My inner critic

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einesteinTo my mind, the word creativity carries with it connotations of originality, imagination and success. For those of us who don’t consider ourselves to have ‘an artistic bone in our body’, this feels self-limiting. Our inner critic tells us that we aren’t artistic, thus we can’t possibly be innovative or inventive, thus creativity is outside of our operational zone. This rather circular argument ignores the fact that creativity isn’t actually about being artistic. It’s about making something out of nothing, about having an idea and following it through, about implementing an existing idea in a new way. It’s about being prepared to try things out, about accepting that ‘trying’ is the first step to ‘doing’ – not the last.

Last weekend I took part in an all-day drawing workshop designed for absolute beginners, for those who – like me – believe they simply can’t draw. Over the years I’ve been to a number of writing/other workshops and, in most of them, the instructor has suggested that I silence my inner critic (MIC) and just get on with it.  Anticipating this, I asked MIC to be an observer for the day rather than a participant. She must have agreed, because I had the best day and learned far more than I expected to. I even tried sketching in charcoal, which turns out to be a very satisfying medium to work in/with. I felt very creative, very capable.

Later on I reviewed my sketches at home. Away from the supportive vibe of the workshop, I could see many more flaws in my attempts than I had in class. Clearly MIC was back in play and she was making up for lost time. Before all my confidence fled, I decided it was time for us to get to know each other a little better.  My goal was to try to establish how and why my perceptions of my creative abilities had been set and, in so doing, to figure out how MIC  could help rather than hinder me.

I started by listing the sorts of ideas that, broadly speaking, might be limiting my creativity and empowering MIC.  The first thing that leapt to mind was the pervasive belief  that creativity is inherently self indulgent. MIC does have a tendency to murmur to me that I should be doing ‘something useful’ instead of ‘messing about with mosaics’ (or whatever).  Then there’s the notion that creative pastimes require time, money and an appropriately creative environment. Considering that creativity is so broad ranging, this is clearly a furphy – but I’ve nevertheless bought into each of these ideas over the years as well. Another roadblock for many people at various times is the rather childlike need for external approval to validate the endeavour (whatever it is) – and I’m no different. However, the most ubiquitous underlying limiter I came up with is self-doubt. This is like a vitamin B12 shot for MIC – it feeds her and allows her to grow and expand her influence over what I do.

The source of self-doubt is complex, built up in layers over many years and even more experiences. This often makes it quite difficult to single out an originating point or, indeed, to know whether such an assumed point is accurate or imagined. MIC and I worked together on trying to figure this out. We eventually narrowed it down to (surprise!) my childhood, to my memories of drawings done by my mother and brothers. I remember these as things of beauty, an unreachable benchmark. I tried to draw like them and fell short, so I concluded that I couldn’t draw.

This outlook very probably shaped the way I’ve tended to approach creative activities ever since. Over time my belief that I can’t draw turned into a view that I probably can’t do other ‘arty’ things – or, at least, not do them very well. MIC and I agree that this is not an outlook that serves any useful purpose. It’s based on the half-remembered impressions of an eleven year old – a child who didn’t consider that it takes work to do something well, that her mother and siblings probably spent hours and hours sketching.

I haven’t tamed MIC (she is a rather unruly minx), but we’ll work together to formulate a better working model. We’ll try for one that promotes creativity rather than hampering it, perhaps by turning ‘Critic’ into ‘Critique’.

 

A learning exercise

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Gcon Sausage Sizzle_25apr15Last week saw us gearing up for a sausage sizzle fundraiser barbecue outside our local hardware store. The preparation phase included getting up to our elbows in raw onion a few days before the event – and the miasma continues to permeate my house and fridges, car and numerous plastic containers. 40kg of medium sized brown onions is a whole lot of onion. In fact it’s two very large sacks of onions. Being involved in peeling and processing them individually made me realise much more clearly just how much ‘a lot’ really is – and it’s heaps!

We had a good system going, though: five people and an industrial strength slicer/dicer machine. This combination of teamwork and machinery peeled and shredded all 40kg in about four hours. This was followed by a fair amount of cleaning up, because little bits of onions somehow just went everywhere. Then we had to find somewhere to store 16 bags of onion slices for two days, whilst leaving space for about 400 sausages. My fridge and freezer may never recover from this little exercise…

The adventures with onions was just one part (but definitely the smelliest part) of the preparations. Other aspects included ensuring that the group’s public liability insurance was up to date and that the venue was booked – these things needed to be done well in advance. Then there was costing, sourcing and purchasing the onions (!), soft drinks, sausages, sauces, bread rolls, cleaning equipment, oil, serviettes and so forth at the best prices available. We also had to acquire 30kg of ice and a 135 litre esky (giant cooler box) to store the items that had to be kept below 5 degrees on the day of the ‘sizzle,’ specifically the onions(!) and the sausages. The hired esky may also never recover completely, despite the enthusiastic application of bleach after the event…

Next time round we’ll try to get some of these items donated, which would no doubt help our bottom line.

