a scrap eve of broken dreams with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure ..." :: sighs and audience laughs ::
like that you know and um... the answer.. short answer to all those question is YES.
um.. yes im afraid of all of those things and i always have been, and i'm afraid of many many more things besides that..you know people cant even guess at ... like um seaweed .. and other things that are scarey
but when it comes to writing um.. the thing that i've been sorta thinking about lately and wondering about lately is..WHY..you know is it rational .. is it logical that um anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this earth to do? you know and um ..and what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about eachother's mental health in the way that other careers kinda dont do, you know.. um..
like my dad, for example was a chemical engineer and um i dont recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer you know .. it just.. didnt like.. "got chemical engineering block John?" you know, how's it going .. and um it.. it just didnt come up like that . you know but to be fair right.. chemical engineers as a group havnt really earned a reputation over the century for being alcoholic manic depressives .. and um .. we writers .. you know we kinda do have that reputation .. and ..and not just writers .. but creative people across all genres it seems to have this reputation for being enormously mentally unstable um.. and you know.. all you have to d ois look at the very grim death count in the 20th century alone . of .. of really magnificent creative minds who died young and often at their own hands .. you know um.. and even the ones who didnt literally commit suicide seems to be really undone by their gifts. you know um..
Norman Mailer, just before he died ..last interview he said "every one of my books has killed me a little more" .. an extradinary statement to make about your life's work ..you know .. but we dont even blink when we hear somebody say this because we've heard that kind of stuff for so long and somehow we've completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inheritantly Linked. and that artistry in the end will always, untilmately lead to anguish .. and the question that i want to ask everybody here today is.. um..are you guys all cool with that idea?? like are you .. comfortable with that ? becaue..um you look at it even from an inch away .. and um im not at all comfortable with that assumption .. i think its odious and i also think its dangerous and i dont want to see it perpetuaded into the next century i think better if we encourage you know our great creative minds to live .. you know and um .. and i definitly know that in my case in my situation ..um it would be very dangerous for me to start sort of leeking down that dark path of assumption you know particularly given the circumstance that im in right now, in my career.. which is you know..like.. 'check it out im pretty young, im only about 40 years old i still have maybe another 4 decades of work left in me ..and its exceedingly likely that anything i write from this point forwards is gonna be jude by the world as the work that came AFTER the freakish success of my last book right?
um.. i should just put it bluntly, coz we're sorta all friends here now, its exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me.. you know..um ..so Jeasus ! what a thought ! you know.. like thats the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking Gin at 9 oclock in the morning ..and ..you know .. i dont wanna go there .. you know i would prefer to keep doing this work that i love and so the question.. becomes.. HOW.
you know.. and so.. it seems to me upon alot of reflection, that .. that the way that i have to work now in order to continue writing is that i have to creat some sort of protective psychological construct.. right? i have to sorta find some way to have a safe distance .. you know between ME as i am writing .. and my very natural anxiety about what the reaction to that writing is going to be from now on. and .. and as i have been looking over the last year for like models for how to do that, i've been sorta looking across time and ive been trying to find like other society to see if they might of had better and saner ideas than we have about how to help ..um creative people to sort of manage the inheritant emotional risk .. of um of creativity and that search has lead me to ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.. so stay with me coz it does circle around back..but um..
Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome people did not happent to believe that creativity came from human beings back then. okay.. people believed creativity was this divine attendent spirit that came TO human beings from some distant and unknowable source or distant or unknowable reasons. The Greeks famoulsly called this divine attendent spirit of creativity "Damens". Socrates famously believed that he had a Damen spoke wisdom to him from afar. The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a "Genius" um.. which is great coz the Romans did not actually think that a "Genius" was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a "Genius" was this sort of magical divine entity ..um.. who wa believed to literally live in the walls of an artist studio kind of like Dobby the house elf ..um and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work ...so brilliant! there it is ..right there .. that distance that i'm talking about, that psycological construct to protect you from the results of your work.. you know
and everyone knew that this is how it functioned right.. so the ancient artist was protected from certain things like .. for example too much narcissism right, if your work was brillant .. couldnt take all the credit for it .. everybody knew you had this like disembodied Genius who would helped you.... If your work bombed not entirely your fault ..you know and everyone knew your Genius was kind of lame and ugh.. this is how people though about creativity in the west for a really long time. and then the Renaissance came and everything changed and then we had this big idea, and the big idea was lets put the individual human being at the center of the universe right.. above all Gods and mysteries and there's no more room for like mystical creatures who take dictation from the divine..and it's the beginning of rational humanism and um people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual and for the first time in history you start to hear people refering to this or that artist as BEING a Genius rather thank HAVING a Genius .. and i gotta tell ya, i think that's a HUGE error.
