APPROACHING THE PANDEMIC WITH CREATOR CONSCIOUSNESS
“Covid ICU” Mixed media assemblage by Sara Saltee. March, 2020.
Well, shit.
There’s no way around it, guys, we are FAR from being out of the awfulness of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the scourge of Delta being followed inevitably by Lamda and who the hell knows what other Greek letters to come, we creators are clearly going to need to continue whatever coping strategies we’ve adapted, and perhaps add some new ones, too.
As we all dig deep and wide for ways to think about what we’re going through, I wanted to offer this excerpt from my recent interview with Dr. Susan Carter. In this segment, we’re talking about how people who operate within an ethos of creativity are equipped differently - and I think better - to cope with big, disruptive challenges like the pandemic.
EXCERPT FROM “RETHINKING CREATIVITY FOR A PARTNERSHIP WORLD”
(The full interview can be found HERE.)
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Susan Carter:
So, what exactly are the features of the ethos of creativity?
Sara Saltee:
I’ve been fascinated by that question for a while now. I do think that there is a distinct set of values, beliefs, mindsets and practices that are embedded in the creating process and shared by seasoned creators of all kinds.
People who regularly engage in practices of creating share ways of thinking, ways of being, and ways of relating to the world that extend far beyond any discrete, visible “acts of creation.” Fundamentally, creators share the understanding that creating is not a way of producing fancy things (or a fancy way of producing things), creating is a way of being-in-relationship.
Creators understand that the quality of their relationships determines the quality of their results. And I don’t mean just relationships with people, though those are important. Creators hold a vision of a desired result (or even just an idea of a direction for exploration) loosely in the background, while they focus their attention on deep listening to their tools, instruments, and materials, as well as their environment, their co-creators, and their inner states of being. They focus on being in conversation with what is wanting to emerge, which means they practice thriving in dynamic fields of activity defined by ambiguity, risk, tension, vulnerability, and surprise.
And because creators know that tangible “results” are only the after-effects of states of being and qualities of relationships, the characteristic aspirations that creators share are aspirations to bring the world to life by weaving, evolving, repairing, and strengthening the webs of relationships that bond us to ourselves, to each other and to all beings. This is why, in my work, I offer a definition of creativity as the “caring and curious imagination that brings the world to life.”
When I need to remind myself or my students of this fully subjective way of being in the world, I often turn to this beautiful passage from Ursula Le Guin in which she describes how things appear from the creator’s perspective:
Relationship among all things appears to be complex and reciprocal — always at least two-way, back-and-forth. It seems that nothing is single in this universe, and nothing goes one way.
In this view, we humans appear as particularly lively, intense, aware nodes of relation in an infinite network of connections, simple or complicated, direct or hidden, strong or delicate, temporary or very long-lasting. A web of connections, infinite but locally fragile, with and among everything — all beings — including what we generally class as things, objects. (Le Guin, 2015, Foreword pp. i-ii)
Susan Carter:
So, if the ethos of creativity is tied to this relational, complex, interconnected perspective, what different ways of acting or being does that perspective lead to? What are some commonalities in the habits or behaviors of people who are functioning as creators instead of as producers?
Sara Saltee:
I think the fundamental difference is that while the “productive self” is focused on imposing its will upon the world, the “creative self” sees itself as acting within the world. In place of the linear, plan/execute modality of the productivity ethos, the creativity ethos values sensitivity and response-ability to ongoing shifts in the context within which creating is happening.
For example, if we look at what happened to people in this pandemic — the productivity ethos says, “make whatever technical adjustments you need to make as fast as possible to make sure that you still reach your goals. The conditions may have changed, but the plan is the plan and we go on executing.” Since the central aspiration of the productivity ethos is to produce as much as possible as quickly as possible, complex and changing conditions lead to a lot of stress and a lot of perceived failure. No amount of forced positivity or self-discipline (which we might also call self-domination) or incremental process tweaks are going to make this kind of time bearable for people who understand their worth in terms of their measurable outputs. And I think we’ve seen a lot of people who, without the props of productivity to hold them up, resort to a sort of nothingness, just waiting and numbing out until things “get back to normal.”
But people who brought a creativity ethos to the experience were more likely to say, “whoa, the whole context of living has shifted in ways that impact my work, but also go far beyond my work. I’m going to need to be really attuned to what this means for me, for my children, for my community, for my friends and colleagues, for my team. I’m going to be as flexible and inventive as possible as I sense what is most needed in this moment. I’m going to be willing to set aside my task lists in order to focus on the work of care and connection that is never done, never measured, and never finally accomplished. I’m going to focus on keeping life worth living, staying present and available, staying playful, staying hopeful, staying engaged, and staying curious about how this is all going to go.”
By the way, I think it is important to add that the ethos of creativity doesn’t exclude concerns about accomplishing results—far from it. Creators are extraordinarily eager to make meaningful contributions and impact the world in positive ways. It’s just that creators situate those concerns within a much broader perspective that sees ALL of the business of living—from work to parenting and care giving to activism to community-building to artmaking—as part of one dynamic, multi-threaded ecosystem of life. From this perspective it gets really clear that for the whole ecosystem of one’s life to thrive, over time the relative weight of those different threads is going to change, and the threads themselves are going to get woven and interwoven in a thousand different patterns. When the world around us changes in disruptive, shocking ways, creators focus on listening for what kind of reweaving is going to be needed to support the continued aliveness of ourselves, our families, our communities, our democracy, our planet. Operating in this broader perspective requires very different kinds of inner work from the work that the productivity ethos teaches us to do.”
Excerpted from “Reimagining Creativity for a Partnership World.
Carter, S., & Saltee, S. (2021). Reimagining Creativity for a Partnership World. Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, 8(1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.24926/ijps.v8i1.3883
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