Creative Acts: Inspirations & Triggers?

[Hope4Now]

I am interested in talking about creative activity (making or witnessing art of any sort) inspires us, consumes us, distracts us and triggers us. It's an open-ended question. I'll share one little pieces of my story to start.
Making Art
From the time I was very young, I've been passionate about drawing and painting. I was "good enough" that my parents actually gave me lessons (first a Saturday group that was more to get me out of their hair and avoid the mess at home, but later when I was 12-13, I studied privately with an artist (I hated her, but that was what was on offer so I went every week). I took art classes all through high school, and an advanced placement portfolio class which was going well until I did a brief runaway from home and then landed in the hospital (that's a different story).

I made a lot of art for a lot of years. I wanted to do it all the time. BUT. My first shattering experience happened in preschool when I was experimenting with mixing colors (they only gave us three colors to paint with and this was extremely frustrating). The teacher yelled at me and told me I had ruined the painting I was making. She threw it away and gave me a new sheet with the instruction not to mix colors and make a mess of things. I had similar experiences with my scary kindergarten teacher. My mother (a narcissist I think) tore up several of my drawings when I was around 4 (they were of naked people and this upset her...why I was making these drawings, which I remember vividly, is a story I don't know but I suspect is going to come crashing into my consciousness at any moment). She also refused to spend money on art supplies for me, so I had to wait until Christmas when my great aunt would send a box of stuff that I had to ration through the year. My father (a narcissist definitely) in one of his drunken evenings, went into my room and gathered up my coloring books and sketch pads and used them for kindling to build a fire. When I started to scream and cry, he got angry and my mother said "Oh, you don't need those old things." They took me out of the Saturday class I loved (I don't remember why). Later, they insisted I "stick with" my studies with the professional artist even though I dreaded her. When I wanted to apply to art school for college, they would not allow it. They insisted that I could not make anything of myself as an artist so I should study something useful.

I did continue painting into my twenties. Then I stopped. I threw everything away. I have not painted or drawn for 25 years and I have made such a busy life for myself that there is no time or energy for creative work. Yet my entire sensory experience of the world is through shape and color and I am forever composing paintings in my mind. Then I destroy them. I have a 12 year old daughter who is a gifted and productive artist who also happens to be the spitting image of me. It's like being transported back to my childhood constantly. I buy supplies for her all the time and she makes very cool paintings and drawings and she knows how much I admire her work and am proud of her. As she has gotten older, she keeps asking me why I don't paint. This past fall, when this whole complex trauma disaster invaded my life out of the blue, I bought three canvasses, some decent brushes, and paints. I freeze every time I look at them. I cannot pick up the brush, or even a pencil to sketch. I feel like I've lost an essential part of myself. Yet, the vision is still there...terribly wonderful, distracting as all hell, and crazy-making because I am so blocked.

I hope people will join in to share stories and insights and comments. Maybe in another post I'll talk about my fiction and poetry writing, and my relationship with music and drama.

 

[Echo]

.I hope you find your way back to it, @Hope4Now, but it is easy to see how you might be very blocked, not only in terms of your fear about the subject matter that might shoot out of you, but also because you have been made to feel bad about it by other people destroying your work. Maybe you've internalised that behaviour, too, so it makes it very difficult to start. Perhaps they were very worried about what you apparently remembered and might reveal about things past.

I am also a very creative person, although parts of it have been strangled at birth. My whole career is based around the arts, and I need it, in many different forms, almost as much as I need water. When I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the dark stuff swirling around me, I asked my therapist, who is also an artist, how I could face it all down. She said, "Do beautiful things, look at beautiful things, go to beautiful places, read beautiful things."

One of the things I do best, however, is to write. When I write in my rape diary, as I charmingly call it, I terrify myself with what comes out. Not only does it come out perfectly formed, ready for publication (which freaks me out - who is writing it? And how is it so ready?), but it is fierce and frightening and excoriating, and it brings me to the truth in a way nothing else does. Actually, after one particular revealing episode with it, I am now too scared to write in the diary at all. I am also too scared to write a diary here, for the same reason. Maybe it is again a case of going too fast. I could write pages and pages, day after day, and maybe it would be bringing it all to the light, far too fast for me to process. Maybe it is the fierceness that bothers me more. In 'real life' I don't connect to the anger that must be in there somewhere; I never have. I don't know why. But with my writing, it is there. It is like controlled white heat, not ranting, but it has the quality of a law-making angel reading the riot act. And the energy that sears up through me when I do that kind of writing feels as if it could consume me in its flames. I don't like it at all. I suspect I shall have to get on with it at some point, because it no doubt needs expression. But I will only do so with my therapist's guidance I think, so I don't overdo it.