you know .. i think that allowing somebody .. like one mere person to believe that he or she is like the vessel .. you know like the font , and the essence and the source of all divine creative unknowable, eternal mystery is like a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile human Psyche. It like asking sombody to swallow the sun.. you know it just completely warps and distorts egos and it creats all these un managable expectations about performance and i think the pressure of that has been killing off our artist for the last 500 years
and um... if this is true.. and i think it is true.. the question then becomes .. you know.. what now .. you know can we do this differntly ..ugh maybe go back to some more ancient understanding about the relationship between humans and the creative mystery ..um.. maybe not, you know maybe we cant just erase 500 years of rational humanistic thought in one 18 minute speech, um.. and there's probably people in this audience who would raise like really legitamite scientific suspicions about the notion of basically fairies who follow people around like rubbing fairy juice on their projects and stuff.. like.. i am not probably gonna bring you all along with me on this ..um the question i kinda wanna pose is.. you know
WHY NOT..um.. why not think about it this way becaue it makes .. as much sense as anything else i have ever heard in terms of explaining the utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process. A process which.. as anybody who has ever tried to make something .. which is to say as basically everyone here.. knows does not always behave rationally, and in fact can sometimes feel.. downright paranormal
um.. i had this encounter recently where i met the extradinorary American poet Ruth Stone whose now in her 90's but she's been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia she would be out working in the fields and she said she would like feel and hear a poem comming at her from over the landspace. and she said it was like a thunderous train of air, and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape and when she felt it comming coz it would like shake the earth under her feet, she knew that she only had one thing to do at that point, and that was to ..in her words "run like hell " and she would run like hell to the house and shed be getting chased by this poem and the whole deal was she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her she could collect it and um..grab it on the page .. and other times she wouldnt be fast enough so she's be like running .. and running and running and ugh she wouldnt ge tto the house and the poem would like barreled through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape .. looking as she would put it for another poet, and um... and there would be these times ...and this is the piece i would never forgot. She said there were moments when she would almost miss it right .. so she like running into the house and she looking for the paper and the poem passes through her and she grabs a pencil just as its going through her and then she said it would like reach out with her other hand and she would catch it ....she would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page and these instances the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards from the last word to the first ...
..so.. when i heard that i was like ...that unbeli-- you know..that's uncanny that's exactly what MY creative process is like ..
it's not AT ALL my creative process! im not the pipeline you know! like im a mule .. and the way i have to work is that i have to get up at the same time everyday and like sweat and like labor, and like barrel though really akwardly but.. even I in my muelishness ..even i have brushed up against that thing .. you know at times.. and i would imagine that alot of you have too.. you know like even i have had work or ideas have come through me from a source that i honestly cannot identify ...and what is that thing? and how are we to relate to it in a way that would not make us lose our minds? but in fact might actually keep us sane. and for me the best contemperary example that i happen to know how to do that um.. is the Musician Tom Wade who i got to interview several years ago on a magazine this time..
and we were talking about this and you know.. it.. you know Tom for most of his life he was pretty much the embodiment of tormented contemperary modern artist .. yo uknow like trying to control and manage and dominate these sort of uncontrollable creative impulses.. you know .. that were totally internalized .. but then he got older and he got calmer .. and one day he was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles and he told me .. and this is when it all changed for him ..and um.. and he like speeding along .. and all of the sudden he hears ..this little fragment of melody.. you know that comes into his head as inspiration often comes elusive tantalizing and he wants it.. you know it's gorgeous .. and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it he doesnt have a piece of paper he doesnt have a pencil, he doesnt have a tape recorder, so he starts to feel all that old anxiety start to rise in him like.. "im gonna loose this thing " you know.. "and then im gonna be haunted by this song forever and im not good enough..and i cant do it.. " and instead of panicking he just stop.. he just stop that whole mental process.. and he did something.. completely novel ..um .. he just looked up at the sky and he said..
