Spent a really positive day with Alison White; friend, writer and co – creative agent. For some time we have been discussing, how we spend a large part of our working lives encouraging, facilitating, motivating, cajoling others to be creative, to see themselves as inherently creative people. So, where, how, and when do we make the time to do this for ourselves?
Many cups of tea, and a lot of rambling, we talked a lot about the ‘gremlins’ – the voice/s which say – “Why bother? It’ll be rubbish” OR – “He / she / they already do this much better” or whatever format our own negative voices speak, or sometimes shout at us.
Talking about my own self/land/scapes project, which has (due to technical difficulties) rather ground to a halt, Alison likened me to her two year old, when finding something doesn’t work, or fails to do what he wants, does the obvious, and throws the teddy out the pram…..
A visit to The Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester prompted us to talk about what drives us to make / create, and how things generally would be a lot easier without that drive being so insistent.
The fact that Alison is in the final stages of putting her first poetry collection together spurred me on somewhat, and made me think, financial imperatives aside of the NEED for me to invest further time into my own creativity, aside from work I do for someone else. Point taken.
On the gremlins front, we decided that a ritual burning of our personal gremlins is a good next point of action. Anyone got a pair of old socks…?
