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At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside.

That’s a quote from Simone Weil’s essay Human Personality, written in the last year of her short but extraordinary life.

I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast.

How’s it goin out there. Hope all is well.

This is Episode 7 of my series of episodes on Imagination creativity, based around my book Create.

I used to be in a prison, the prison of Creativity, something I talked about in depth when I explained how Ursula LeGuin made me understand that Creativity has been co-opted by corporations and academia but that Imagination is still available to us as a relatively uncorrupted, or co-opted word. Imagination, which hasn’t been as coopted is one of the ways of breaking out of what I will be talking about today, lexical prisons. So, today I want to talk about lexical prisons, something Weil referred to at the beginning of that quote how “a mind enclosed in language is in prison”.

Last time I spoke about school and education, and how the industrial revolution and a utilitarian, way of educating can be detrimental to the imagination and inspiration of young people, leading them away from creativity instead of potentially opening Doors towards inspiration and enthusiasm.

For example, in this podcast I don’t curse. This is very difficult for me, or at least it was when I first started out, to not curse. Why? Because where I grew up we all curse. Most of my close friends who listen to this podcast are probably thinking, Why isn’t John cursing? That me speaking the way I am, the language I’m using, is not me, that I’m in a kind of prison by not letting myself express myself with curses, which is totally acceptable for Irish males, as that’s our reputation, part of our culture of craic, our maverick, iconoclastic buck the system. And don’t get me wrong. I love listening to the Blindboy podcast, and still curse when I’m having a laugh with friends and family.

So why did I stop? Because when I stepped back to look at my way of communicating I realized I was in a lexical prison. I noticed when I left my country for a long time that I was cursing a lot more than everyone else, but more importantly, the curses were taking up the space where adjectives, nouns, phrases should have been. I’m a writer. I’m all about words, how they’re arranged, which ones are left out, how long the sentence. But when I cursed I didn’t have as much control of what I wanted to express, because words I should have been there were absent. And I saw this as destructive, not creative. It moved me away from creativity, the imagination, using the right word, words, replacing them with expletives. I had placed myself involuntarily into a prison of language, and if we think of words as leading to our destiny, then this lexical awareness becomes even more important. As Gandhi put it:

Our thoughts become our words, our words become our actions, our actions become our character, our character becomes our destiny.

I had been thought to marginalize myself from the more eloquent people in Ireland, the better off, who hardly curse, the kids who were educated at Belvedere College and Trinity, because it wasn’t what they were taught. They didn’t have to curse to feel included with peers because their peers were hardly cursing.

In psychology they have what they call applied psychology, which basically means giving access to marginalized people the tools they need to deal with the anxiety and pain they are in. This access comes with language. For example, how can a person who has anxiety know how to deal with a panic attack if they don’t even have the words to express it? Just those two words, panic and attack, could help so many if they had access to that language. So language is a tool that can help them with the prison of their anxiety, to alleviate the anxiety. First, an individual can accept what happens, or is happening to them, as normal – that we all get panicked at some stage. That’s the first step out of the lexical prison, access to a new language that allows the individual to see they’re not alone. This reduces the suffering. Second, it helps the individual realize that there must be more language out there to help them understand what it is we are going through.

This is why we need to democratize creativity, democratize Imagination, just like we need to democratize psychology, because when we don’t have a language we can’t speak to other people who speak that language in the same way. If we don’t have a language of creation then we can’t speak to people about creating something without thinking we’ve no idea what we’re talking about. As opposed to simply having psychology in the universities and available to people of a certain socio-economic class, it needs to be available to everyone, democratized, applied psychology. We need an applied creativity, applied imagination, just like we need applied psychology. All the people need access, not just the few. The few is not democracy, the few is oligarchy. And oligarchic psychology and oligarchic creativity is simply not healthy for the larger population, only the few.

Which is the whole reason I’m doing this podcast, to democratize creativity and Imagination, even if at times I feel like I’m not using my real voice, by not cursing, because I want to practice what I preach, by using applied creativity, by not allowing the few to have access to expression, just because I came from a different socio-economic class when I was a kid.

I think every one should have access to creative tools, just like everyone should have access to psychological tools. What I am trying to say is that this podcast is my way of creating an applied creativity, just like psychologists create applied psychology, to help everyone, and especially those who don’t have access, to democratize creativity and the Imagination.

Just like with applied psychology, we need adaptive tools to unlearn negative or unhealthy behaviors, what I have called Walls away from creativity and Imagination. We need applied creativity, what I’ve called Doors towards Imagination, to unlearn all our unhealthy artistic behaviors, and lexical prisons are a Wall, just like the many other walls I’ve been talking about.

Again, to further this way of thinking: with awareness, by knowing our creative enemy, our creative enemies, the Walls again, we can reduce a lot of the anxiety about not being a creative person, or for example, feeling like a failure for not creating something perfect on your first attempt. Adaptive tools, adaptive and applied creativity help us recognize when we are falling into a trap, moving towards a Wall.

Another way to look at lexical prisons is to talk about cursing again. Podcasts. They have Parental Advisory labels on them. And this is the beauty of podcasts, people can step outside their lexical prisons and curse as much as they want to, like Blindboy, who I mentioned earlier. He curses a lot, but it doesn’t take away from how eloquent he is. It actually allows him to express himself fully. He lives in Ireland, permanently. It would be inauthentic if he didn’t curse, because of where he comes from. But for me, I’m an immigrant, and because of it I’ve had to look at the way I express myself, because if I say certain words Blindboy says over here in the States, people are disgusted and will judge me. So I’ve used this as away of analyzing my own specific lexical prison and adapted to the culture I’m living in so as not to upset people on the street, because I’m Irish and I’m American. I’m not saying I won’t be cursing in interviews I do later on though. No. Because then I’ll be with people I know, not out in the street, or in a store.

Of course, on TV and syndicated radio it’s the complete opposite. They have to rely on advertisers and foundations to support the salaries of their broadcasters. So people like Blindboy would be muzzled, which would be awful for us, and his creativity. Which is unfortunate because most people aren’t able to talk the way they would with friends and family which means there’s a lack of honesty, a lack of authenticity to their voices because they’re hampered by the language of whatever broadcaster their working for, and then they’re hampered by the political perspective of whoever owns the TV show. So, the words they use are brought under censorship, which is another form of lexical emprisonment. For example, I used to think the people in America were super puritanical, conservative, overly polite, but I was wrong. When you get to know Americans when you’re here, when you listen to them on podcasts, you realize they can be as harsh and forward thinking as anywhere else, but it’s just those voices are not what are seen on the lexically hampered mainstream media.

Our language contributes to our culture. The way we speak, the words we use, and don’t use, condition how we relate to others, how we feel, how we think.

