GC Myers- The Angst
Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.
I don’t like starting posts with quotes where I am unsure of the attribution, but I like this one regardless of who spoke it first. It is most attributed to either the poet W.H. Auden or legendary animator Chuck Jones. Quite a gap there as far as gravitas is concerned. That makes me believe it was probably from Chuck Jones. Those who liked the sentiment most likely wanted it to be from someone with a little more intellectual weight and Auden did write a Pulitzer Prize winning poem, The Age of Anxiety.
During a quick search I couldn’t find anything that corroborated the Auden or Jones connections. I’ll leave it up to you. My money is on Chuck.
Let’s get back to the quote: Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.
I can only speak for my experience, of course, but I tend to believe that my better work has sometimes emerged from periods of anxiety, times which have often been deep and dark for me. Maybe it is because my mind become sort of hyperactive in those time. It’s bouncing around like a mouse trying to find a way out a box, racing around to examine every possible point of exit even when one doesn’t seem evident.
It’s uncomfortable, to say the least. Actually, excruciating is a better choice of words. But sometimes during these periods where the mind is freewheeling, this mouse finds a way out of the box. Finds something that wasn’t evident to me until I was forced to see it.
Can’t explain it fully and maybe this is all in my mind. Though I think much of the work produced as a result of these times is among my best, there is no objective proof that others see it the same way. As much as I would like others to see what I see in it, it’s okay with me that they don’t.
I know that not all art reveals itself immediately. Time will tell.
There is also a contradictory position to anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity and I am experiencing it at the moment. Sometimes the anxiety is more than the mouse can handle. The racing and searching suddenly stops. The mouse stops it racing and tries to find safety by pressing as deeply into a corner as possible.
I feel a little like the mouse today, frozen in its anxiety.
It is, of course, the anxiety of current events and an election in a couple of weeks that could alter our collective future in in two very different ways. You might say that I shouldn’t be othered by this. There are some out there, those indifferent few, that aren’t affected.
That’s not in my makeup, however. I am forever the mouse in the box. That is not necessarily a bad thing as sometimes good work is produced from it. And maybe eventually that will be the case from this particular time in the box.
But for the moment, I am pressed tightly into a corner of my box, frozen in place as I count down the days.
While we’re in this corner, let’s listen to a song while we wait. It’s a longtime favorite from The Kinks. It seems appropriate for this post. This is 20th Century Man.
Redtree Times 