Staying home hasn't drained my creativity, so maybe you should speak for yourself

Maya Angelou lived an incredibly creative life, so she would know.

 

 

I'm kind of late in replying to this, but several weeks ago I saw an article whose title didn't sit right with me:

Why being stuck at home drains your creativity

Now I'll admit I don't care for overly pretentious and stilted-sounding writing, and using "one" instead of "you" is a good example of that, but in this case, I would have preferred it because I really don't like being told that my creativity is being drained because I'm social distancing. Also, I know that in my case, it's simply not true. I suppose it must have been true for the 3 people who wrote this short article, though, primarily because it took 3 people to write it!

They wrote this article as if the internet doesn't exist. All those serendipitous encounters I may have had while navigating daily city life can still happen via social media, as the torrent of posts of everyone I follow washes over me every time I look at certain sites and apps. I feel very sad that I don't get to go to the art shows and trade shows that I love, but at least I still get to see things I haven't seen before when I get emails from the artists, galleries, and manufacturers I've subscribed to, or when I visit sites like Booooooom, Colossal, and The Jealous Curator.

The tagline beneath the title states that "creativity is social," but that's not always true, either.  And I say this in spite of doing a presentation about creative collaboration in graduate school. Of course it's true that interacting with others can give me ideas that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise, but that doesn't mean that a decrease in creativity is the inevitable outcome of doing the right thing by staying away from coffee shops during a pandemic spread by an airborne virus. And honestly, my creative process was never a laptop in a coffee shop affair to begin with. If that sort of social interaction was the only key to creative output, then artists' residencies wouldn't exist. 

There is something to be said for the role of solitude in the creative process. Sometimes it helps to be alone with my thoughts. Being alone usually helps me to get in touch with my feelings. I can reflect, reminisce, and imagine more easily when I am not distracted by the presence of other people. Sometimes being creative means mining the depths within myself. And sometimes other people, though they may be well-intentioned, can be a real hindrance. How many of us have shared our ideas with others only for them to rain on our parades and extinguish the fires of enthusiasm for a new project just when they started kindling? It's happened to me so many times that I've learned to protect my ideas and only share them when the time is right.

Perhaps the real creative drain of the current era isn't the result of closed Starbucks and co-working spaces, but the current of despair and anxiety that courses through every aspect of our lives. Creativity still resides, but it's much harder to access when everything feels so hopeless. There are so many opportunities lost. There are so many deaths not yet fully mourned. There is so much grief still unacknowledged. We still don't know how much has been lost. We have endured this ongoing disaster for nearly a year now. We can't survey the wreckage until it's over. I don't blame anyone for feeling overwhelmed at the thought of doing thumbnail sketches for new artwork or blueprints for a new building or an outline for a new book when the future still seems so uncertain.

Also, there is a particular type of creativity the article is referring to, creativity in the service of corporate America. Aesthetically pleasing infographics, pretty PowerPoint backgrounds, apps that are easy on the eyes, beautiful business plans. Not the creativity born of necessity, the make a way out of no way ingenuity that led my ancestors to create soul food or pandemic era home cooks to learn to bake their own bread from scratch and re-grow green onions from scraps. Not creativity in service of personal growth, like the people who are rediscovering their living spaces and making them more liveable. Not the creativity born from boredom, leading people to take up new hobbies just for fun. Creativity is still happening, but often in ways that are not intended to be monetized.

The article's authors have failed to consider that creativity is often a response to constraints. Consider the inventive space planning of tiny houses, ships' cabins, and RVs, for example. Some of the most ingenious solutions have been made when people have limited space, time, materials, or money. Those of us who have taken courses in design have completed projects where constraints were part of the assignment, and have expanded our capacity for creative thought as a result.

Another problem with the article's defeatist attitude about creativity is that it reflects the larger mindset in response to the pandemic. There has been a profound lack of imagination at the institutional level. The combination of a stubborn adherence to irrelevant traditions, unrealistic expectations, and persisting in sticking to business as usual has produced so many stale ideas that don't meet the moment. This started last year when our leaders decided not to pay everyone to stay home for a few weeks to prevent things from getting this bad. And now that we are in a continued crisis, this could have been an opportunity to rethink and restructure the way we do so many things, especially teaching and working, but instead, the lack of creativity and over-reliance on video calling has resulted in meetings that could have been emails and "Zoom fatigue" for students of all ages. 

