We just gave a series of workshops in The Green Room this past weekend. One focused on the topic “Creative Career Management”. During this workshop, I found myself dropping back into a time in which I felt So Very STUCK in my musician’s career. I was struggling with injuries and chronic pain, burnout, and a distressing lack of long-term prospects. I also suffered from limited imagination for other possibilities. I’d been on the ‘pianist track’ since age 5, and couldn’t imagine what else I could possibly be suited for.

At that time, usually while practicing, I began to daydream about founding a Cat Hotel. This was a recurrent, intuitive, and persistent thought. In my daydreams, this Cat Hotel would be the MOST ADORABLE thing imaginable: cats everywhere, a home for wayward cats unwanted by anyone else. It would be like the Hemingway’s Home that hosts over 60 six-toed cats, or a shelter for the cats of Istanbul who need to retire from the streets. (By the way… cat lovers: watch this gorgeous documentary!).

I could care for the cats, but would also derive so much benefit from the little dears. It would be mutually beneficial and healing.

It would be utopic…

So, the Cat Hotel idea never panned out for me, and I don’t think it was ever really intended to happen. This daydreaming probably had one simple purpose:

To loosen up my knotted-up brain.

‘Stuckness’ is such a big topic in psychological counseling sessions with musicians, other artists … actually with most people seeking out psychological counseling.

Stuckness, stagnation, an impasse, a lack of perspective, a double-bind, a catch-22, a vicious circle, a no-win situation, a rabbit hole … this is the ‘daily bread’ of my psychological counseling and artistic-systemic therapy, the material we (my clients and I) most often use as a starting point in the sessions. Often the image of a giant knot comes up. We pull at the threads, and try to loosen it. Loosening it can happen immediately ( Eureka! ) or take a looooooooong time. One may only recognize that the knot’s been loosened in hindsight and with a bit of distance.

Big ‘knots’ in life tend to develop slowly and many things tend to contribute to them. Simple solutions most often aren’t up to the task of easing these monster-knots. Increasing possibilities and ‘nudging’ people out of habitual patterns is a way to approach the knot, rather than spending time and energy (and money) looking for easy, quick, and definitive solutions.

Creating greater mental and emotional flexibility through an expanded repertoire of possibilities reflects the thinking of the master movement pedagogue Moshé Feldenkrais:

"The truly important learning is to be able to do the thing you already know in another way. The more ways you have to do the things you know, the freer your choice is. And the freer your choice, the more you’re a human being."

Mental, emotional and physical flexibility are often analogous and complementary processes. As the rigidly fearful and supremely inflexible Mr. Brown learns in Paddington 2, when encountering an impossible situation… “Open your Mind and your Legs will Follow…”

Is flexibility inherent in creativity? Can one be rigid and creative? Seems unlikely…

So what is this thing we call creativity? It’s a word we use often, especially in the context of artistic pursuits, but what is it exactly?

Is it:

Thinking ‘outside of the box’?
Coming up with novel ideas, solutions, paths?
Exhibiting traits of brilliance?
Walking around with your head in the clouds?

I’d like to draw from the work of the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who identified Creativity NOT as a personal trait, but as a system: a social construct. In other words, a person alone cannot make a creative system. Creativity exists out of the interaction of three elements:

The three areas that are essential for creativity are:

1) a culture or domain

2) person or group offering a creative impulse

3) an audience that receives and accepts the creative impulse

Let’s explore this idea a little:

A culture or domain is the field in which a creative person is born out of. For a composer, it’s both the music notation and the legacy of past composers. For a dancer it is the discipline of ballet or other dance forms. For a pianist it’s piano technique and a wide and deep exposure to the existing repertoire. For a scientist, it’s the scientific method and inputs from previous researchers.

It’s what came before the creative person/group entered into the system.

A creative impulse comes from a person or a group who absorbs deeply the culture and then brings it forward in a new way. This person makes her own contributions, finds novel solutions, creates new ways of thinking and doing.

And then there’s the hard part: in order for creativity to occur (according to Csikszentmihalyi), it needs to go out into the world and find resonance there. He mentions experts and industry gate-keepers who can validate the new impulse and incorporate it into the field. I believe it could also be an audience or an interaction with the current world we inhabit. The impulse leaves the realm of the individual or small group and goes out into the world. It creates something new in the world.

When these things occur, creativity happens.

Creativity, therefore, cannot exist in a vacuum. The world has its misunderstood geniuses and iconoclasts. According to Csikszentmihalyi, these people may be brilliant, but they do not participate in creative systems unless their impulses take hold in some tangible way. This is the spirit out of which we designed the “Creative Career Management” workshops for artists.

Creative Career Management for Artists

Three paths:

1) Create space for forming and identifying values, visions and goals

2) Build networks and other supportive structures

3) Cultivate the conditions in which creativity can thrive

1) Creating space for forming and identifying values, visions and goals

My excellent colleague, Elisabeth von Leliwa led the participants in our weekend workshop through a spontaneous writing exercise in which the participants wrote down their responses to the following question:

What would your ideal working day look like exactly five years from now? Describe the details, following your daily routine: when (and next to whom) do you wake up? What do you do first? What activities occupy you? What do you eat, drink, think, say, smell, experience, remember? Who do you speak to? Where do you spend the day? Provide as much juicy detail as possible.

Letting the pen flow for c. 20 minutes, flesh out this future day.