I am particularly drawn to writing about our experience of landscape at the moment. This is something new to me, though I am always exploring new things. Having run several book groups and fairly recently introduced people to Sebald's Austerlitz, probably my favourite book so far, I have found a great deal of comfort in the photography and writing of psychogeographers, as I have discovered they call themselves. I don't know why it is so grounding for me, but I suppose being brought back to nature, when I have become more reclusive than usual is very helpful.

In order not to become a full-time hermit, and in response to my therapist's wonderful guidance, I am trying to schedule in a weekly cultural or enjoyable thing with a variety of friends. With some it is about sharing art in some of the fantastic art galleries and museums around here; with others it is sharing books, poetry or going to hear people speak about their work. More than anything else, I am trying to set myself projects that enrich and entrance me; nothing takes me away from myself and this blasted PTSD more than becoming obsessed with a new quest (usually art historical, but not exclusively so).

 

[franciemarnie]

What terrible behavior your parents showed. What unconscionable acts by them and those horrible teachers.

Someday, when you are ready and it feels safe, perhaps you will take up the brush again and create work more magnificent than you could ever have created prior to PTSD.

I never drew or painted when I was young. Then when I was twenty, I was hospitalized. It should have been for PTSD but in 1977, there was no term "PTSD". A lot of awful stuff happened that summer. When I came home, I bought a drawing pad and pencils and drew like crazy. It was a wonderful experience and focused my crazy energy for hours at a time on a constructive thing that appealed to me aesthetically.

But that only lasted a few years. It was painstaking and not my natural talent.

I was good with words and have been a reading fool all my life. What I write is often whimsical and I don't know until I am done the deeper meaning and message my unconscious is giving me. It's almost like magic. The metaphors would be picked up by anyone with PTSD I think. I love to write.

I got into photography for a while but writing is my thing. I am completely aligned when I write and go into a wonderful parallel universe, a strange meditative state from which I emerge the better.

 

[Hope4Now]

Hi Echo, Thanks for sharing this! I think you're smart to take a break from your diary, or at least take it slowly, even if it comes out publisher-ready. If it is bringing on too much emotion, you may not be ready yet as we've talked about on other threads I think.
I love what your therapist said about looking at beautiful things and your project of a weekly event. Do you find that listening to others' read or talk about their work gets mixed up with your own feelings about your writing?

In 'real life' I don't connect to the anger that must be in there somewhere; I never have. I don't know why. But with my writing, it is there.

I, too, am a writer--mostly of non-fiction stuff in my field at this point--this to me doesn't count as writing. Like the painting and drawing though, I got stuck with the novel I was working on because it was so fierce. It is still sitting here on my computer but I'm afraid to go back to it. Yet I think about it all the time. Years ago when I was doing readings and participating in a writers' group, I read a section from it. I was deeply offended when someone pointed out, "Wow, you're angry at something!" and someone else said, "Wow, you're showing a side of yourself nobody would have guessed." That person and others were seriously shocked by what I had written in one of the scenes. I don't connect with anger at all in my real life, but I guess it's in there somewhere seeping out.

psychogeographers

This is a term I've never heard and I will investigate! Sounds very cool.

 

[fresh.start]

My story short:

When I was little, I liked music,
I liked to strum an old guitar...
But my daddy was abusive,
He gave it to the gypsy...
He said it needed fixing...
I hadn't gotten it back so far...

When I was small, I loved big words,
I put my anger into rhymes,
But mommy didn't see my world...
She threw them out with trash,
She never cared to ask.
Things owned their feet back in old times...

When I was little, I was loud
To sing, to act, to play,
I thought my parents would be proud...
Mom gave strange looks,
(Songs? Back to books!...)
My joy turned slowly into shame...


:)

 

[Echo]

That is an interesting question, @Hope4Now, as to whether my feelings about my writing get mixed up with those of the writers I hear speak. My writing is normally academic, non-fiction, and, although I do go to hear other academics speak - Marina Warner was a recent notable example - I do find that they are people who speak with great passion about their subject matter. They are the ones that appeal to me, and I like rich, emotional work, even when it is academic or non-fiction. I also saw Simon Schama talking about his history of the Jews some weeks ago. He had finally decided to write something very personal, something that touched upon his own history and ancestors, reaching back in time over the centuries. That sense of belonging, despite massive sadness and pain, meant a great deal to me, as I lose my own family, thanks to the abuse. I have also got to look beyond the immediate family to find another, wider sense of belonging. Marina Warner is playful and rebellious, and she works in an interdisciplinary manner, which doesn't sit well with many people. But to me her passionate creativity and the FUN she brings to her work are really important to me, too.

I have had to lay down several fictional books recently. Unless the subject matter is utterly different to my own experience, I have found it too triggering and raw. I never normally fail to finish a novel, but in the past year, this has happened quite often. I just have to choose more wisely or accept I can come back at a later stage, when I am more stable.