For example, why are words like passion, enthusiasm, madness and inspiration not used more often in a positive way? Because we’ve been taught, consciously or not, to use words like “like” or “interesting”, or phrases such as “I’m on a deadline,” or “I don’t know.” Sentences such as: “Like, I don’t know, like if I like, it’s interesting, like.” What is that sentence actually about, what’s it actually saying? Nothing. That’s what.

Instead of a deadline, can’t we have a due date? Can’t we give birth to a creation, as opposed to dying if we don’t get over some imaginary dead-line? Instead of “I don’t know” can’t we just say how we feel about what we’re responding to? “I don’t understand what you’re saying”, as opposed to the non committal nonsense phrase “I don’t know”. Instead of saying something is “interesting”, can’t we say “That really inspires me.” “That makes me so enthusiastic.” “I’m passionate about…” When people use phrases like these we need to be aware, because they are creating Doors towards creativity and the world of the Imagination, stepping away from the walls of lexical prisons into the world of creation.

Every country has these lexical prisons. In America, they use the word “interesting”, all the time. It’s a language prison because most of the time people are basically saying what you’re saying is not interesting. They’re actually saying, please shut up now. This does not mean something cannot be interesting. It can. But it all depends on the person’s delivery. Are they saying it with enthusiasm, with a positive intention?

In Ireland, we curse a lot. I think it’s because of our servile psyche, but that’s another whole thing. As I said before I had to teach myself not to curse in public. Again, the cursing was a lexical prison, for me. It made me say things in a crude way, without actually saying anything. There were a lot of expletives in my responses but not a lot of substance. As a writer I should be able to express myself with words that show how I feel, the right words.

And a lot of the time we need to get out of our country to experience our lexical prisons, like I did with cursing. Or when I noticed Americans using “interesting” in France, for everything, compared with English English, or Australian, Canadian and New Zealander English, where they hardly used it at all unless something was actually really interesting. Changing our geography, changing where we are can change our perception of the reality we grew up in, where we come from. We get away from the Walls of our lexical ecosystem, out of our lexical habitat, and walk through the Door towards new creative opportunities.

Joyce once wrote “Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.” Not the most positive thing to say about your country. But Joyce was honest, and created beauty away from the lexical prison he was born into. He did so by escaping, and looking in at the world he came from, from the outside.

So, phrases, ways of speaking, stop us from having opinions. “Oh, that’s interesting,” is not an opinion. Cursing is not an opinion. Sometimes, they’re both giving up, because you put lock yourself inside the walls of your own lexical prison. Words such as “like” do the same thing. It’s filler. “That’s like, the way it is, like.” “You know yourself, like.” It’s noise. It has no substance.

We use to run art expos for a few years at our retreat. People would come from all over the mountains to see the art. They’d drink and have a laugh. But there was one old man, the mayor, who wouldn’t come in. He being a good friend of mine I asked him why he wasn’t coming in. He kind of just looked at me because he didn’t know what to say, this from a fella who is never lost for words. I kept prodding him until he explained that he went into the mine when he was around 14 and that, quote “doesn’t have the right language to be able to express what I’d be looking at. I so not have the right education.” There were tears in his eyes. So obviously, his family, or friends or just some villain had made him think that because he didn’t have the language of creation, that he was not allowed to look at it. He was put in a lexical prison. As he put it, he didn’t have the “intelligence” for it, one of the smartest people I met in those mountains. No matter how I tried I couldn’t get him to come in. No matter how many times I told him “It doesn’t matter what kind of an education you had.

Everyone sees art differently, through their own personal lens. You might hate a painting, I might love it, but you don’t need a degree from a university to say how you feel about something.” He smiled, but refused to go in, stuck inside the Walls of his lexical prison.

Ocean Voung has a bit in his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous about this reality of lexical imprisonment where he writes about toxic patriarchal capitalism. He sees American males caught in a lexical prison based on capitalistic violence and war. Expressions such as “You’re killing it.” Or “You’re making a killing.” Or “You blew them up.” Or “I went in there all guns blazing.” And men don’t even realize they’re using this violent language, because it’s so common. Capitalistic success is equated with killing people. Death and destruction of others, capitalizing on them, monetizing them, commodifying them, especially commodifying women’s bodies, is seen as a positive way of using language. It isn’t. It’s a very negative lexical prison.

So thanks for listening. I started with a quote from a wonderful French philosopher, mystic and political activist, but like last time, I’m going to end this episode with an Irish proverb. This one literally means:

An eye evades a thing it does not see.

Seachnaíonn súil ní nach bhfeiceann.

This podcast is supported by you the listener via my Patreon page. If ya want to support the podcast and help me get paid for doing it then please head over to patreon.com/johnfanning where you can get early and ad free access as well as extra episodes when ya sign up. Ifya can afford it then give me the cost of a price of a cup of tea or pint once a month. Ifya can’t afford it that’s grand too, ya can listen for free, but please subscribe to it on iTunes or wherever you listen to it and leave a review on itunes too or wherever ya listen to it and let your friends know about it so the listenership grows. Thank you! And thanks for listening. If you’re looking for more episodes you can find them on all the usual places like iTunes – or on my website at johnfanning.me under “podcast” where I’ve put up overview transcripts with links to all the people and ideas I mention. If you’re into social stuff and you’re looking to engage with me one-on-one, check me out on twitter @fanning_j and instagram @johnfanning_. It’s been great sharing stuff with you today so until next time take care out there and be benevolent when you can!

Slán libh agus go n-éirí an bóthar libh.

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Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to the Facts, sir!

So that was the opening paragraph from Charles Dicken’s great satiric novel, Hard Times.

I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast. How’s it goin. Howy’re yis all doing out there? Hope yis are all doing well.

This is episode 6 of my series of episodes on Imagination and creativity, based around my book Create.

Last time I talked about how Imagination can encourage us to move away from the Wall of co-opted Creativity, inspired by the wonderful Urusla K LeGuin. Some of you mentioned that my call for “abandoning Creativity” because of first, linguistic reasoning, and secondly ideological ones were too late, which were valid points. Yes, ‘Imagination’ is an abstraction, a conceptualization, an abstract noun rather than a dynamic act, like creativity, but creativity is no longer associated to the same extent Imagination is in contemplating, meditating the images inside you or “picturing oneself”. As I said at the outset of the last episode, I gave examples of how Imagination has been co-opted too, but this is no way to the same degree creativity has. More important again is the way I see it as a lexical prison, an idea I’ll talk more about in the next episode. When I say imprisonment I mean we have to become aware of the conditioning around the words we use in whatever culture we’re living in. Creativity has crossed cultures, but it is far less a meditative act than imagination is, especially in the sense that the Romantics or Blake or LeGuin meant. Imagination is being captured, or trying to be captured by corporations, but it is freer to me, a word that envisions more a part of the act and process of creation. You could say it doesn’t matter what you call it, but it does. I quoted the wonderful Stephane Hessel in the second episode:

To create is to resist; to resist is to create.

