Creativity, Where are You?

I like dinner parties better than other kinds of parties. There is less pressure to mingle. You get to sit in one place and just talk to the few people seated nearest you. And the awkward lulls in conversation are easily filled by stuffing more food into your mouth. Not to say that I don’t occasionally enjoy shouting non-sequiturs to someone at the far end of the table strictly for my own amusement. I’m not shy. It’s a common misconception that introverts are shy. We just require regular trips to the fortress of solitude to recharge our social batteries. Dinner parties are also perfect opportunities for one of my favorite pastimes: pretending I’m a character in a Woody Allen movie.

At a recent dinner party, the conversation turned to my interest in changing careers. A friend volunteered that I should do something creative because I seem like a person who would really have something to say. I was flattered but just as quickly, skeptical. I definitely love the idea that I am such a person, but I’m not always sure it’s the case.

I have made things. I am a creative person—just not by trade. I’ve had a few poems published in some not-at-all terrible literary magazines, and I write and record music under the name Giants of Diving. I released my first album in late 2019, and the following year I put out a single called Lucky, Like Me that I consider one of my best. But since then, nothing. For one reason or another, I hit a wall. I either ran out of ideas or lost the drive to execute them. I’m not sure which happened first. Either way, I came to identify myself as what they call BLOCKED.

Boyhood portrait of the artist scanning the landscape for his lost creativity

Anyway, back to this idea of having something to say. I’ve decided to find out if it’s true. And to that end, I did what I almost always do when life gets hard: I bought a book. In this case, it’s a creative recovery guide called The Artist’s Way. Maybe you’ve heard of it due to its many glowing celebrity endorsements. On the back cover, Martin Scorsese calls it a valuable tool to get in touch with your creativity, which I’ve chosen to translate as, There would be no Goodfellas without this book. I am in the early stages of the program, but from what I’ve learned so far, I’ll need to open up and allow myself to be led by someone called the “Great Creator.” Pretty straightforward.

I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Meanwhile, how do you like that? There is a comment box! Any thoughts on my journey of enlightenment so far? Have you experienced creative or spiritual blockage, and if so, how have you dealt with it? What do you think about thinking? How about just a quick dinner party story? I would love to hear from you in the comments!