Spells for Creative Courage

Creativity is evolutionary and empowering.

And a lot of the time, it’s really fucking scary.

It comes with all kinds of social baggage,

about worthiness and individuality, and

the impossible demands of uniqueness.

This spellbook will help you find a way out of your own head,

so you can add your voice to the glorious chorus of human creativity.

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Mentioned:

Join Crucible, a supportive container to help you find the courage to be creative! https://timewitchery.com/crucible

Martha Graham on creativity and the life of an artist: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/02/martha-graham-creativity-divine-dissatisfaction/

The Antiracist Enneagram Podcast with Jessica Denise Dickson

Make Magic:

Remember, my love that your creative expression isn’t about you.

It’s not about whether you’re worthy, or whether you get something out of it.

It’s about being part of a co-creative, collaborative collective,

that is SO MUCH bigger and more powerful than any one of us.

Transcript: Spells for Creative Courage

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. So today's episode offers you spells—plural—for honoring creativity. Let's see if the title actually ends up [laugh] being spells for honoring co-creativity, because I really, truly believe that all creations, all of the things that we make, that creativity itself is always a collaborative process. Like, we don't do any of it alone.

We are always inspired by or responding to or rejecting [laugh] one another's creative contributions, yeah, always. And for me, that is so comforting [laugh] to know that when I am creating something—and I could be creating a recipe, creating an offer, creating a knitting pattern, creating a spell for you—that I'm not really doing it all by myself, yeah? 

I'm assembling elements of experience. I'm responding to other people's ideas. Like, we're in a collective, and creativity is something that we're all doing. It's something that we're all using.

And creativity is, I think, so important because it is evolutionary, right? As we create, we are taking what we have had, and we are evolving it. We're moving into what's next, into a new expression of it, or a different take on it, something new. Yeah? 

So I think before I move on to the spells, there is one kind of aspect of this that I am beginning to understand even more deeply, and that is the difference between individualism and individuality—individualism and individuality. And I want to credit a podcaster, Jessica Dickson. She has a fabulous podcast that is called the Anti-Racist Enneagram Podcast. And Jessica makes this distinction that I found so helpful that I want to kind of—I will [laugh] kind of create my own explanation of it for you. 

So Jessica talks about the difference between individualism and individuation, right? And she says individualism, that is the every man—and, of course, we do mean man—every man for himself, that is the pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that is the kind of the cultural capitalist, white-dominant, patriarchal exaltation of the individual and the individual's achievement that denies that actually every achievement is in some way collective, right? 

So individualism is that cultural concept that tries to give some individuals all the credit, and other individuals all the blame. So fuck that, right? We are not here for individualism. We know that is bullshit. 

Individuation, Jessica explained, and every—like, [laugh] I was driving to Pilates, listening to this, and I was just on fire with how clear it was. Individuation, that is, honoring that there is so much diversity among individuals. Right? So, no, we are not all the same. The collective is made of very different individuals. 

Now, these individuals are all collectively forged, right? We are influenced by our cultures. We are influenced by our parents. We are influenced by our education. We are influenced by what we read, by what we listen to, by what we do, by what we see together, right?

So individuals are inherently collective, right? No person can exist on their own here. We are together. We are a collective, and/but within that collective, there are so many different unique individuals. Yeah? So isn't that a really helpful distinction? Thank you, Jessica, for that. 

That feels to me worth saying because I think that sometimes when we talk about creative expression, when we talk about being creative, an anxiety that comes up is, well, is what I create worthwhile? Is it actually creative? Is it actually different enough from other expressions out there that it's worth doing, right? 

And you could be a novelist. You could be a cook. You could be a marketing coach. Like [laugh], there's so many different ways of being creative in this life. So I think because of the exaltation and the myth of individualism, I think we can often think, "Oh, my thing, the thing that I'm making, it must be completely unique. It must stand alone. It must, like, differ in every way. Like, I've got to say something completely different. I've got to pull something out of the blue, and into the world that is completely my own." 