How is it for you, @Hope4Now? How does PTSD challenge your reading habits?

 

[Hope4Now]

I got into photography for a while but writing is my thing. I am completely aligned when I write and go into a wonderful parallel universe, a strange meditative state from which I emerge the better.

:)

 

[Hope4Now]

@Echo wonderful you got to see Schama--I admire his work a great deal. I will have to check out Warner--I looked at her site and she intrigues me. I hope you didn't take offense at my dismissal of my own academic writing. I read and admire many non-fiction books, though fiction is my passion. I have four academic books out and a fifth that I am desperately trying to regurgitate...it's a difficult topic and I haven't been able to write with any focus these last months, but I'm in the final editing process now. My husband simply cannot understand why I don't tell people about these published books when I'm talking with people about writing. I guess it's because I write these for my work, rather than for myself. Very few people other than those who hear me speak or know of my work have any idea that I have books out. I think it is my weird way of minimizing my successes and focusing on the things I'm stuck on.

How is it for you, @Hope4Now? How does PTSD challenge your reading habits?

I am deeply disturbed that I have not been able to finish a work of fiction since all this hit. I used to read 1-2 a week depending on how busy/tired I was. My change in reading habits is probably the most subtle but also more devastating symptoms (intellectually and spiritually) of my ptsd. It isn't that fiction triggers me...I don't think...I simply cannot concentrate on it. It is like I'm a different person now. I used to find it mind-boggling when people said that they only read non-fiction. It seemed so empty and bleak. Now I have a pile of a dozen or so new books that I look at but don't open because I don't want to ruin them by "trying" to read them. I am hoping to get back to it. Have been reading poetry, though. And obsessively and compulsively reading about trauma and dissociation and treatment. Have decided that the new book, Running on Empty, which will arrive tomorrow, will be my last. I have read enough about it that I feel like they're all saying the same thing. No quick answers, just more questions.

 

[Barconian]

Fictional books are a dream place, but not reality!!!

 

[Hope4Now]

@Barconian for me good literary fiction often captures a deep reality. A reality that most people don't perceive or engage in because it is on a perceptual and emotional and spiritual level that is invisible. In good fiction, the "story" is just the vehicle. It is the connection it makes among the author and the readers (individually and as a group that shares the linked experience of reading the story). I like non-fiction because it "tells" or "teaches" us something about each other and the human experience. Good fiction invites us into actually experiencing ourselves and one another and our humanness at a particular time and place and circumstance. And really good fiction activates our mirror neurons I think and brings us into a sort of inner attunement that connects us with the energies of others when we engage in the world. I think that certain poetry. music, visual art, and theatre can do the same if we're open to it.
Maybe I'm rambling and too esoteric?

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - yes, I have struggled greatly with concentration and have failed to finish books or even really start them due to all of that. I think there is just so much processing going on in our brains, they cannot take on any more. There was certainly also one stage I went through, and it repeats itself, when I just could not listen to other people's stuff, whether those people were real or fictional. Some plots are just too close to the bone and triggering in a variety of ways. I found my way to Twitter and from there to reading small snatches of information and writing, such as that published in blogs, for instance. That was all, and is often still all, I can take. I am familiar with this from the three years I had CFS. Then I could not read at all; I could not watch TV or listen to the radio. It was just beyond me. The thing I disliked the most about it then and again now, is my inability to work in my usual academic manner - i.e. holding an argument in my head, weaving all the evidence or elements together and getting it down 'on paper' in a coherent manner. I have to work backwards now - getting all the individual bits down and then trying to sew it together, weed out the extraneous stuff and try and make it flow. It is definitely not as good as previously, though, I hope, still good enough. And I hope the old way will return when things have settled. Good on you if you are able to keep your productivity up and keep writing books - that is a major achievement.

I agree with your post above about fiction. We can learn so much about the world, other people's experiences and cultures, develop empathy for other people and emotional intelligence from it, as well as using it as a form of healing and necessary escapism. I wonder whether books kept me sane and gave me a safety valve when all around me was terrifying and incomprehensible as a child. It is another form of reality, as is great art in all its forms. I couldn't do without it.

 

[fly away home]

This is a fascinating thread. Having a creative outlet has been my main means of communication especially prior to diagnosis. I paint and draw and have recently discovered that almost every work I have done is directly related to my traumas subconsciously.

I vividly remember in pre school laying down a purple wash ready to do a painting on top. I recall the joy of the process like it was yesterday. Then the shattering of my whole being as the teacher came up behind me and told me I was wasting the paint and promptly removed the paper from the easel.

Luckily I had a grandmother who nurtured creativity. All forms of creative expression. She and I were the odd ones out in our family. I really relate to your story @Hope4Now