The machines will gobble words to their ends, but we have to resist them. We have to create a new understanding of our words so we use them to our ends, not the ends of the machines. As a friend just wrote to me from Australia, we have to reclaim the word creativity. But to reclaim it we must first understand what has been turned into, and find a new via media, a new word. To me that’s Imagination, to others it may be something else. What’s important is the realization, that to create is to resist, and to resist is to create, lexical prisons, ideologies created by big pharma, academia, capital.

Today I want to talk about school and education. Because the subject is a large one the episode may run a little longer than the usual 30 minutes or so.

So, facts alone are wanted in life. This is the character of Thomas Gradgrind, a wonderfully satirical Dickensian character, a doubting Thomas in the wrong way, who grinds grades, to use the inventive name Dickens gives him. Gradgrind grinds grades and facts into the heads of children so Imagination can never live there. He is a true villain to these children’s Imagination. Dickens explained the theme of his novel by saying,

“My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else.”

Even though the book was published in 1854, it’s still relevant today. There’s a wonderful oil painting by the Swedish artist Peter Tillberg, done in 1972, which also reflects this uncreative Gradgrind worldview. I’ll put an image of it on my website.

The painting is called “Will You Be Profitable, My Dear?” It depicts 27 students facing us, sitting in uncomfortable wooden desks with almost nondescript faces in a gray and very depressing school room, waiting, to be taught. Trying to imagine any child in that painting being allowed to have a creative imagination is, well, unimaginable. It’s as if the energy has been sucked out of them, out of the whole drab room. And this is where we want to inspire kids? The lights hang down like lost balloons imprisoned in the ceiling. All the pictures on the bulletin board or tacked up there is precise rows, just like the precise, perfect rows of desks. The children seem more like the lights and pictures, imprisoned and tacked into place. What could have been an opportunity to inspire Imagination and inspired learning has become rote facts, as in Dickens’ novel.

How many of us remember our class rooms in straight lines where we sat bored out of our minds most of the time because of all the uninspired facts been dished out to us. Unlike schools like Exeter in New Hampshire, as well as many others, where the collaborative circular table of say the Harkness method is not simply for preschoolers. This image of education is completely different. Instead of all the children facing one person, each one perhaps suffering anxiety over unfinished misunderstood homework, or an impending exam, at the round table we have teachers and students facing each other, inclusive, having a conversation, creatively looking at learning, promoting inquiry and inspiration instead of trying to dismantle it by regurgitating dead facts.

And what happens to children in drills of tables sitting to attention waiting to download facts? Well, like the children in Dickens’ novel, when they don’t have Imagination, they fall into despair.

Gradgrind’s daughter falls into a loveless marriage to a morally bankrupt and ugly banker, while his son Tom turns into a man without any scruples of conscience, a thief who makes an innocent man take the fall for his crime. Witnessing the degradation and downfall of his children, Gradgrind realizes that his own misguided principles have ruined their lives.

In an interview, the Irish writer Alice Taylor, had something to say about children and the Imagination:

The glory of childhood. Children have their own magic. I have my own grandchildren and I can see the older in there eyes about things. It’s great. That children would have time to be children. [We] have to give them time to be children, not to cram their lives with too much activity. I don’t mind them getting bored. I think it’s good for them to be bored. They start exploring then, poking around, and using their imagination. I think that’s our greatest gift, our imagination. As Blake said “Imagination is evidence of the divine.

People are educated to stay in the box. Society’s educational system is based on this broken model, that of the mathematical mind created during the utilitarian Industrial Revolution Dickens so wonderfully satirizes in his novels.

American author, activist and intellectual, Noam Chomsky, in his book based on the great documentary of the same name, Requiem for the American Dream, talks about what he calls the 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power. One of them is Principle #2, “Shape Ideology” and under it, the sub heading of “Education and Indoctrination” where he says the following:

There was an article in the New York Times quoting some doctors who give drugs to children in impoverished areas to try to improve their performance, knowing perfectly well that there’s nothing wrong with the children – there’s something wrong with the society. In fact, the way they put it, we as a society have decided not to modify the society but to modify the children.

The article he refers to was published in the New York Times by Alan Schwarz on October 9, 2012, and it’s called Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School and makes for some disturbing reading, especially a bit where Dr. Ramesh Raghavan says,

“We as a society have been unwilling to invest in very effective nonpharmaceutical interventions for these children and their families,” and “We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to use the only tool at their disposal, which is psychotropic medications.”

Leading contemporary educational philosophers are asking many questions, one of the most important being: Do Schools Kill Creativity? That’s actually the title of Sir Ken Robinson’s inspiring TedTalk from back in 2009, where his talk makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. People are listening to him too. The video has been viewed over 63 million times. I’ll leave an embed to the video on my site.

There’s a part I love in his talk where he says:

life is not linear; it’s organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us. But, you know, we have become obsessed with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college.

His point is that we need to bring a learning revolution to the educational system, not try to put bandages on a heart attack. A whole new system needs to be created, not one that caters to bandaging the many negative symptoms of what is wrong with the old system that even Dickens’ characters lived in. It needs to be more in keeping with what the word school actually means, from the Latin and Greeks roots, “leisure time”, in addition to gymnasium, the training of the body to create a virtuous young person. And of course, Robinson advocates for an educational system based on creativity.

Another wall to creative education is the contemporary advent of helicopter parenting. Today, we’re reacting to situations and parenting based on a 1 to 3% risk of something happening. It’s kind of mad. But why is this? If a kid doesn’t take risks then how can they evolve as creative beings?

When I was a kid jumping ditches and schooling through the fields – isn’t that a wonderful colloquial verb, schooling through the fields? Anyway, when I was scaling trees and chasing cattle I never had my parents running after me wondering whether I was going to be molested or kidnapped. If I hadn’t had that freedom to play and be creative in my day I would never have been able to educate myself away from my parents, with other kids, to overcome the fear of jumping out of a tree or climbing one when I have vertigo. Or to get back up after being nastily fouled playing gaelic football. If my parents were there all the time I would have probably stayed on the ground crying looking for attention instead of getting back up and going after that ball again.

This does not mean there are not inspiring, extraordinarly creative teachers out there. Robinson, in his book “Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education”, mentions many schools and inspirational teachers. An Australian novelist who came to La Muse told me and five other shocked people on retreat once that all of her teachers were inspiring, that all of them had become friends of hers. Myself and the other five creators, in all our years at school and during all our degrees thereafter, could only think of one or two inspiring teachers, three at most. I had one. That’s when we found out about Atlantic College. And Round Square schools, and Steiner schools.

This type of creative teaching, this type of creative learning, is not linear or square. It’s inspired. It’s out of the box. This is inspiration and creation. We need to be planting the seeds of imagination in our children so they move towards Imagination not away from it like Gradgrind’s children, or into drugs because the schools are underfunded in impoverished areas.

