Patience is a virtue, in someone else’s world. Not mine. There are things I do not have patience for; standing in line, whiny people, and poor customer service. Yet, I can have loads of patience for other things. Wait, it will come to me.
There was no waiting to get into Talulah Jones. What a beautiful store!
Oh I know! I like to talk about why people do what they do. I can make time for this. I had a discussion yesterday with Amy from Talulah Jones here in Denver. We were speaking of patience, pain and the creative process. For a final twist, we were tying these facets back to our relationships with our parents. Stay with me here.
Amy asserts that we all have holes in our lives. Areas where we feel we are missing something. Specific to this conversation we talked about the relationships we wish we had with our parents and how, even as adults we still yearn for acceptance from our parents. This can inhibit the creative process when as artists, we create something beautiful, yet in our heads we are sure that our parents would not approve. This leads to frustration and creative blockage.
Wonders if Freud would agree with Amy.
Although we spoke specifically about mother/daughter relationships, I also have seen artist/peer group acceptance issues stifle the creative exploration of others. Has anyone else see examples of this? How have you seen people deal with it?
Continuing on the conversation with Amy, she felt that the pain and frustration felt by an artist could actually stimulate creativity if the individual just opened up, faced the issues at hand and then used their creativity to soothe their pain. It doesn’t sound so farfetched really, in an “I’m okay, you’re okay” kind of way.
This was my contemplation for Independence Day, the thought that we must gain our autonomy from our parents way of seeing things if we are to be truly creative. I also wonder why I don’t feel this particular frustration over my artistic projects. Am I somehow free of this parental/child need to be accepted, or am I too shallow to see it? I could explore this with my local psychoanalyst, but I suspect the wait to get in might frustrate me more than the topic at hand.
I think I will go make something.
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