I’m perpetually about five steps behind the smart kids like Merlin and Julien, so I’m just now reading Twyla Tharp’s absolutely outstanding—OUTSTANDING, I tell you—book, The Creative Habit.* (Julien, if you’re reading this, you were 100% right, and I owe you a beer. Or something.)
Since Merlin first started talking about the book some time ago, I’ve noticed a term creep into his writing more often: tolerance.** As in, tolerance for ambiguity when it comes to approaching the making of stuff, and tolerance for sucking during the process of making it.
Possibly in turn, or possibly because it’s part of the zeitgeist I’m soaking in, I’ve noticed the term floating up into my own consciousness a lot lately. I’ve worked steadily at cultivating my own tolerance for ambiguity and for sucking, as well; I lump them together as tolerance for “mess,” which I’ve built up a much, much higher tolerance for both physically and psychically.
Interestingly, my tolerance for clutter has decreased as my tolerance for mess has increased. On the surface, you might see them as the same, but I see them as quite distinct:
Mess is the inevitable by-product of creation—the few eggs you’re going to have to break to make an omelet (or the few thousand you’re going to have to break to make one expertly). Mess is the artist’s studio during work hours, or the writer’s office halfway through a book, or any creative person’s brain at the beginning of a huge—and always scary—undertaking.
Clutter is the crap that gets in the way of creation—the weeds and distractions that keep you from the business at hand. It can can be thoughts that no longer serve as well as tools that are broken or outdated. It’s the fat and the noise and the junk that stands between you and your goal: if you’re an actor or a dancer, it might be literal body fat; if you’re a singer or a speaker, it could be a weak diaphragm or shit habits that are destroying your pipes. It is almost always TV, for everyone, but it can also be any number of bad consumptive habits, from too many beers after “work”-work (getting in the way of your artistic work) to excessive reliance on gossip rags, chick lit or internet forums.
For some of us, clutter is simply too many things we’ve said “yes” to that we don’t really want to do, or that aren’t moving us forward in significant ways. I have become much closer to my little friends, No Fucking Way and Not a Snowball’s Chance in Hell, although I have to constantly remind them to use their indoor voice and smile politely when out and about in the world. My new-favorite dish is the “no” sandwich: slipping a big, bad slice of Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me There between two pretty slices of “Oh, aren’t you sweet to ask!” or “That Sounds Like So Much Fun” or “I Reeeeeeeally Wish I Could.” The point ain’t to stomp on someone else’s delicate mess with your big clodhoppers, but to recognize what works for them may not for you, and vice versa.
I get a little panicky about how much time I have left to get the music out of me every year about now. And yeah, I realize that worry is a form of clutter, too. Still, addressing what’s standing between me and what I’ve decided I want becomes more and more important as I creep inevitably toward what I hope is a natural and long-off death, but which I recognize could be lying just steps away, up on the fire escape, Acme anvil in hand, waiting for me to turn the corner.
So I say “no”—or at least, “let me sleep on it”—to more things, that I may say “yes” to the right things. Creating limits, so there’s a safe space to cultivate tolerance…
xxx
c
Image by “T” altered art via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
*I’ll be reviewing it next week, but feel free to buy it now, even without the review. Because the first 100 pages are better than most of the pages of about 2,000,000 books put together. It’s just the best book I’ve read for working creatives ever. Juicy, full of ideas and inspiration and exercises. Funny. Well-written. No fat. Blowing-my-mind good.
**You can read the central post about it, which also links to a really nice talk he gave at this year’s MaxFunCon on dealing with The Resistor during the creative process.
{ 13 comments }
Great post!!
Love your indoor voice! It’s what I’m thinking when someone asks me to interrupt my day, week or life for something that doesn’t further my creativity and life.
Not sure I’m as pleasant as you when I say No (LOL)
Judith
Great post.
Whoo-hoo! I’m reading The Creative Habit too! It is a great book, and you’ve captured it well in this post.
I love tolerance because it gives us space to be with what is and wait for clarity to come, rather than immediately saying “yes” like a hamster on a wheel.
Tolerance for ambiguity, and for not knowing, is the key to allowing our true and natural response to surface, so we can live our own real lives rather than being bound by “should’s” and expectations.
I love this! And at the same time I’m thinking “Are we reading the same book?” Because I’ve been focusing on digging. The scratching and the digging and the boxes to put all of it in.
So now I need to go back and find the tolerance part. Because that sounds so so good.
Thanks, all. Glad to see so many other lovers of Twyla out there.
And Sarah, this is by no means what I’d call a well-rounded look at what I’m getting from the book. It’s just funny to me that the whole tolerance thing that had been swimming around in my consciousness floated back to the surface as I’ve been reading.
More soon—very soon!
Not surprised that you would like this book since you also reviewed another writer I love: Patti Digh “Life is a Verb” =-)
Love what you’re saying about learning to say “NO” – life IS too short for clutter of all kinds, ESPECIALLY saying ‘yes’ to things that are less than “WOO HOO”!!
Can’t wait to see what’s next here =-)
discernment is a form of genius. suhweet distinctions, you, you, genius.
Nice post, and nice distinction between mess and crap. I wish I had been able to articulate that for myself, but now I don’t have to.
And speaking of crap, you’re being spammed in here. Comments 1 and 3 are crap.
Monica – I love Patti Digh’s writing! I feel like a kid in a really, really fine candy store, finally getting my mitts on the good stuff everyone else has been enjoying for ages. (Oh–and thank you!)
Danielle – Is it? I’ll take it! Thank you, my brilliant madwoman sister to the north.
Jeremy – I do my best. And both PP and LPC are regular commenters and friends—I’m guessing they were just too busy to wax rhapsodic. Unless someone has hijacked their computers.
Wow. I’m really sorry for leaping to conclusions, but to be honest I didn’t fancy visiting the sites they linked to. The only time I get comments like that, they really are spam.
PP, LPC, please accept my apologies. You are not crap. You may, however, still be mess.
“I get a little panicky about how much time I have left to get the music out of me every year about now.”
A pre-birthday sort of angst? I get a wave of something like that around now too. Getting a bit better at being mellow about it these days. In any case, oddly reassuring to think that other folks have issues that come up around their bdays.
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