Also, another thing, which I’ll address more in a later episode on Failure and Success: fact, if you go to the right schools it’s much easier to get the established jobs. It’s that simple. This is something I used to tell every young creator who came to La Muse. Not to be so hard on themselves. Yes, it’s about getting lucky, but also about who you know. If you went to the right school for writing, or art or building, then you have a much better chance of getting ahead, getting the job. Most young creators are not aware of this and beat themselves up over not being successful, thinking that going to the right schools is some kind of urban myth or conspiracy theory. Well, it’s not. It’s just simple fact, and if creators are aware of it then they know they just have to work harder to get their creations out into the world.

For example, if you’re a highly creative young woman who wants to change women’s rights through political activism your chances of becoming a minister are no way as strong as a student who went to say Sciences Po, The Paris Institute of Political Studies. The school’s alumni include many of the French and international political elite. 7, yes, 7 recent French presidents studied at Sciences Po. 13 French prime ministers studied there. 12 foreign heads of state or government. The same goes if that young woman wants to be a creative executive. There are the six CEO’s of France’s largest companies who went there.

And that’s just France. The private schools like Eton and Harrow in England, which are ironically called “public schools” or Belvedere College in Ireland or the many Ivy League universities here in the states, or as they call them here in the states, “colleges”, all give access – a very important word that, access. They give access to positions of creative power or more importantly, access to the tools for so called creative “success”, economic, social, cultural.
I’m not saying this means you have to go to college, or one of those colleges, but it helps, a lot, even if there are many, many exceptions to the rule.

Ray Bradbury talked to host James Day about his career, back in the early seventies, on the show Day at Night. This is what Bradbury has to say about about college for a writer:

I never went to college — I don’t believe in college for writers. The thing is very dangerous. I believe too many professors are too opinionated and too snobbish and too intellectual, and the intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth — who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.

I’ll embed the youtube interview on my website. It’s wonderful.

Then there’s another American writer, the same one I quoted in my first episode, Kurt Vonnegut:

What I hate about public school systems is that they cut out the arts because they’re not a way to make a living – it is such a human thing to do, and it is the experience of becoming if you make something that wasn’t in the universe before. And that feels so good to human beings, and to cheat kids out of that is criminal. Everybody should be painting now or drawing or whatever, just as they should be singing or taking walks or falling in love or whatever. It’s so human. And not to teach kids how to do this is to cheat them terribly.

That’s a quote taken from part of a wonderful conversation Kurt Vonnegut had back in September of 2005 when he was talking about book A Man Without a Country. Again, I’ll put a link to the audio in the transcript of this episode.

So, I have two degrees, one of them an honors Masters degree. But school never helped me on my path in any helpful way to creating our artists and writers retreat in the south of France. It never helped me write novels. It never helped me create this podcast.

After secondary school, I went to the nearest place I thought you could learn how to write, university. However, Ireland in the nineties was not the place to study creative writing. They had the university of East Anglia in England. They had the whole creative writing cottage industry in America. Ireland? Nothing. Not one course.

What did I do? Studied English, of course. Wouldn’t that help me write? Studying Shakespeare, novelists, poets? No. It was a nightmare. Hermeneutics. Cultural materialism. Post Structuralism. New Historicism. Isms polluted my poor head like Gradgrind’s children. And every time I wrote an essay it had to lean towards that specific lecturer’s political “ism”. It was about as creative as hitting your head off a concrete wall.

When I did my degree in Greek and Roman Civilization, Marcus Aurelius, one of my favorite writers, was never mentioned. Maybe I missed something, but I never even remember a footnote where the man was mentioned. It was only later, fifteen years after my degree, that I discovered his wonderful “Meditations”. Then, the movie “Gladiator” came out. Remember the old king? Yes, he was Marcus Aurelius. That’s when I really realized how incompatible my “education” was with actually educating me about creativity, about what inspires me.

After two honors degrees, I went directly into the service industry where, surprise, surprise, I learned nothing about writing, again.

How many teachers during your whole educational experience really inspired you? I mean someone who took the time to really care and help you understand what it is you’re on this planet for.

I had one, for one semester.

Over the last two decades I’ve asked that same question to a lot of creators and they’ll say anywhere between one and three teachers. I mentioned the lady earlier who went to Atlantic College. She’s an aberration. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if the education she received was the norm?

Some of the writers and artists who go to La Muse are also secondary school teachers. On one retreat we had six teachers from four different continents. Two of them had jobs creating the new curriculum of two different subjects in their country. I asked them if they had watched Ken Robinson’s TedTalks. They didn’t know who he was. I asked them what they thought about the United World Colleges, Round-square schools, Steiner, etc. They hadn’t heard of them either. This scared me. How can there be so much passionate discussion about issues in education that don’t make it into schools? If I, just some guy living in the middle of nowhere in the south of France, seemed to know more than career teachers about what seems like vital stuff in regard to the philosophy of education, and how important creation is for children, it’s no wonder the system isn’t changing. Don’t get me wrong. These teachers were wonderful people and they love what they do, but if they’re the experts and they’re the ones writing the curriculum, well then, that worries me.

But, the problem is not the teachers, it’s the educational system. A recent example would be “The No Child Left Behind” program in the States which seems to leave the majority of kids behind. Because of it over 70% of school districts in America have gotten rid of, or cut back on, their arts programs. Schools teach for testing, not learning. If the system doesn’t empower creative teachers how are they supposed to help motivate children?

We’re squeezing the arts out of the curriculum. In England, the government wants “core subjects”, the Ebacc, sciences, English, maths, a language, geography or history as compulsory for secondary school kids. This decreases access to dance, art, music, drama. In America, there’s the same over-emphasis on “core” science, technology, engineering and mathematics, so called “STEM” subjects.

Ironically, it was only when I arrived in America that I discovered there were whole departments full of lecturers actually teaching creative writing. I was just a little bit frustrated you could say. Why didn’t they have them in Ireland, the home of so many Nobel prize winners in fiction — Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Heaney, not to forget people like Joyce?

Our aptitudes are completely different from those of the person sitting beside us. The educational system doesn’t cater to that. Never mind that, if you get ten people into a room to learn something, all of them will not learn the same way. Isn’t that a creative opportunity, both in how we teach and how we learn, to harness an imaginative way forward.

Also, if you think because you were bad at school then you’re not alone. There are so many creative people where school was not a place they excelled. At school, Rodin was described as the worst pupil. He applied to France’s most prestigious art school, École des Beaux-Arts, but was rejected three times. His uncle called him uneducable.

Then there’s Beethoven. He was awkward with the violin and preferred to play his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer. Stephen Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California School of Cinema Arts, twice. Louis Pasteur, the father of microbiology, was a mediocre pupil. He preferred fishing and sketching. In 1841, at the Collège Royal de Besançon he failed to get his degree in science with special mathematics. He finally got it in 1842 from Dijon with a bad grade in chemistry. Again, he failed the entrance test for the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1842. He finally succeeded in 1844.