Only one the helpers on the day had had any prior involvement in running one of these events – and her input was invaluable. Nevertheless, there was a very steep learning curve for all of us. Fortunately we had a relatively short day of trading, since it was a holiday. This meant we could only set up to start selling by 11.30am and finished up at about 3.30pm. Generally the stalls run for twice that long, which would have been quite a stretch for our little team.

Next time round we’ll also try for some extra helpers so that we can work in shifts, rather than flat out for the whole day.

Things I learned along the way:
* Shopping wisely (like pre-ordering the bread rolls in bulk and keeping and eye out for special offers on soft drinks) can bump up the bottom line considerably
* You can NEVER have too many helpers
* Aprons are amusing
* Onions are smelly… really, really smelly… and the stench lingers in a house (my house!) for an awfully long time

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Confit d’Oignon, almost ready for bottling

On the up side, it turns out that Confit d’Oignon (French onion marmalade) is a cunning way of using up a LOT of leftover sliced onion – but it’s quite a lot of work and once it’s made it needs a home… I don’t need that much onion jam – so all offers of rehoming a bottle or more of onion jam will be considered.

After all the dust has settled we made about $650, which is an excellent start towards our fundraising goal of $4,000 for the year. We raise the funds in order to cover the venue hire and insurance for our annual convention (GenghisCon). If we didn’t do this, we’d have to bump up our membership prices (like every other local convention has) and we quite simply don’t want to go there.

So sausage sizzle #2 is booked for 21 November – put it in your diary now and come on down to support us 🙂

That’s what friends are for…

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Having watched The Jungle Book (again) this week, I now have an ear worm buzzing around in my brain.  With the strains of That’s what friends are for on internal auto-repeat, it’s not very surprising that I’ve been thinking about friendship – what it means, how we define it, how we live it.

So what ARE friends for?

I did a whole research project on this topic about a decade ago. It was (rather boldly, I now realise) titled Towards an understanding of the role of friendship in contemporary Western society. In about 20,000 words I examined comparative notions of friendship, from Aristotle forward. What I found, in essence, was that friends are broadly seen as being bound together by a combination of altruism, kindness and high levels of trust and support. After speaking to various people on the topic over the last couple of days, I would add that these relationships are based on trust, honesty, reciprocity and mutual understanding – usually between equals. Indeed, many people consider friendship to be the most meaningful of relationships.

Broadly speaking, it seems to me that choice, equality and mutual trust appear to have remained the foundation stones that encapsulate our notions of friendship as a whole. However, ideals such as these need to factor in the rapidly changing nature of our public and private interactions – and the constraints that these impose on us. Clinging to them if they don’t is, quite simply, setting ourselves and our relationships up for failure.

Friendship is complex and many-faceted. It doesn’t operate in isolation and there isn’t a set of formal rules that can outline how individual interactions can or should evolve, who one can be friends with or why.  This is simply because having such rules would limit the nature of what is an essentially fluid relationship. Perhaps the most, and the least, that can be said is that friendship is. It is part of our greater and ever changing social milieu, it is a source of support and comfort to individuals, and it is the one area where people feel that they should be able to be comfortable and relax with their peers.

These are relationships that clearly continue to be seen as providing levels of interaction not available from or in any other kind of relationship. A true friend is still seen as a treasure – something both to aspire to be and to have. With this in mind, perhaps it’s worth considering the words that Buzzie, Flaps, Ziggy and Dizzy (the vultures) sing to Mowgli and to come to our own understanding of what we think friends are for.

That’s What Friends are for.
From “The Jungle Book” Composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman.

We’re your friends…
We’re your friends…
We’re your friends to the bitter end

When you’re alone…Who comes around
To pluck you up… When you are down
And when you’re outside, looking in… Who’s there to open the door?
That’s what friends are for!

Who’s always eager to extend… A friendly claw?
That’s what friends are for!

And when you’re lost in dire need… Who’s at your side at lightning speed?
We’re friends with every creature… Comin’ down the pike
In fact, we’ve never met an animal.. We didn’t like, didn’t like
That’s what friends are for!

So you can see… We’re friends in need
And friends in need…Are friends indeed
We’ll keep you safe… In the jungle for ever more
That’s what friends are for!

Finding the Faraway Tree

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This week a friend and I managed to find a last minute booking for what was described as a “quaint, rustic cottage” next to a lake in Bridgetown.  We jumped at the chance and headed off for a few days of sorely needed downtime at the end of a very busy term. The plan was to rest, but also do some writing, photography, drawing and (most importantly) chatting.

I’d been itching to try out my new camera since my birthday, so as soon as we were settled in our distinctly rustic abode I set out to walk around the lake and find something photo-worthy. I soon came across a derelict footbridge (snap), a rose arbour that had fallen into disrepair (no snap, too sad), a very orderly row of fairly young gum trees side by side with a lone fig tree (snap, snap), and a rather palatial kid’s cubby house (snap). All of these were interesting, but none of them stirred me more than superficially.

