Elizabeth Gilbert on the concept of genius & creativity

This video has proved to be very popular amongst my fellow students on the M.min course. I’ve deliberately not read through their posts yet, so as not to influence my initial reactions. Gilbert delivers a heart felt, and genuinely warming speech on the pressure of genius, and the pressure of simple creativity.

As a guitarist primarily influenced by blues and rock artists, as well as being a worship musician, I’ve always been attracted to the “tortured artistic soul”. The lone guitarist standing at the Crossroads, doing a deal he may regret. Memories of Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Clapton, Hendrix, Lennon; all my heroes had lives filled with tragedy, self destruction and a good measure of insanity. This is the music I’m attracted to, raw, intense, soulful.
Gilbert, in this video sums up what every creative artist would love to say, but instead, usually just gets bitter or empties another bottle down their neck. Oh that we would be honored for, “Just showing up” as Gilbert suggests. In the church our job is doubly hard because we perceive, sometimes rightly, often wrongly, that we aren’t “allowed”  or expected to express frustrations or fears, especially fears. Quite rightly we need to have integrity, self control and seek righteousness. The Keith Richards school of chemical intake and sexual prowess is not a good model for worship leaders (or really anybody). But perhaps he (Richards) has kept creating so prolifically for 40 years because of his authenticity and that he seems to have laid aside the pressure to be anything other than who he his. What really struck home for me with this video was the sense of release and permission that Gilbert gives creative artists, by just telling it how it is. Often the worst enemy of the artist is the artist themselves, constantly beating ourselves up and setting impossible goals. Although she may attribute it to “fairies”, where genius is concerned, I am reminded of the parable of the Talents, and of a quote from NT Wright in “Surprised by Hope”,

All the skills and talents which we have put to God’s service in this present life….will be enhanced and ennobled and given back to us to be exercised to his glory.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/453