Don’t let education or schooling be a Wall away from Imagination. For the most part education doesn’t teach you creative intelligence, how to create what you want to create. You want to educate yourself in what you want to create? Don’t give up. Learn by doing.

So thanks for listening. I started with a quote from Dickens and as usual I’m going to end this episode with an Irish proverb. This one literally means: Heavy is the load of ignorance. Or in English english: Ignorance is a heavy load.

Is trom an t-ualach an t-aineolas.

This podcast is supported by you the listener via my Patreon page. If ya want to support the podcast and help me get paid for doing it then please head over to patreon.com/johnfanning where you can get early and ad free access as well as extra episodes when ya sign up. Ifya can afford it then give me the cost of a price of a cup of tea or pint once a month. Ifya can’t afford it that’s grand too, ya can listen for free, but please subscribe to it on iTunes or wherever you listen to it and leave a review on itunes too or wherever ya listen to it and let your friends know about it so the listenership grows. Thank you! And thanks for listening. If you’re looking for more episodes you can find them on all the usual places like iTunes – or on my website at johnfanning.me under “podcast” where I’ve put up overview transcripts with links to all the people and ideas I mention. If you’re into social stuff and you’re looking to engage with me one-on-one, check me out on twitter @fanning_j and instagram @johnfanning_. It’s been great sharing stuff with you today so until next time take care out there and be benevolent when you can!

Slán libh agus go n-éirí an bóthar libh.

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In America, the imagination is generally looked on as something that might be useful when the TV is out of order. Poetry and plays have no relation to practical politics. Novels are for students, housewives, and other people who don’t work. Fantasy is for children and primitive peoples. Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions. I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination. 

That’s a quote from a talk given at the a meeting of Oregon Literary Arts in 2002 called “The Operating Instructions” from a book of essays and reviews called “Words are my Matter”, written by the inspiring and imaginative American writer Ursula K. LeGuin.

I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast. How’s it goin. Howy’re yis all doing out there? Hope yis are all doing well.

This is Episode 5 of my series of episodes on creativity, or since reading LeGuin, on Imagination, based around my book Create. Last time I talked about family, friends, and those close to us, and how important it is to make the distinction between allies and villains.

Now, I want to talk about creativity and Imagination. I talked about creativity in my first episode, my introduction, in a confused way by saying what creativity is not. Then, in the second episode I talked about what creativity is in all its amorphous forms, especially as a positive path, or Door towards change and hope. At the time, I hadn’t formulated a reasoning for why creativity as a word itself felt so amorphous to me, without getting into the idea of value and capitalism, something I will be doing a long episode on in about another 10 episodes. However, what I knew intuitively was that creativity has been co-opted in some way by academics and corporations, hence my resistance to even using the word. But if not creativity, then what? Everything that came into my head seemed like aspects, parts, either Walls or Doors away or towards creativity, not an idea or word as amorphous as creativity to signify the creative world in a more apex of the triangle kind of way, to encompass things. Until a few days ago.

My wife Kerry came back from the public library here in Scarborough with a book she said she thought I should read, because she knows I love Ursula LeGuin. And of course the very first essay I read was the one I read from at the outset of this episode. The essay clarified what had been gnawing away at me inside my head now for a long time, this distinction between the Imagination and creativity.

Of course, it had been staring me in the face all this time, even after having written a whole book on what I thought was creativity. Here I was without at least one short chapter on Imagination in my book. And yes, in an earlier draft I had had a few paragraphs on Imagination but, as with the idea of creativity, it had felt too amorphous to me, not enough to pay attention to for a whole chapter. So I deleted it. And so here I am back again, reconsidering the imagination because of LeGuin, because she made me understand that my intuition was correct, that creativity has been coopted and that it is Imagination which is more important because it hasn’t been coopted. Because creativity is simply the catchall to describe the act of using our Imagination. We are creative when we imagine. When we imagine, inspiration comes. When we imagine we create. We use the imagination to create. We don’t use creativity to create. Creativity is objective, what we see someone doing, creating. And innovation is when we better it, both being things in the tangible world. The action of creating though, that’s imagining, new theories, characters, worlds. Creativity is imprisoned by reality, imagination is free, released from the unreal.

Here is Le Guin again, later in her essay:

In the marketplace, the word creativity has come to mean the generation of ideas applicable to practical strategies to make larger profits. This reduction has gone on so long that the word creative can hardly be degraded further. I don’t use it any more, yielding it to capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can’t have imagination.

Exactly. This is exactly what I was trying to get at in my first episode, but didn’t. I wanted to write a letter to her after reading that quote, to thank her for her clarity.

Imagination. Of course. Let them have creativity. But, they can’t take away Imagination with a capital I, from us. They cannot capitalize on It, or again, as LeGuin expands:

Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making. It is not a weapon, though all weapons originate from it, and their use, or non-use, depends on it, as with all tools and their use. The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human.

For LeGuin story is the way into the world of the Imagination and the way to share empathy and communal bonding. For others the way in could be any of the forms of creativity, or sorry, Imagination, I’ve mentioned in previous episodes. But, the important thing, the corporatocracy can’t splash Imagination over their billboards, even though many have tried to appropriate it for selling products, Disney theme parks, gaming, technologies, cruise ships, cars. Albums and songs, fine, of which there are countless called Imagination, but corporations?

Two centuries before Le Guin, the Romantics placed a huge importance on the Imagination. How had I forgotten this? To them, it was considered the pinnacle of our mental faculty. Before the Romantics reason with a capital R was seen as all important, something we seem to have reverted to a lot more today, appealing to the negative, reasoning and uninspiring side of Science as opposed to the positive, creative and inspiring side of it.

To the Romantics the Imagination became a shaping, a creative power. They saw it in a Blakean way, on a par with nature or Nature with a capital N, as a deity, dynamic, active, alive and changing. Gone is the functions and passivity of Reason. To create anything, they argued, you needed Imagination. Without it you were losing before you started.

But they also saw Imagination as even larger than this, that it also shaped, or shapes our reality. Wordsworth would have said we perceive what is around us but that we also partly create what is around us too, and Coleridge’s “intellectual intuition” takes this a little further by saying the Imagination synthesizes and allows us to harmonize opposites and differences in the world as it appears, what he called a “reconciliation of opposites”, when two opposite but equal forces interact to create a third force.

And of course this Romantic Imagination had effects. Mary Shelley created “Frankenstein” when she was 20. Indeed she must have inherited her Romantic Imagination from her mother even if she never met her, the wonderful political theorist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother, author of the great proto-feminist book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, wrote in a letter from 1794 (The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Janet Todd):

The imagination is the true fire, stolen from heaven, to animate this cold creature of clay, producing all those fine sympathies that lead to rapture.

Wollstonecraft saw Imagination as the Door to liberation, even if it became sensual, seductive and “bewitching” her into despair and rapture.