This exercise serves to identify values, visions and goals, three core aspects of creative career management. The values arise when you explore what is important to you, which actions correspond to your idea of a meaning-filled life. The visions put your imagination to work. What do you daydream about, even if it’s merely a ‘Cat-Hotel’? Where, with whom, and doing what, do you imagine yourself in five years? Goals are the stepping stones towards the values and visions. They are a structure to assist you in progressing from the now to the future.

In the workshop, the question came up: What’s the point of making detailed plans when The World could come in and knock everything over? We live in VUCA-times (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous), so, what’s the point of wasting precious time with detailed visioning and planning? Didn’t we learn through COVID and through ever-increasing wars to be careful about hanging onto our plans? Didn’t we learn about the danger of painful disappointment?

Perhaps the best response to this very valuable question is in the practice of Buddhist monks who painstakingly create something and then ceremoniously dismantle it, giving them and the onlookers opportunities to reflect on Impermanence:

There is no benefit in hiding from your values, visions, and goals, making your life smaller by not committing to things. Opening oneself to the vulnerability inherent in imagining a future that may, or may not, come to fruition is a deep practice in being human.

2) Building networks and other supportive structures

Many artists are loners. I was one myself. The piano is a big-old loner-instrument. Composers in the 19th century claimed that it freed them from the tyranny of forced collaboration with orchestras. If you were Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, or Schumann, you could express a symphony through the 88 keys. Composers in the 20th century claimed the same thing about electronics. Electronics even held the potential to do away with the pesky humans. The longer I live, the more I realize the limitations to self-isolation. We need each other AND we need quiet time for reflection. We need a balance between those things, and in today’s hectic, noisy, and disconnected world, both community and opportunities for quiet contemplation are becoming increasingly endangered.

Nora Bateson expresses it better than I can:

“People need people and people have no idea how to live with people. The ways in which community was generated in the past have slipped away. The farm, religious ceremonies, moving water, taking care of animals, making music, raising children, tending the elderly … these things have changed shape. In some cases the break with traditions of family and religion released younger generations from oppressive cultural expectations so they could pursue a different life than their parents, allowing for different expressions of sexuality, exploring new ideas of life, and so on. But in the midst of finding ourselves, we lost each other. Now in this time of tumultuous, rapid change there is a need for another sort of collaboration, one in which improvisation is the basis. No one knows what chaos is coming next, or when or how to respond. The pandemic was evidence enough that governmental bodies and media were not suited to addressing localized unique situations. To get through these times a morale that underpins communal relationships must be nourished. This morale is a willingness to be flexible together, to be creative together, to ‘find a way’ where there is need. People need to find a way — to find a way.”

This ‘finding a way to be creative together’ is not limited to the actual artistic pursuit (playing/dancing/acting together): it involves including others in your entire process: letting others into the nitty-gritty of daily grinds, disappointments, joys, frustrations, jealousies, generosities, and so forth. It’s about knowing how we can draw from each other and give back to the collective. It’s also about understanding the extent of our need for quiet, alone-time, and deep reflection.

3) Cultivating the conditions in which creativity can thrive

I’d like to hand this topic over to the great choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp. This woman is Bad-Ass personified. In her 60s (and probably even now), she’d wake up at 5:30 and go to the gym. EVERY STINKING DAY. For her, creativity was a by-product of discipline, rituals, and mental exercises. She constantly engages in searching, or ‘scratching’, as she calls it, for the things that provide nourishment for creative impulses. She speaks of training the “creative muscle” by engaging in daily structures in which creativity can flourish. Even though I feel like a big old slacker when I read her book (I do like to lie aimlessly in bed in the morning), I can recommend the book to anyone who is looking for motivation, inspiration, and a model of a creative life, spiced up by a good old-fashioned Mid-Western work ethic.

Twyla Tharp:

“When I walk into [the studio] I am alone, but I am alone with my body, ambition, ideas, passions, needs, memories, goals, prejudices, distractions, fears.

These ten items are at the heart of who I am. Whatever I am going to create will be a reflection of how these have shaped my life, and how I've learned to channel my experiences into them.

The last two -- distractions and fears -- are the dangerous ones. They're the habitual demons that invade the launch of any project. No one starts a creative endeavor without a certain amount of fear; the key is to learn how to keep free-floating fears from paralyzing you before you've begun. When I feel that sense of dread, I try to make it as specific as possible. Let me tell you my five big fears:

1. People will laugh at me.
2. Someone has done it before.
3. I have nothing to say.
4. I will upset someone I love.
5. Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind.

There are mighty demons, but they're hardly unique to me. You probably share some. If I let them, they'll shut down my impulses ('No, you can't do that') and perhaps turn off the spigots of creativity altogether. So I combat my fears with a staring-down ritual, like a boxer looking his opponent right in the eye before a bout.

1. People will laugh at me? Not the people I respect; they haven't yet, and they're not going to start now....

2. Someone has done it before? Honey, it's all been done before. Nothing's original. Not Homer or Shakespeare and certainly not you. Get over yourself.

3. I have nothing to say? An irrelevant fear. We all have something to say.

4. I will upset someone I love? A serious worry that is not easily exorcised or stared down because you never know how loved ones will respond to your creation. The best you can do is remind yourself that you're a good person with good intentions. You're trying to create unity, not discord.

5. Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind? Toughen up. Leon Battista Alberti, the 15th century architectural theorist, said, 'Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.' But better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.”

To which Henry David Thoreau replies:

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

(from Walden)

15. A Cat-Hotel, a.k.a. Creative Career Development for Artists