"excuse me, can you not see that i am driving?"... " do i look like i can write down a song right now..you know?" if you really want to exist come back in a more opportune moment and when i can take care of you.. otherwise go bother somebody else today !" go bother..Leonard Cohen you know.."
and.. and his whole work process changed after that.. not the work. the work is still often times as dark as ever you know but the process and the heavy anxiety around it was released when he took the Genie... the Genius out of him where it was causing nothing but trouble and released it kind of back where it came from and realized it didn't have to be this.. internalized .. tormented thing.. it could be this peculiar wondrous bizarre collaboration, this kind of conversation between Tom and the strange external thing that was not quite Tom.
so.. when i heard that story, it started to shift a little bit, the way that i work too and i t already saved me once.. this idea.. it saved me when i was in the middle of writing 'Eat, Pray, Love" and i sorta fell into one of those pit of despair that we all fall into when we're working on something and its not coming and you start to think that this is gonna be a disaster, this is gonna be the worst book ever written, not just bad but the WORST book ever written.. and um.. and i started thinking i should just dump this project.. you know .. um but then i remembered Tom talking to the open air and i tried it .. so i just lifted my face up from the manuscript and i directed my comments to the empty corner of the room and i said out loud.. "listen.. you ..thing..um.. you and i both know that if this book isnt brillant that this is not entirely my fault ..right.. as you can see that i am putting everything i have into this and i dont have any more than this so if you want it to be better then you gotta show up and do your part of the of the deal okay? but if you dont do that, know what the hell with it i'm gonna keep writing anyway because that's my job and i would please like the record to reflect today that i showed up for my part of the job"
because.. ( thank you ) in the end.. its like this okay centuries ago in the deserts of north Africa, people used to gather for these moonlight dances of sacred dance and music that would go on for hours and hours until dawn and they were always magnificent because they dancers were professional and they were terrific right, that every once in a while ..very rarely ..something would happen and one of these performers would actually become transcendent.. and i KNOW you know what im talking about because i know you've all seen at some point in your life a performance like this, you know and it's like ..time would stop and the dancer would step through some kind of portal and he wasnt doing anything different than he'd ever done ..you know a thousand nights before but everything were aligned ..and all of the sudden he would no longer appear to be merely human.. you know he would be like lit from within .. and lit from below .. and all lit up on fire with divinity .. and when this happened back then people knew it for what it was you know they called it by its name, they would put their hands together and start chant "Allah ! Allah! God ! God!" God... THAT's God
you know.. um ..curious historical footnote um ..when the Moores invaded southern Spain they took this custome with them and the pronunciation changed over the centuries from "Allah, Allah, Allah" to.. "oley, Oley, Oley" which you still hear in bull fights and flaminco dances in Spain when a performer has done something impossible and magic Allah.. Oley.. Oley.. Allah.. magnificent.. Bravo ... incomprehensible There it is! a glimpse of God..
which is great coz we need that .. um.. but the tricky bit comes the next morning right for the dancer himself when he wakes up.. and discovers that its Tuesday at 11 am that he's no longer a glimpse of God and um he's just an aging mortal with really bad knees and you know maybe he's never going to ascend to that height again, and maybe no body will ever chant God's name again as he spins.. and what is he then to do with the rest of his life..
This is hard.. this is one of the most painful reconciliations to make in a creative life you know..um but maybe it doesnt have to quite.. so full of anguish .. if you never happen to believe in the first place that the most extronary aspects of your being came from you, but maybe you would just believe that they were un loan to you.. you know from some unimaginable source for some exquisit portion of your life to be passed along when you're finished with somebody else..
and.. you know if we think about it this way it starts to change everything! you know.. this is how i've started to think and this is certainly how i was thinking about it in the last few months..you know as um..i've been working on the book that will soon be published as the dangerously, frighteningly, over anticipated follow-up to my frekish sucess um.. and and what i sorta have to keep telling myself when i get really psyched out about that is um.. Dont be afraid...
dont be daunted .. just do your job.. continue to show up for your piece of it whatever that might be, if you're job is to dance ..do your dance.. if the divined cockeyed Genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts.. then Oley.. and if not.. do your dance anyhow and oley to you nonetheless .. and i believe this and i feel like we must teach it .. and oley to you nonetheless just for having the sheer human love and stubborness to keep showing up
...thank you.
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