Another absent parent, Lord Byron, also had an extraordinary daughter, Augusta Ada Byron, or later, Ada Lovelace. She too was influenced by the this same Imagination but in a different way, despite the cruelty of her mother, by creating a Romantic science. Instead of writing fiction Ada wrote code, or a computational poetics, becoming the first writer of a paper on computer science. In 1843, when she was 27, she translated a scientific paper by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea “Sketch of an Analytical Engine”, writing seven footnotes which combine to over sixty pages, over twice the length of Menabrea’s text, including the first complete computer program.

The conflict between the Imagination and the contemporary industry around creativity can be seen all the way back to the experiences of the extraordinary William Blake too, when he was commissioned to work for a fool who didn’t understand the Imagination or creative freedom.

Blake talked about vision, his muse and his Imagination but his employer Reverend John Trusler criticized and tried to denigrate Blake’s spiritual intentions. Trusler wanted derivative contemporary whimsical caricature. In one of his letters to the Reverend, from August 1799, Blake writes:

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.

Blake also writes about how important the magic of the real world is, how the visions he creates are easily found in the imagination of children, quote, “who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my pictures than I even hoped. Neither youth nor childhood is folly or incapacity. Some children are fools and so are some old men. But there is a vast majority on the side of imagination or spiritual sensation.”

Which brings me back to Le Guin’s wonderful essay. She sees Imagination, like any tool, as something we need to first learn how to use, that we don’t destroy it in our children:

Children have imagination to start with, as they have body, intellect, the capacity for language: things essential to their humanity, things they need to learn how to use, how to use well. Such teaching, training, and practice should begin in infancy and go on throughout life. Young human beings need exercises in imagination as they need exercise in all the basic skills of life, bodily and mental: for growth, for health, for competence, for joy. This need continues as long as the mind is alive.

When children are taught to hear and learn the central literature of their people, or, in literate cultures, to read and understand it, their imagination is getting a very large part of the exercise it needs. All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people.

So, why have we forgotten this Romantic understanding of Imagination? What wonderful works and creations have we lost by this industry of creativity? Because if we can’t imagine, anything, especially imagine a better future, how can we ever create one, much like Lennon’s Imagine song sings?

How has the creative faculty of our minds, the process of thinking and remembering, creating and fantasizing been lost to the industry of of creativity as opposed to the process of Imagination? Even the word itself, from the latin word, “imaginari”, asks us to question ourselves, because it means “to picture oneself”, to image oneself, to imagine oneself, which is perhaps a real understanding of creation, to investigate and picture from yourself, create from your images, your memories, your imagination, a visionary Blakean place where visions create mental concepts that are not actually tangible to the senses, but are there, present, nevertheless. Perhaps the best way to express all our creative world is the Imagination, just as the Romantics trusted, not what has become a commodification of creativity, a creativity industry in academia and corporations, something divorced from creation itself, many Walls away from creation, with words the Romantics would have despised, like efficiency and comfortable calculated maximization of profits and worker performance. The clutches of consumerist commodification are trying to optimize creativity when it is something the exact opposite, inspired, passionate, a chaos of enthusiasm and courage.

From now on I will try to use the word Imagination as much as I can on this podcast, but at the same time continue to title episodes with the word Creativity so as to allow people conditioned as I was by it’s amorphous commodification, to perhaps hear a reminder of what the Romantics called creativity, the Imagination. Like children, we need to imagine again. Wild imagination. Imaginary friends, make-believe, play. As Blake would have put it, we need to return to the Lamb of Innocence to harness our imagination, as a child, not the Tyger of creativity, like an adult. We do not lack imagination, we are simply told it’s ridiculous or weird as we grow up. We have to “put away childish things”, if we are to listen to dogma, become more real. Creativity needs Imagination. Imagination does not need creativity. So the question is, do you lack creativity, or do you lack Imagination? Is this real world more important to you than the imaginary one? And if you think it’s Imagination which is equally important, if not more, like I do, then how do you return to childhood Imagination?

So thanks for listening. I started with a quote from an American writer but as I’ve done in previous episodes, I’m going to end with an Irish proverb.

This one literally means:

Every beginning is weak.

Bíonn gach tosach lag.

This podcast is supported by you the listener via my Patreon page. If ya want to support the podcast and help me get paid for doing it then please head over to patreon.com/johnfanning where you can get early and ad free access as well as extra episodes when ya sign up. Ifya can afford it then give me the cost of a price of a cup of tea or pint once a month. Ifya can’t afford it that’s grand too, ya can listen for free, but please subscribe to it on iTunes or wherever you listen to it and leave a review on itunes too or wherever ya listen to it and let your friends know about it so the listenership grows. Thank you! And thanks for listening. If you’re looking for more episodes you can find them on all the usual places like iTunes – or on my website at johnfanning.me under “podcast” where I’ve put up overview transcripts with links to all the people and ideas I mention. If you’re into social stuff and you’re looking to engage with me one-on-one, check me out on twitter @fanning_j and instagram @johnfanning_. It’s been great sharing stuff with you today so until next time take care out there and be benevolent when you can!

Slán libh agus go n-éirí an bóthar libh.

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Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

So that was a quote from Carl Jung, from his last book, which was mostly on alchemy, Mysterium Coniunctionis.

And I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast. How’s it goin. Howy’re yis all doing out there? Hope yes are all doing well.

This is Episode 4 of my series of episodes on creativity, based around my book Create. Last time I talked about Walls, and today I want to talk about family, friends, and what I call villains.

So, family. Well, if I’m going to talk about family I need to talk about my own experience a bit so I can arrive at what I want to say, as I often do, through anecdote.

I grew up in rural Ireland, in a place not far from Dublin, but sufficiently far to be too far, for a young fella seeking creative community. It’s called Meath, and it’s a beautiful place, full of history, The Battle of the Boyne, and the Boyne valley itself with all it’s mad megalithic tombs. One of them, Newgrange, not far from where I grew up, was built about 5,000 years ago around 3,000 B.C. which makes it older than the Great Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge over in England.

So, the place was rich and beautiful, but creative community was hard to find. There was no music in our house, hardly any books, save the ones inherited by a great-aunt from England.

All my Dad’s family were from a farming background. My Dad was an agricultural advisor. So, when I was a kid the other kids talked about tractors and livestock. Don’t get me wrong, I love my farming background, but I didn’t love the creative isolation, or the common understanding that creation was for crazy artists and writers up in Dublin, or in some far flung foreign city like New York or London.

My mother’s family, the same thing, they all worked for other people, even if they were doctors and lawyers. I was actually supposed to become a lawyer, or a doctor like my maternal grandfather. And he’s the one I want to talk about today. On his deathbed, he asked me a question. I was in my teens. He could barely breathe.

“What … are you … going to do … after university?”
“I’m going to be a writer, Granddad.”
His breathing got worse. “Oh no … not that,” he wheezed.

Not the most encouraging conversation I ever had. But that was the general consensus. You want to be a what? Writer? Are you mad? How will you eat? Where will you get money? Away with the fairies, as they say in Ireland.

