Reclaiming Our Creative Birthright

 Remember What It Was Like: Small Steps

When I was eight walking on my way one weekend to pray, I noticed that my hands looked oddly dirty outside the chapel. They were clean, but they did not look it in the daylight. But inside the chapel, they looked spotless. I went back and forth several times to verify this, and it worked each time. Something was very different inside the chapel. I’ve been seeking that thing ever since.

When I was six, bored one day in first grade, I wrote a story called “Are You Old?”. We’d been learning in reading group about the meaning of quotation marks, so I wrote a story with quotation marks. It read:

     Mommy said, “Daddy is old.”

     Daddy said, “Mommy is old.”

     Are you old?

which was a direct transcription of some banter I’d heard between my parents the day before onto chunky yellow paper with alternating solid and dashed blue lines widely spread across both sides. The teacher saw it, had me read it to the class and gave me a gold star. She sent me to the class next door where I read it aloud and got a blue star. I’ve been writing ever since then.

But when I was three and a half, my Grandmom took me to the Lane Theatre on north Broad Street where a troupe was  performing a children’s show. It was so beautiful I forgot to breathe. They were sparkling and jumping and flashing colors and flying, and I wanted to be up there with them. Me, TOO!

I don’t remember doing this but was later told that midway through the program, I stood up and, much to my Gandmom’s chagrin, walked slowly, wide-eyed down the aisle toward the stage, my mouth open simply held there by the magic of what I saw in front of me. Many, many thanks to my Grandmom both for taking me there and not yanking me back with embarrassed brusqueness as I floated down the aisle. Also for chocolate chip cookies. But that’s off script. She could have nipped my connection with theatre right there, but she let me float away within her sight. I’ve been performing since then. The stage was my first heart’s desire bigger than chocolate milk and a space ship cup with the straw built in.   

Am I unusual in this? I bet not a quarter as much as we’re led to think by the popular notion of the distribution of talents.  There’s no lack of discouragement. Everyone told me I was an idiot. But the people who mattered also told me I was very talented. Generally they told me in the form of a complaint about how I wasn’t realizing my talents. But often enough they told me in a sincere way that I was able to hear it deeply. And often enough I actually did something which I looked at and said, yeah, that’s good. The trick was being stubborn enough to keep those tender encouragements fully protected and ready for use against the truly stupid flood of undifferentiated spew coming at me (and everyone else)  that I (and all but a tiny percentage of everyone else) was an irretrievable waste as an artist and should look for serious work to do. Real talent, so the myth goes, shines through no matter what.

Taken apart, that statement is beyond irrational. It is a dementia in and of itself. Real talent dies fifty times more often than it kills to live. Real talent is based in the real human personality which really flourishes under real encouragement and really doesn’t under real discouragement. Really. There is only one group of people which believes it benefits from this story, and it settles for money as proof of the benefit it accrues. It does not reckon how much this lie impoverishes the world. Mundane lies such as this one keep us confused enough about our own natures to doubt everything and make us vulnerable to more and greater mundane lies. How much invention and innovation would the world be heir to if everyone were confident in her own talents and abilities? What would life be like if we didn’t have to wait for experts to tell us the best way to spend our time?

We won’t know the depth of talent comprising the birthright of humanity until we stop stomping on it as it tries to sprout in the young. But it is possible to project a surmise based on available data about us as a species. We’re genetically identical to 0.1%.  We are 99.9% exactly the same model of creature. This is closer than nearly any other species on the planet. It is widely considered that a pandemic or other catastrophe wiped out much of the human population not too long ago in anthropological terms. We who now breathe subsequently sprang from the survivors. There hasn’t been enough time for us to develop the kind of genetic variety which, for example, our close cousin the bonobo has. We’re still in the throes of the culling.

What does this imply about our natural talent quotient? It implies that if one of us demonstrates a talent, it is more likely that this talent is there in all of us than it is that the talented person is a genetic anomaly, particularly if others demonstrate the same talent in varying degrees. This would seem to suggest that talent is installed with the basic package but conditions determine whether or not it will grow.

I am left with the reasonable possibility that all humans possess similar intelligence and talents to those which have been demonstrated by the best of us. My experience is bearing this out. I just began writing theatre reviews Stage Magazine,  but I’ve been around here long enough to know that there is a lot more high-level talent and interest here than I ever would have guessed growing up in Cherry Hill in the 60s. It’s been a delightful revelation.

More often than I can have the strength to praise, credit for bad dramatic play performances in local theatre goes to choice of material. Someone’s goal exceeds his reach. The staging is too inexperienced to do the material justice, the lighting distracting, the actors uncertain of their characters’ complex natures. That’s what you call excellent failure. Going out of your comfort zone is how you grow. It’s praiseworthy.

 And it’s agonizing to everyone. I want to like it, but it’s awful. You want me to like it, but you know it’s awful. The cast and crew want to be proud of it, and, oddly, one actor is absolutely delighted with it, but the rest know it is awful. And full praise to those willing to fall on their faces reaching for a vision. Next time, please try smaller steps? Writing the “magnificent failure” review gives me heartburn.

That is what I’d like to say to everyone: how about if we all try it in smaller steps? There’s a strong possibility that there’s a whole lot more talent around than anyone has ever suspected. We have the demonstrated cognitive capacity as adults to recapture the connection to the excitement and creativity that was ours by right as small ones. We can bring it back out. This time, however, we are in  much better positions to see that it receives the warm welcome it deserved the first time around.

My mother wanted to be on stage all her life. As she was dying, she organized a reading of the Bontsche Schveig story, a wrenching tale about the meaning of piety. She read the central part. It was an astonishing performance, and a fulfillment of a dream. I encourage us all to consider that we don’t have to wait for imminent death to do things like this. In fact, it’s even better if you live on to do it again.

House readings. Most of the people seeing this live in domiciles. Most of those residences have living rooms. Think of a play you’ve always found funny or interesting, invite a group of people pot-luck, byob to come over and read it out loud in voices. Make sure the group includes people not ordinarily involved in theatre. Of course many of us feel we are not qualified to do this job. However, as no one more qualified is available, you are absolutely the best one to do it.

And make sure everyone goes home with a prize. Sincere recognition of a job well done from peers is excellent. This is true for everyone and particularly for you. Have simple cards with one reader’s name on each. At the end of the evening, have everyone write compliments in everyone else’s cards.

But for organizing an event like this, you deserve something more. I think a gold, a blue and a green star would be in order for you. And a thorough round of applause. Bring the arts to everyone. Everyone’s an artist.


You may also be interested in The Myth of Talent , another post on this theme. Click here to see it.