Stop yelling at your creativity
Not all ideas need the world's applause
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I stopped playing guitar in my mid-20s.
I had picked it up as a teenager, inspired by my rock God heroes Pete Townshend of The Who, Paul Weller of The Jam and Bruce Springsteen. Like many kids in the 80s who knew three chords, I found myself in a band with three other girls and one guy – our lead guitar player. We had some minor success – playing in Athens, Georgia, just after REM and the B-52s had made it a hotspot for up-and-coming bands.
Then, as it goes with so many bands, we broke up. I tried to find others to play with but had no luck. I quietly moved my guitar into the closet and shut the door on my dream of rock-and-roll stardom.
In my mid-30s, I was sitting with my therapist and somehow, the subject of music came up. I told her about how much I had loved playing guitar and being in a band. I told her that I had put my guitar aside since it wasn't going to lead anywhere productive – by which I meant, it wasn't going to bring me fame and fortune.
She paused, as therapists do, then asked the most profound question I had ever heard up to that point: "Could you just play guitar because, y'know, you enjoy it?"
My head exploded. That thought, honestly, had never occurred to me. Play the instrument just because the act brought me joy? Even if nobody heard me? Even if no one played with me? Even if I never stepped on another stage? Even if I never said, "Hello, Cleveland!" to a sold-out auditorium audience waiting in anticipation to see me?
It stopped me cold.
I would not seriously pursue the guitar again until my early-40s, when I had a practical reason to pick it back up. By then, I was serving as an associate pastor, and I wanted to add songs to my sermons. I asked a guitar-playing friend to help me with the first sermon I did that featured a song, but then coordinating with her for later sermons became cumbersome. Time to dig my friend … if not my dream … back out of the back of the closet.
Spoiler alert: I am still not a famous, rich, rock star. I am far from ever being Taylor Swift, let alone Townshend, my true rock idol. And that's okay.
It wasn't okay … for a very long time. That old "on the cover of the Rolling Stone" dream never quite lost its grip on my subconscious. I still wanted my guitar to take me that far, but I've recently begun to realize that not all creative manifestations in this world WANT to achieve Taylor Swift status. Some of them want to live in obscurity. Some of them may, indeed, only be meant for an audience of one – whether it's an unpublished novel, the never-hung-in-a-gallery piece of art, the publicly unsung song or musical, or the unacted play. Why do we demand that all our creativity be our ticket to fame and fortune?
As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic: "To yell at your creativity, saying, 'You must earn money for me!' is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you're talking about, and all you're doing is scaring it away, because you're making really loud noises, and your face looks weird when you do that."
Gilbert says she kept her day job for the express reason of becoming her "own patron" instead of waiting on the world to notice her talent and pay her handsomely for it. Sure, the world did reward her handsomely at some point, but if we're all rich and famous, who would be left to be our audience? We're not all the stars of the play in this life. Some of us are forever audience members – and that's okay because we, too, star in our own little productions. The world's accolades do not make us rock stars. We do. We become our own patrons.
"Ah, that's a cop out," the ego says. "If you don't achieve the world's definition of success, then redefine it to the point that makes you comfortable in your obscurity."
Ok, sure, that's one way to look at it … and believe me, that's how I perceived it for a long time. Now, though, I see it differently.
Gilbert confirmed for me something I long suspected was true – ideas exist independently – as "a disembodied, energetic life form," she writes. They are, however, capable of interacting with us. In fact, they need us to make them manifest in the world. They are always looking for humans to partner with, and we have a choice in whether or not we will be available to them.
As I have said, though, just because ideas need us to help them manifest into the world – we must be careful about what we demand from them. Perhaps not all ideas aspire to Taylor Swift or Oprah status in the world. Perhaps that is never their intention and to try to force them onto a stage they do not wish to inhabit damages the idea – twists it in ways it never intended to go.
What if some ideas are meant to play to a small audience – even if it's an audience of one? I make up funny ditties about my pets all the time, and they'll never be on the Billboard charts. It's just a playful idea that wanted to come and spark a moment of joy for me. Perhaps you make up a sweet lullaby that you sing only to your baby, who grows up to sing it to their child, who grows up to sing it to theirs, into the next hundred generations or so. Maybe that idea simply wanted to join your family – not the whole world.
Can we even entertain this idea? This idea that not everything must attain worldly fame, fortune, and accolades? Will our ego even allow this kind of freedom? We certainly have a say in that. We can tell the ego to get bent and send it on its way and return to the joyful intimacy that our ideas bring to us.
This is where I am now – telling my ego to shut up – because I am making myself available to the ideas that want to partner with me to manifest. I will play my guitar. I will write songs. I will write essays like this one. I will preach sermons to anyone who hires me. I will do workshops on my ideas. I will partner with these ideas and make them manifest even if they have an audience of one or one-hundred million.
I think this is the way to honor all ideas, to give them the purity they seek in their manifestation. If they want to be bigger in the world, they will find a way to manifest that, too. That's not your job. As Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: "The ideal, Arjuna, is to be intensely active and at the same time have no selfish motives, no thoughts of personal gain or loss. Duty uncontaminated by desire leads to inner peacefulness and increased effectiveness. This is the secret art of living a life of real achievement!"
"Tell that to Taylor Swift," my ego growls. Well, yes, Swift has the ambition and talent to be on that stage – she also has the looks the world desires. I can have all the ambition and talent in the world, but nobody wants to see me prance in a bedazzled onesie singing about my breakups. There is one Taylor Swift, and that's enough. Maybe what she's doing brings her inner peacefulness and joy – though the content of her songs may suggest otherwise.
Those who have attained Swiftian success often discover it's not where they find peacefulness and joy. Actor Jim Carrey confirmed this when he said, "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer." Carrey knows what our ego doesn't – fame and fortune tends to pervert our ideas, twist them into something unrecognizable that longer brings us peacefulness and joy.
Just like Carrey, I have come to realize that I only perform for an audience of one – that Divinity that lives within us all. How, when, and if, an idea grows beyond that audience, that's wonderful. Hopefully, it will bless the whole world. If it's only ever sung or performed within the walls of my home, that's wonderful too. It has fulfilled its mission to be made manifest.
We achieve true greatness in this world, Krishna tells Arjuna, when we first unite our "heart with God and only then pursuing worldly things. Proceed in this order, not in the reverse order, and then your actions will be linked to the very purpose of life – which is again, union with the divine."
Or, as Gilbert says, "Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest will take care of itself."
Music for the Journey:
"Applause" – Lady Gaga
"I live for the applause, applause, applause"
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About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution, or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.
Well said. I think you're on the right track