So, getting back to that Jung quote.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

A classic example here in the states would be an immigrant family, say they have a store of some kind, but they want their kid to go to college even though their kid wants to keep working in the store, because he sees making furniture as really creative, or making bread as really creative. He or she loves it. So it becomes this war between doing what she loves and doing what makes her family love her.

Of course this is not just here in the states. Like I said, I was under pressure to become a doctor or a lawyer. Projection and expectation’s normal in every culture but it’s wrong-headed because creation is about doing what you love, being happy is doing what you love, not what your family loves. And just because one person settled into a way of living in the world doesn’t mean they have to subject their kids to the same pressure.

This pressure can be seen all the time. For example, I had it easy compared to the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. His parents went full throttle with their agenda for what young Paulo needed. In his teens, his parents sent him to a mental institution, not once, but three times. Why? Because he wanted to become a writer. Coelho was locked up for months and given tranquilizers and electroshock therapy.

As I just said, the examples exist everywhere, in every career. Charles Darwin gave up a medical career. His father didn’t think much of his decision. He said he was a very ordinary boy, below the common standard in intellect, and that he would disgrace himself and his family. I mentioned Rodin and his process in the last episode. Well, his father was even more blunt than Darwin’s. He said he had an idiot for a son.

It can be found in so much of what we watch too. Marilyn Brando’s character in “On the Waterfront” tells his brother what it did to him to take a fall in a fight, when he could have won. He said,

I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody. Instead of a bum. Which is what I am. Let’s face it.

Two brothers, one a villain, the other with a dream and passion to express himself through boxing.

And why do we identify with this character? Because it’s great dialogue? Because it’s a great script? Great actors? Direction? Yes, but no. Because ultimately it’s because the scene makes us think, “I’ve experienced that. That’s my inner world, my inner struggle. I’ve had to deal with family like Brando’s brother. People who try to stop me from doing what I love.”

We’re all like Brando’s character. We all have “villains” in our life, even if they think they’re protecting us like my well-meaning Grandad. We just have to be able to recognize the villains.

It could be a spouse, a sibling, a child, a neighbor telling you:

“No, you’re biting off more than you can chew with that,” or some other cliché. Because that’s what they’ve been told, and they believed it, they believed their villain, and they’re simply regurgiating it.

Of course, as always, this doesn’t mean there are not supportive people out there encouraging people to create. My wife Kerry has been supporting my novel writing for over twenty years now. I would never have gotten those books done without her support. So many of the artists I’ve known, many of them close friends, would never have gotten their art out there if it weren’t for their spouses. So that’s a really important thing to mention.

However, what I’m talking about is how important it is to understand the distinction between the two. There are people who will support your creativity, open the Doors towards creativity even further for you, and there are those who will play the role of villain, putting up Walls and discouraging you away from creativity, whether they know it or not.

Who is your villain? And who’s your ally? Who or what has a negative effect on you when you’re trying to create, and who has a positive effect, gives you the opportunity to go further into your creativity? Are they the crazy-maker who calls you up when you’re trying to write a scene, when you’re about to build a chair, design a deck, to tell you about all their stuff, what’s wrong with their life? Or are they the person who minds the kids while you write? Or are they the person who assumes you’re not doing anything important, that you’re available because if you’re not making money, you’re not really “working”, and if you’re not working you’re available? Or do they leave you with the door closed, as Stephen King puts it, to create, and when you come out they smile and ask, how did it go? And when you had a crap day they encourage you, say it’ll pass, that tomorrow will be better, that getting 6 figures for your first book is not why you’re doing it, but because it gives you joy to create.

The villain doesn’t have to be malicious. Just effective enough to unhinge you, to take your time, to discourage you. They don’t simply exist in plays and novels. They’re on the streets, or sitting beside you in a taxi, or on the couch saying it’s not worth it.

When I was a kid, most of the time my villains didn’t have to say anything. A look, the expression of disbelief, was enough. Their silence, their faces were enough. Those faces said:

“You want to be a what?”
“This fellas off his head.”

After Granddad, when people asked me what I wanted to be I answered, “I don’t know. Maybe a pilot.” Each time I’d tell them whatever came into my head. For the laugh. Because I thought I might as well have fun with it than let it depress me. My answers became more and more obscure. Lawyer. Botanist. Neuroscientist. Feng shui consultant. Fragrance chemist.
However, now, when people ask I say, “I’m a writer”.

So remember, be aware of who your villains are, as much as who your allies are, and of course villains will always tell you what you are not, so don’t let them tell you who you are. Create, regardless.

So thanks for listening. I started with a quote from a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst but as I’ve done the last episodes, I’m going to end each podcast with an Irish proverb. This one literally means:

There’s no hearth or fireplace like your own hearth.

Or there’s no place like home – if they let you do what you want or more importantly, what you love to do that is.

Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin.

This podcast is supported by you the listener via my Patreon page. If ya want to support the podcast and help me get a wage for doing it, because that’s how I see this podcast as a job, one I love doing, then please head over to patreon.com/johnfanning where you can get early and ad free access as well as extra episodes when ya sign up. Ifya can afford it then give me the cost of a price of a cup of tea or pint once a month. Ifya can’t afford it that’s grand too, ya can listen for free, but please leave a review on itunes or wherever ya listen to it. Thank you! And thanks for listening. If you’re looking for more episodes you can find them on all the usual places like iTunes – or on my website at johnfanning.me under “podcast” where I’ve put up overview transcripts with links to all the people and ideas I mention. If you’re into social stuff and you’re looking to engage with me one-on-one, check me out on twitter @fanning_j and instagram @johnfanning_. It’s been great sharing stuff with you today so until next time take care out there and be benevolent when you can!

Slán libh agus go n-éirí an bóthar libh.

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If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it’s too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us — create who we are. It is we who created the system.

So, that was part of the Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami’s acceptance speech, for the Jerusalem Prize back in 2009. And I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast.

How’s it goin. Howy’re yis all doing out there? Hope you’re all doing well. So, this is Episode 3 of my series of episodes on creativity, based around my book Create.

First off, thank you for all the positive feedback to the first two shows. I really appreciate it and to all of you who’ve starting supporting the podcast on Patreon, thanks so much. I’m very grateful.

However, some of you, many of you creators I really trust told me: 1. The intro should have been half the length, and that the second episode should have been two episodes, one on creativity, and then the next on what is a creator. Then 2. You said I need to spell people’s names out as this form is the spoken word and not everyone is going to go to my website to look at the links and correct spelling of the individual I’m talking about. And I will. Fair point. And I’d never even thought of it.

So, sorry about all that. I was actually going to take down the episodes and do them again. I researched for hours how to do it technically until my wife Kerry told me to just leave them there, saying they’re an example of creativity, that it’s messy, that you have to learn from your mistakes and grow as you go. Also, people only ever look at the last thing you did, the last ten episodes, the last book, movie, so the first 2 will get buried she said by my tenacity to keep putting out episodes. So, this episode, and every one after it is going to be under 30 mins, accept for interviews later on.

