(no subject)

[was_tansu_now_badhedgehog]

All creativity is self-indulgent bullcrap.

Comments

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

I prefer to think of it as masturbation. Natural and healthy, but there's generally no need to share it with anyone else.

[tansu.livejournal.com]

In that case there shall be no music, no books, no poetry, apart from that which the consumer has furtively created for herself.

All creativity is self-indulgent bullcrap. Yours or mine no more or less than anybody else's. Some creative work has various merits.

I can appreciate something in your view - that one should not deal with the fact that all creativity is self-indulgent bullcrap by forbearing all creative activity.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Yes, and?

[tansu.livejournal.com]

That is where I need to be, I think.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Are you feeling self-indulgent and fancying a roll in bullpoo, or are you thinking FLEE FLEE?

[tansu.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling like clarifying to myself some disordered thinking about creativity. The winner of the Costa Book Of The Year (formerly the Whitbread) prize was announced today. It got me thinking about how the author had set about writing her book, what gave her the right to write about her chosen subject matter (never mind how a subject matter was chosen or whatever the verb is that describes the thing that isn't like a conscious choice but isn't an accident) and so on. And then I thought that all creativity is self-indulgent by definition (and so are all acts of publishing created works), and although it was blatently obvious and trivial, it seemed important and worth reflecting on. A good way to deal with disordered thinking is to face the obvious and trivial. Baby steps, I know, but there it is.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to me that the price web site says it's an award for "the most enjoyable" book of the year. That almost makes it sound as if they're not automatically going to award The Book All the Critics Don't Understand So It Must Be Deep Fart Fart Fart.

I was going to post a much longer response than this, but then it seemed obvious and trivial. HEE!

[loree-borealis.livejournal.com]

Self-indulgent? Probably. Bullcrap? Only at the Tate. (Kidding. I saw a particularly self-indulgent piece of bullcrap there once. It did stick with me, obviously, so I guess that's something.)

I think that some people are called to create by what they believe is a higher power, or in pursuit of something nobler, like beauty or awareness or.... I'm not saying that they're right, but that creativity can have other motivations than self-indulgence.

edit: (not that I would know about it)

[troubleagain.livejournal.com]

Right! It does feel good to indulge sometimes, though.

[cropherb.livejournal.com]

I've thought for some time that the whole notion of 'creativity' in the arts is really relatively recent, and basically totally vague and confused in the minds of people who rely on it to explain things like talent and inspiration. It seems to me that only God (or the universe, or what have you) gets to really create stuff. The most that humans ever get to do is sort of shuffle and rearrange things a bit. Now, of course, some of that rearranging can be done more or less imaginatively, and with more or less of substance, style, ingenuity, originality, etc. How one arrives at meaningful expression of ideas or feelings or experiences, and avoids the banal or hackneyed or merely incoherent is admittedly more than a little mysterious. But I think people tend to grab ahold of 'creativity' as kind of the flogiston of genius or of self-expression, not aware that it both fails to really explain anything, and serves to justify all manner of truly, fatally self-indulgent flailings carried on its name. Think of all the maundering performance art, interminable guitar feedback solos, wankish noodly jamming, and messy painting executed so the practitioners could "get in touch with" their "creativity".

I don't buy it. I think the real artists just get to work.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

Hm. Eh. Hm.

It's true that you have to find the contents of your own head sufficiently awesome and important to be worth spewing out in some form or other. (The temptation is to describe as self-indulgent anything that we don't find as awesome as the artist apparently does. But then we're practically into but-is-it-art territory, and no one wants that.) So yeah, okay, all creative output is self-indulgent. Then again, finding your inner self awesome is a pretty useful life skill, in moderation.

A lot of it is undoubtedly total wank. I mean, I doodle all the time. All. The. Time. Without even realising I'm doing it. But I don't show anyone, because it turns out that what comes out of my head when I'm not thinking is a) kitties and b) big titted women. If that's not wank, I don't know what is.

Still, sometimes it turns out awesome. Personally, I think it's worth trudging through a whole heap of mediocrity and bullcrap, and even being a mediocre bullcrap merchant oneself, if it means that one time in a thousand something really, really good gets made. And the best thing is, we can't even agree on what's really really good. So my mediocre novel is someone else's all time favourite. They're wankers, of course, but there you go.