A masterpiece by Jackson Pollock
Sitting between creativity and failure….
We all sit in this place throughout our lives. Unfortunately, many of us fail to recognize the inherent creativity to living itself. Instead, we associate it with artists or designers or anyone other than ourselves. We fail to see creativity as existing on a continuum that includes us all. This is a horrible blow to our sense of innocence and wonder, one that I would like to see you heal.
Did you know that Jackson Pollock painted at least one of his masterpieces over 400 times? (I read this on a display panel about the painting I was staring at in a museum in London.) My jaw dropped as I gazed upon these seemingly random patterns of drops, lumps, and sprays of oil paints on the massive canvas. Over 400 times. That guy was intense.
I recently decided to start again on the book I am writing. I was about one-third finished and realized I wasn’t writing the book I wanted. The voice was too philosophical and essayish. I was trying to convince the reader of something, rather than whispering in his or her ear. My son Paul has been watching me struggle all summer with this writing. When I first told him I was starting again, there was a look of concern on his face. “Are you serious?” he asked with enlarged eyes, “What about all those pages?” Once he realized I was not only okay but smiling, he added with a hopeful look, “Well, you have been extra crabby these last few weeks. Maybe this will help.” Enough said. If there was any doubt that the restart was a good idea, this ended it. It’s hard to write well from a crabby place.
There is a big difference between starting again and starting over. I am not starting over. All the work I have already done informs what comes now. I know the path to the book even better. In fact, I will cover much of the same ground, only differently. It reminds me of a yoga practice. A yogi might do a particular pose 10,000 times throughout a lifetime. Each new time he or she is not starting over…that’s impossible…what has come before is part of what comes after. This is the miracle and why repetition is such a powerful teacher in yoga. So too with creativity. The creativity emerges from the repetition of practice, not vice-versa.
So I wonder about each of the 400+ times Pollock started his painting again. What did he see, what did he feel, how did he know to start again on a new canvass? Did he see each discarded canvass as a failure? Or was he wise enough to realize his failure as essential to his development? I am sure that he too had to somewhere between creativity and failure. The difference between him and us is that he was not afraid to start again over 400 times.
The repetition of our ordinary lives is the precondition of creativity, not the death of it. Of course, this presupposes that your life is a work of art. I hope you know that it is.