And that's a lot of pressure, and I think it is—[laugh] it's just—it's unreasonable pressure because the reality, of course, is that even if you write a whole new kind of novel, for example, you are writing it in a novelistic tradition [laugh], right? There are many other people also writing novels, and so of course you are responding to those. 

If you pull a theme or an idea through your marketing, of course, you are responding to the other themes and the other ideas that are out there. So, again, I say this because I think that when we think about creativity and about being creative, very often we can get hung up on worrying whether our thing is different enough to be worthy of this world. 

Really, what creativity is, in my estimation, it's a big conversation. What we're contributing is coming from our individuated, our individuality. Like, my perspective is different. The words I choose are different. The approach I take is my own. It's informed by me. And, at the same time, I'm joining a larger collective conversation about recipes or knitting patterns or whatever it is that I'm helping to bring into the world.

So [laugh], speaking of co-creativity, this set of spells is actually an extended quotation. It is my favorite quotation of all time, to date. I absolutely love this set of things that Martha Graham, who was a choreographer in the United States through the 20th century, a groundbreaking, innovative choreographer.

Supposedly, she said this set of sentences to Agnes de Mille, who was also a choreographer and a dancer. So, already, I just like [laugh]—I love that the story of this quotation, is it self-collaborative? This is what Agnes de Mille says that Martha Graham said to her as they were sitting in a soda shop, talking about how Agnes had felt like her work for many years was ignored or undervalued.

So here she was making creative expressions, and she wasn't being recognized. And then, all of a sudden, she did choreography for a version of the musical Oklahoma, and she gets all this amazing press. And she's kind of saying to Martha Graham, like, "What the hell? I've been creating all this time, and I don't even think this Oklahoma choreography is that good, but that is what people are loving. Like, what is even going on here?"

There's kind of this moment where Agnes is questioning the worthiness of her creative expression. So there are many spells in this quotation, and I'm going to go through them one by one. I hope you love this as much as I do. 

So Agnes says, "I confess that I had a burning desire to be excellent but no faith that I could be." She's like, "Oh, whenever I make something, it never feels good enough, individual enough. It doesn't feel mine." That's where she was coming from. 

And then she says, "Martha said to me very quietly, 'There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.'"

And so here it is. Creativity is both a collaborative and individualizing pursuit, right? There is this force, this genius. It's in the ethers. This vitality, this life force, this idea, this inspiration, that is all of ours, and/but when it's translated through you, you of whom there is only one of in all of time, it comes through with a unique expression.

So is it yours? Yes. Is it also not yours? Yes. You see? I fucking love that, because that takes the pressure off. No, you are not generating all of this out of thin air. You are opening up to the spirit, the zeitgeist, the bigger energy. 

So there's only one of you in all of time, and this expression is unique. And then she says, "And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and it will be lost. The world will not have it." 

And that's why it is essential that we, each of us, all of us respond to our creative impulse. Evolution comes through our creative response. And when we don't respond creatively, then our contribution doesn't happen. It's like a piece of the puzzle goes missing. I find that very compelling. 

OK, next one. "It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open." That is, worrying about the product, worrying about the worthiness of it, worrying about how other people will respond, worrying whether it's as good as that person's thing or whether it's going to stand out in the marketplace, Martha Graham is like, fuck all that. 

None of that is your business. Your business is to keep the channel open. Your business is to respond to that vitality, energy, quickening. Your energy is to allow that translation that comes through you. 

She writes, "You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open." You need to exist continuously responsive, creatively responsive to the world around you. Basically, you have to, like, listen to your ideas, and bring them into the world. That's what is our business. That's what we're here to do.

I love this thing, "You don't even have to believe in yourself or your work." It's like it's not about you. And, my love, this is something I've really been wanting to step into myself. My creative expression is not about me. It's not about whether or not I'm worthy. It's not about whether or not I get something out of this.

My creative expression is bigger than me. This is about me being part of a co-creative, collaborative collective, yeah? OK. So Agnes reports, saying back to Martha, "But when I see my work, I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied." Yeah?

