Reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami and I keep coming back to one passage:

"When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place."

You might say Murakami means simply that creativity brings out the worst in the creator. But do creative people really have to sacrifice the best of themselves for their art, or is this just a myth that we've subscribed to over the years? Hell, Byron was sexy and rebellious and so were the bad boys and girls of the Lost Generation and so are hip-hop stars; hubris is king and a prerequisite trait needed before any Timberland boot steps on stage in front of a DJ.

But maybe it's the process of creating art makes you an asshole, and you have to go into it knowing this. Becasue you're going to, inevitably, hit that wall of doubt. Second-guess yourself, which of course leaves the finished product born of toil and tears and maybe several shots of tequila.

And yes, you the artist will explore twisted inpiration, traumas great and small that have latched themselves onto you and made you want to create something to better understand them in the first place. Your world, a collection of environmental stimuli processed internally and reacted to externally? (Let's be real, more like processed and re-processed and then more re-processing until we arrive at some servicable explanation. For now.)

And then if you are brave, you show the world your world. Hopefully the outside world somehow hasn't moved on, changed, and of course you'll now have to catch up. No. Maybe, just maybe, the art you've created will hold some truth to last ages. Like The Great Gatsby or Guernica. But of course Fitzgerald and Picasso sacrficed themselves. Went to the front lines and having come back from their war left something of themselves across that solitary sea, lying dead on a beach of remembrance, never to return.

Oh, did I misenterpret Murakami's quote? It might be that he is simply talking about the immersion in one's work, the concentration, that robs you of experience. Even if you are disciplined enought to write eight hours a day and still make time for friends and family, are you really there? Or are you just present? Let's keep with the Lost Generation and talk about their poter child, Hemingway, and how he sabotaged relationships in that hyper-competitive literary world back in 1920s Paris. Perhaps just protecting his writing from being back-shelved in favor of those avant garde poets and writers.

I suppose there are many toxins.

Startup Creative

Creative Toxins