#51: Three Things that got me thinking
🎨 Creative parents + 🎭 Improv theatre + 🐴 Pigeonholing
Hola everyone,
Here are three things that got my motivation radar beeping this week.
1. Before / After
A lovely article about how having a child changes creative work:1
It might change what you want to do.
Rosie Foster, photographer:
I have definitely shifted from focusing on fashion to looking at people as individuals and their story.
Amy Bennett, artist:
It wasn’t until I had settled into my new life in the suburbs and was pregnant with my second child five years later that I felt ready to make work about parenthood. I had this long list of images I needed to make, which resulted in my Nuclear Family series.
It might change how you work (+ where and when).
Laxmi Hussain, artist:
It’s meant my work has grown more freely, to become less restricted, less fussy.
Mijae Kim, art director at Artment.dep:
I am also growing and learning, just like my son, about how to work and rest at my own rhythm.
And it might change why you want to do it.
Adrian Caddy, founder of Greenspace:
Being a parent reinforced my commitment to helping others create their own legacies.
Shawna X, illustrator:
It’s so important to make work and collaborate for the relationship, not the project, the money, the title; the relationship will trump all of these things.
2. Have many goes
You may know comedian and writer Deborah Frances-White from The Guilty Feminist podcast. She also co-authored, with Tom Salinsky, a comprehensive improvisation theatre manual called The Improv Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Improvising in Comedy, Theatre, and Beyond, which is full of wise and practical ideas.
In Chapter 2.2, they write about that awkward stillness right after a teacher asks for a volunteer for an exercise, and the importance of trying (and failing) often:
On some occasion, if a volunteer is asked for, every single person puts their hands up and some actually rush forward. That’s when those people are children. […]
Children want lots of goes, but adults want one perfect go.
As adults, we’ve already decided what we’re good at and what we’re bad at, and we only want to have goes at things we’re already good at.
That adult reluctance to fail / fear to look like a fool makes it hard to learn.
No one comes to RADA2 hoping to fail. We think that this is a strange attitude to bring to a learning experience […] because it means the student is hoping not to be educated but validated.
So: why not put your hand up, and have lots of imperfect goes?
3. Trojan horse
This quote by Belgian writer Myriam Leroy resonated with my experience of doing things that other people wanted or needed me to do, instead of following my own hunger. It might resonate with yours:
I’ve wasted a lot of time doing things that weren’t like me at all, because that’s where I was put. And because I knew how to do it, I did it—hoping people wouldn’t leave me in there forever, and that it was just a Trojan horse to access something else. In the end, I didn’t access anything else, and I spent a lot of time in the horse’s belly, getting really hot, saying: “When are we opening the door? It’s time to get out!”
This quote comes from Leroy’s 2019 interview with comedian Fanny Ruwet in her podcast Les Gens Qui Doutent, which I’d already mentioned last week. Let’s say I went on a bit of a binge with this podcast. (Pour les francophones, I’ve included the original quote in the footnotes3.)
Thanks to Kevin Maguire for the find; thoughtful dads here will certainly enjoy his newsletter, The New Fatherhood.
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in the UK.
Leroy worked as a journalist for multiple print, radio, and TV outlets and wrote novels and plays. She also co-directed a documentary film about online violence against women, released last year.
Opening quote + starting around 46:53 in Les Gens Qui Doutent, episode 9:
Je pense que j’ai beaucoup perdu mon temps, en fait, à faire des choses qui ne me ressemblaient absolument pas, parce que c’est là qu’on me mettait. Et comme je savais le faire, je le faisais—en espérant qu’on ne me laisserait pas là-dedans toute la vie, et que c’était juste pour moi un cheval de Troie pour accéder à autre chose. Finalement je n’ai accédé à rien d’autre, et j’ai passé beaucoup de temps dans le ventre du cheval à crever de chaud et dire: “Quand est ce qu’on ouvre la porte parce que là, il est temps de sortir!”
Donc oui, je pense que j’ai pas mal perdu mon temps. Mais voilà, c’était mon chemin. Je suis lente à la détente.