‘Ole!’ to you, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up!”

In a TED talk, Your Elusive Creative Genius, delivered following the global success of her memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert explored the heart of the creative spirit. At this conference dedicated to creativity in all its mind blowing, earth saving, humanity changing, justice delivering capacity, she issued a call to the TED audience to think deeply about what it means to be creative. 

She discussed the classical notion of daemons visiting people and inspiring profound moments of soul shaking clarity – the idea being that creativity is not the burden of the individual soul as asserted by Renaissance thinkers, but rather the product of something greater that moves through us. She looked to Ruth Stone, a poet who asserted she caught poems by the tail and pulled them through her fingers to write them on the page. She also mentioned musician Tom Waits who learned to make demands of his daemons, basically asking them to visit when he could do something about it, not when he was driving and did not have a pen and paper. She also talked about her struggles with her own creativity.

This talks moves me differently now than it did when I heard it first many years ago. Today, I have a different appreciation of human love and stubbornness. Today, I have a healthy respect for inspiration and creativity. When I first heard this talk, I did not understand how the sacred fit into creativity. I had studied the philosophy of creativity. I had worked as an arts evaluator trying to figure out what and how people learn during the creativity process, trying to use the master’s tools to tear down the mater’s house. Most close to my bones, I had even burned with creative fire myself as theatre person and writer my entire. Knowing all that, my appreciation for human love, stubbornness, and showing up was in its infancy. (I knew it made sense, but I had not walked the paces of stubborn, present love enough, or at least did not have the language to call it by name.)

I am someone who shows up. Imperfect, though I often am, I show up to my creative self. I embrace the notion of doing that thing I must do. I know the profound joy that is creativity, way down deep. I feel the fire of self doubt and keep going. I don’t stop. I am moved to tears by life and tell about it. I don’t stop. Though few read what I write. I don’t stop. I fall behind. I don’t stop. I lose my balance. I don’t stop. Sometimes the ideas flow and sometimes they do not. I don’t stop. That is how showing up works.

I am having a particularly hard time right now being creative. The noise of the everyday. Everything, everywhere, all at once shakes my soul. Even the energy to find words mainly ebbs right now. I am living in the inhale in need of a full breath. My stubborn present love is being tested. My ability and desire to show up is being tested. Perhaps that is what Gilbert celebrates, that in the midst of it all we find a way to create. These words are a prayer for myself and for the world. May we all create from the space of stubborn, present love. May we all keep showing up.