Last time I said I’d get into family, friends and villains, but that’ll bring me over the 30 min mark, so today I want to talk generally about Walls, as the next 10 episodes at least are going to be about Walls away from creativity, before I move onto Doors towards creativity.

And I want to start with an anecdote, about when I left Europe for the first time, to come to the States. My first apartment in America was out in Brooklyn, after sleeping on the floors of other Irish immigrants in Sunnyside, Queens. They had warned me, whatever you do, don’t live in Brooklyn. A month later, I was living in a railroad apartment beside a scrapyard, with a drug dealer and his immense bulldog on the bottom floor, and a huge Puerto Rican family upstairs who practiced Santeria, a lot, judging by the amount of dancing and singing going on up there. The one conversation I had with the father of the family consisted of references to “orishas”, possession by spirits, and Catholic saints.

One day I came home from work to find my Irish friends waiting for me on the stoop. They’d cycled from Sunnyside to “surprise” me. They looked worried. I invited them upstairs. The bulldog hurled himself against the backyard door when we entered the building. They’d already met the owner outside. He’d asked them if they needed “some”, cocaine that is.

When I unlocked the door to my apartment we could see the bulldog barking at us in the backyard. Why? There was no wall in my kitchen. I found out later the family upstairs had “forgotten” to switch off the water in their bath and it had seeped into my wall, necessitating the removal of all the sheetrock by the tattooed “employees” of the slumlord while I was at work.

All my friends’ worst fears had become manifest. They looked around the apartment in horror. Besides my bicycle and some clothes, my only furniture was a mattress on the floor in the “bedroom”. One of them never talked to me again.

Every one of these things should have been a wall to me moving out of Sunnyside. Like my friends, a lot of Irish immigrants move all the way from Ireland to America and hardly ever leave the four walls of Irish communities like Sunnyside. The guy who never talked to me again had worked for the MTA for ten years, but had never been to Manhattan. There I was enacting the parable of the lost black sheep again, leaving my people behind, taking the leap out of the enclosure.

I landed in the right place, a now defunct cafe in the then vibrant, edgy and still affordable East Village. In that coffee shop, I met my real “people”, creators living on the cheap, well, by New York standards. Again, as with Camden Town in London, they were doing whatever they had to to keep creating. My willingness to step outside the walls of Sunnyside and embrace America, honor the culture I was in, led to me meeting so many of the New York creators I still love. I would never have met any of these poets, screenwriters, musicians, artists, eccentrics, students, film editors, designers and photographers if I’d not left behind the protective, safe walls of my own culture.

So by embracing a new culture, a new group of people, other creators, I felt more at home. Actually one of those creators, an American screenwriter, one I met all those years ago in that coffee shop in the East Village, once asked me this question while on retreat:

“Why have you built a wall about doing this non-fiction book, John?”
“Well, because I write novels.”
“I write screenplays,” she said. “And I paint. And I knit. And I tango. Should I stop painting, knitting and dancing because I’m a screenwriter?”

She had me, pardon the pun, up against a wall.

About a week later she said to me, “You know, there are about as many walls to creation, as there are leaves in that forest.”

Artists, writers, actors, inventors, academics, are no different from every one else. We’re all different, but we all have one thing in common: Walls. All creators suffer. At times they can’t create. They make mistakes. They have off days. Walls. What do they do? They accept they’re having an off day, what someone once called an inspiring dry patch, and keep working anyway. They know the off day is a wall, and that it will eventually disappear. And the wall of walls? Fear. We all have it. It’s insidious. I have it. I’ve known many very successful creators. They have it too. Their fears are the same as mine, as yours.

It goes something like this:

“I’ve nothing new to say,” or:
“It’s all been done, written, directed, created before,” or:
“Even when I get it done, it’s going to be sht. People will pretend it’s good, when they really think it’s sht. Even I will think it’s sh*t, because I’ll never be able to create it the way I envisioned it.”

It all leads to the same thing, you hit a wall, and the wall has this written on it:

Don’t do it! Give up!

Anything that says, in the end, don’t do it, is the ego, the mind, and the mind/ego creates fear. It creeps in, everywhere, every time as you’re about to create something.

Maria Callas would sink her nails into the arms of whomever was there before she went on stage to sing. She was terrified. She was the greatest opera singer in the world, and she still thought she’d get found out, that she wasn’t good enough, that her voice would fail, that she wouldn’t be able to give it her best, that people would laugh at her. Even Callas had imposter syndrome.

The answer? You do what you love, you sing anyway. You live passionately. You create anyway, knowing fear is simply part of the process.

Rodin would do thousands of sketches before starting a sculpture. You could say he was blocked, that he was creating a wall, or, you could see it like he saw it, as waiting, preparing for the right moment, the right movement to sculpt. Like Rodin you have to wait for the solution to come, naturally. And the only way to receive a solution is to be there. Keep on taking notes, sketching, planting seeds. Walls are a natural part of the process. You have to accept them, and begin again. They fall away with confidence. You allow your mind/ego to tire itself out, by having the faith to accept that every wall falls, with time.

So thanks for listening. I started with a quote from a Japanese but as I did last time, I’m going to end this episode with an Irish proverb. This one literally means:

Walls need spalls as well as large stones.

Fóireann spallaí do bhallaí chomh maith le clocha móra.

A spall’s a small bit or chip of a stone, that you get when you split a larger stone. A good mason can create any chip size they like with the right hit of a hammer, to fit into a hole, or hold up a bigger rock. The word comes from the Old German word spell, which means to split. Course this would’ve been important in Ireland centuries ago because they didn’t have cement to keep things together. So it takes all kinds to make a wall, and a balanced wall, if we look at walls from a holistic perspective, as are the ones that allow for the big things as well as the small things in life. One balances the other. Sometimes the little things, the spalls, are what keep us balanced.

This podcast is supported by you the listener via my Patreon page. If ya want to support the podcast and help me get a wage for doing it, because that’s how I see this podcast as a job, one I love doing, then please head over to patreon.com/johnfanning where you can get early and ad free access as well as extra episodes when ya sign up. Ifya can afford it then give me the cost of a price of a cup of tea or pint once a month. Ifya can’t afford it that’s grand too, ya can listen for free, but please leave a review on itunes or wherever ya listen to it and let your friends know about it so the listenership grows. Thank you! And thanks for listening.

If you’re looking for more episodes you can find them on all the usual places like iTunes – or on my website at johnfanning.me under “podcast” where I’ve put up overview transcripts with links to all the people and ideas I mention. If you’re into social stuff and you’re looking to engage with me one-on-one, check me out on twitter @fanning_j and instagram @johnfanning_. It’s been great sharing stuff with you today so until next time take care out there and be benevolent when you can!

Slán libh agus go n-éirí an bóthar libh.