Then I saw it – a huge river red gum, standing head and shoulders above all the other trees. It was glorious and immediately evocative of a much loved childhood story. Indeed, the first thing sprang to mind as I gazed up at it was ‘It’s the Faraway Tree!’ I could easily imagine Moonface, Silky, the Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot and the rest of characters that paraded through my highly imaginative early childhood hiding somewhere in its branches.

Bridgetown Faraway Tree

Bridgetown Faraway Tree

Our host had placed a bench under the tree and from that vantage point I could gaze up at the enormous trunk as I reminisced. I remembered wishing that I had a tree with a slippery slide built into it so that I could whizz down on a tasselled cushion. What fun that would be!

I found I couldn’t quite stop myself from glancing up at the top of the tree as I thought about the lands that drifted across the top of the Faraway Tree, just in case… Like the storybook version, this is a tree that cries out to be climbed, for children to adventure into, for artists to photograph and paint, and for arboriculturists to conserve. It’s quite magnificent and the childhood memories that it stirred up made me smile each time I looked across the lake at it over the next few days.

Although I’d remembered the names of all the magical characters in the Faraway Tree books, my memory referenced the human characters generically as the children. Out of curiosity, I looked it up as soon as a Wifi connection was to hand and the second or third ‘hit’ I got was a link to the Enid Blyton Society. This provided me with a plethora of information on all things Blyton, including the names of the children in the series (Jo, Fanny, Bessie) and some examples of the lovely illustrations and cover art from the early print runs.

I spent ages pouring over the covers and jumping between examples of some of my favourite early reading matter. Much to my delight I found a listing for the Five Find-Outers Mystery Series. I read these books with alacrity at much the same time as the Faraway Tree series, but subsequently never found the books again. In the intervening years I’ve asked numerous people whether they’ve read them, but no one I know had even heard of the series. Most people went so far as to ask whether I meant the Famous Five, Adventurous Four or even the Secret Seven! So the sense of vindication was actually quite ridiculously strong and decidedly childlike when I discovered that the Finder-Outers and little Buster the dog really do exist in Blyton-land and that I hadn’t made them up.

The combination of the real and imagined trees, the photographs I took and the information and images on the website has been like catching glimpses of a kaleidoscope of my childhood, of a fragmented land that seems to move further away each year. It’s brought them closer together and has made me want to climb more trees and to hunt for adventures – or perhaps it was simply relaxing for a few days that did that.

From The Enchanted Wood, by Enid Blyton. Illustration by Dorothy M. Wheeler, taken from the first edition.

From The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage, by Enid Blyton. Illustration by Joseph Abbey, taken from the first edition.

The eye of the beholder

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I was recently in a group of people asked to name the most unusual item in our respective kitchens (ingredient, implement, other – as long as it was a bit quirky). The tricky thing with this question is that I, like most others there, consider my own kitchen to be fairly ordinary. This is a room that’s been equipped to be functional and, in many cases, designed to be attractive. So coming up with ‘the most unusual item’ in amongst the mundane actually equates to figuring out which item someone else might plausibly consider unusual.

Bringing up a mental map of my kitchen and gazing around it, I was hard pressed to see anything out of the ordinary. The butcher’s block, crates, appliances – they all fit in and work in their context. Condiments and tins – perhaps far too many of each – have been stocked with some sort of goal in mind. Cutlery, crockery and so on have accumulated over time and, whilst they may not be my ideal Homes & Garden version of same, they serve their purpose. Certainly nothing unusual in any of those.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I have a small collection of teapots on the kitchen window ledge. I wondered if they counted as unusual? They’re fairly brightly coloured, but – when you come down to it – they’re just teapots. In the dishwasher I have a little clean/dirty sign, to let people know the status of the current load – but we think that’s pretty normal. Perhaps the handmade mosaic trivet on my bench top? hmm…

Then I remembered the yellow Tonka Toy lurking on top of the kitchen cupboards. It’s one of the classic road graders, a remnant of my son’s childhood. When he moved out, he made a pile of his Lego, Meccano, toy cars and so forth and asked me to donate them to a good cause. Most went to charity shops or friend’s children without a second thought, but the grader was harder for me to part with. I had (and have) so many fond memories of the roads we built with it in the sandpit and the games that followed.

But what does one do with a discarded toy truck or, indeed, any discarded – yet beloved – toy? In this instance I perched a pair of discarded dinosaurs on it (a diplodocus and a triceratops, I’m told) and there they’ve remained ever since, our watchful kitchen deities. They keep track of everyone and everything that happens in this crazy central space in our home, where people congregate and culinary experiments happen.

My dino-truck combo definitely counted as an unusual kitchen item in most people’s books on the day and, try as they might, no-one could trump it. Since then I’ve looked more closely at people’s kitchens when I visit, keeping an eye out for their version of quirky. To my surprise, most kitchens actually do contain at least one oddity – but the dino-truck still rules 🙂OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA