Thursday - Chaos, Creativity, and a Clothesline

Lots of nice things happened at the Gathering this steamy afternoon – smoothies on the Lawn, A labyrinth walk, a wine reception. I missed them all because I was assuaging my guilt in abandoning my family by attending to last minute housework. I bought groceries, cleaned icky stuff out of the refrigerator, took out the garbage and even (gulp) washed dishes. All to ensure I left my house delivered from chaos.

CHAOS… that is what this year’s Gathering is all about. More specifically “Chaos and Creativity: where the strange crossroads lie.”

I regrettably missed most of the opening speakers this evening. (Hopefully some other folks attending this conference will pick up the slack in that area for me) Truth be told I was too focused on settling to my table, procuring wine and making eye contact with the people I recognized. I was in a state of internal chaos, not ready to exist in those moments and put on the intellectual mantel required for a discourse on Fractals, Quantum Physics and Foreseeing the future. (I hope those things get covered again! I LOVE discussions of Quantum Physics!!!)

When the evenings’ keynote speaker, Author Jennifer Armstrong took the stage, I was settled down enough to receive what she was putting out there. Maybe it was her sonic introduction, invoking Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wildside”. Perhaps it was her skill in taking the room on a journey through time and Western European culture. She weaved a compelling story of how creativity and suffering evolved together to form the “Conceit of Creative Madness”.

In summary, a litany of our most noted creative folks have suffered from varying degrees of mental illness and self destructive behavior. So much so that it has become a common belief that creativity is caused by an unbalanced state of mind.

Jennifer offers a different paradigm - that perhaps creativity is the “self medication” an unbalanced mind uses to find order. Creativity is not produced by internal chaos. Its seeds are present with or without Artistic Melancholia. But those who suffer heavily from some distress or another rely upon the transcendence of creative expression to alleviate the turmoil within..

More simply, Jennifer offers hope to all the artists out there who have not had terrible childhoods. You don’t need pain and suffering to be creative. Just being is enough.

In fact, creativity and art can be found even in the most mundane of things, like housework (the thing I just escaped from!!) Two poems she uses to deftly illustrate this point:
Laundry
Love Calls Us to the Things of this World

In her conclusion she reminded us – “We walk on the wild side and make the world”.