This kind of like, oh, it doesn't come out into the world the way it was in my head, does that speak to you all? I have that. Oh, I have a kid who has that. It's like, well, in my head, it looked this way, but I can't quite get it to manifest in the world the way it looks in my head. Right? It's not as perfect. It's not as ideal. 

So, to this, I am not pleased or satisfied, Martha says, "No artist is pleased." [laugh] Then Agnes is like, "But then there's no satisfaction?" And here's what happens next. "No satisfaction whatever at any time?" she cried out passionately. "No, not pleased and not satisfied. That's not what this is about."

She says, "There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes us more alive than the others." Martha opens up here what it is that we're doing when we are being creative. It's not about achieving a certain kind of result. It is about participating in evolution and in life. 

It is about being responsive to and generative of vitality, aliveness. That is what it's for. So when we are creating something—a recipe, an offer, a job description, a new solution or approach to an old problem—if we can open up to believing that what we're doing is rolling things forward, we are helping with the unfurling of what's next, rather than achieving some kind of very specific solution, then we stay respectful of the co-creative nature of all of this, right?

It's like we know there are artists who don't ever get recognized for their contribution until they're not even here anymore. I learned, actually, you know the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, the classic one with all of the really iconic images? The woman who created that art, Pamela Colman Smith, she was a British artist, she died impoverished, unrecognized. 

Now her art is so iconic [laugh] and it is so influential in tarot, right? Like [laugh], if you're making a deck, you are in some way responding to the Rider-Waite Deck, almost definitely. Even if you are rejecting it, even if you are not referencing it, you're referencing it by not referencing it, right?

It's just made a huge contribution in this world, and yet she didn't get any specific result from it for herself. She made an enormous contribution to the collective, and the results of that are still unfolding. Yeah? 

So when we are honoring our co-creativity, and our own part in our co-creativity, when we're trusting in it, I think it is so important to let go of any hold on a specific desired result, because the results too are co-created, right? We can do this thing where it's like, OK, I'm going to put an offer as an entrepreneur. I'm going to put an offer into the world, and if people don't buy it, then it must be a bad offer. And if it's a bad offer, then I must be bad, right? There's something wrong with me because it's mine. 

And I'll just say, like, gosh, there are just so many more variables than that, and the whole thing is co-created. No, it's not about you; it's about the moment. Now, does this mean that your efforts have no effect in the world? No, that's not what this means. But it means that we are all doing this together, and so if you put an offer out into the world, who even knows what's happening in co-creation? 

Who knows how many people's interest you attracted? And they're not ready in this moment to work with you, but they saw something in your work that is making them pay attention, and a year and a half from now, they're going to buy something else from you because in the co-creation, that's the right moment in the timeline. That could very well be the case, right? 

There are novelists who put books out into the world, and then like their fourth one is a bestseller, and then the back catalog, all of a sudden, becomes very popular because, all of a sudden, they're known. Now, it's not that the second book or the third book wasn't also good; it's that something caught fire with the fourth book, and so now people can go back, and they can see and appreciate what was happening in the earlier books, right? 

Oh, and P.S., not every book is going to be appreciated and loved by everyone. That's also part of it. And that doesn't mean anything about the particular artist. Like [laugh], this is so important, everybody, because the individualism in our culture insists if you are a genius, if you are worthy and smart, then you will succeed—and that's just not the way it works. Success is so much more complicated and co-created than that. Yeah?

We're co-creating with one another. We're co-creating with a timeline. We're co-creating with the weather, with all of it. All right, my loves, so this quotation, the whole of it, is in the Show Notes if you want to go and read it for yourself. Again, it is, to date—I won't put it on forever and ever—but, to date, this is my very favorite quotation of all time. 

It is so inspiring to me, both the thing about how my business is to keep the channel open, to not block the way that vitality and life force wants to move through me, to not abdicate my specific contribution, my role in our evolution. That's what I see there. I fucking love that, and the piece about how there is no satisfaction; there is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, that makes us more alive.

Yes, that is who I want to be in this life: not afraid to express myself, not too scared to put something out into the world, too scared to try but alive and open and willing to allow the life force, the quickening to move through me and into the world. And for all of our sake, I so hope that you will join me in that. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

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