 This could have been a chance to enact the reforms so many experts wanted, like ending high-stakes standardized testing, and maybe even homework. Wouldn't it have been cool to let older students do some independent study projects and check in with their teachers periodically? Wouldn't it have been great if talented out of work performers had been hired to make entertaining educational programming, and if it were broadcast on TV so that students could watch it even if they don't have internet access? This could have been our chance to make sure that students all over the country had access to the same caliber of education. This could have been an opportunity to make workers' jobs better. But instead, we've gotten terrible non-solutions like restaurants creating "outdoor dining" areas with four walls and a roof, and gyms staying open even though they've been proven venues for spreading the virus because some people can't find the middle ground between being a gym rat and being a couch potato. 

And isn't it curious that the rugged individualism that stirs up the desire to assert one's right not to wear a mask somehow disappears when it comes to making sensible decisions about reopening, leaving the same people too helpless to eat without being in a restaurant or drink without being in a bar? These rugged individuals are somehow not individualistic enough to be alone with their thoughts for extended periods of time. No, they need to have big parties with other rugged individuals without masks in the middle of a pandemic because they are so dependent on social interaction. They're incapable of imagining anything else.

In spite of this, there are still signs that not everyone's creativity has been drained. Late night comedy show hosts found ways to entertain us from their homes. Restaurants are selling meal kits and ingredients for delivery and carryout. Musicians are still making music together and dancers are still performing. And I do know some fellow creatives who are using this time as a sort of residency period where they can focus more attention on making new work. I think there will be a lot of new books, plays, films, and artwork for everyone to enjoy once this era has finally ended. 

As for me, I've been trying to change my perspective by looking at all the things I can still do. Surprisingly, thanks to technology, there are plenty of creative things I can do without going outside. I don't want to oversimplify how difficult the adjustment was for me at first. It was only after letting go of a goal-oriented mindset and taking things one day at a time that I was able to move forward in any meaningful way. I haven't been to my studio in months, so I haven't been painting. But I have worked on a lot of things at home. I plan to post more about what I've been working on once I've finished what I've started. For now, here are some previews:

 

A Bitter Pill to Swallow, 5 years later

As I wrote in my art book/memoir, The Sum of Its Parts, 2016 is a year that will live on in infamy, though at the beginning of the year, I was feeling pretty optimistic because that was the year I published the YA novel I had worked on for many years, A Bitter Pill to Swallow. Five years ago today, I uploaded the final version of my book to be published after a long and stressful process that involved numerous rejections and disappointments. In the months leading up to publication, I tried to stay hopeful, but all around there were signs that the political situation in the United States was becoming more and more dire. As the months leading up to the election passed, the horrible man who would eventually become our horrible president was beginning to take up all the space in the discourse about just about everything, it seemed. And I was trying to promote my debut novel in spite of him. 

 

 

Those worlds collided March 11th, which was both the day of my opening reception/book signing and also the day Chicagoans ran a certain candidate's hate rally out of town. (If anyone missed the reception because they were at the protest, I completely support that, by the way.) Since this is inauguration day, I can't help but think about this. And sometimes I also wonder if things would have been different had I published at a time when people's attention wasn't so consumed by the election. 

Still, I am grateful that I was able to find bloggers who were enthusiastic about reviewing my book, and that I won a 2016 Chicago Writers Association's Book of the Year award for it as well. And 2016 was also the year that the Book Expo of America was at McCormick place, so I had the opportunity to have my book on display in one of the booths and also attend the expo and network there. Publishing my book myself opened up opportunities to speak on and moderate panels and meet a community of authors and booksellers I would never have met before. Illustrating my own book covers led to illustration projects for other authors, and I have been able to parlay my book layout experience into projects as well.

I also think that the political turmoil of this era led to more discussions about diversity in publishing. Though it still doesn't reflect the diversity of the population, the roster of books published about African-American teens has increased since 2016. And I would also like to mention that though it helped launch and support new traditionally published authors, I felt like the movement for diverse books left independent authors on the sidelines.

At the time that I was working on my book cover designs in the previous year, there weren't many Black characters on YA book covers. That's changed a lot now, and I'd like to think that I was at the forefront of that change.

Five years later, there are still a few milestones I had hoped to reach but still haven't yet. Hopefully one day I will finally be able to afford to record an audiobook edition. And I still don't have my book in as many libraries as I would like. In fact, one of my goals last year was to get a booth at the American Library Association's annual conference because it was supposed to be here in Chicago, but was canceled due to the pandemic. But in spite of these things, I'm glad I published my book when I did because I'm not sure how well I would have been able to concentrate on writing it had I attempted to do so during the past four tumultuous years. And though one reviewer described my antagonists as "cartoonish," perhaps now they might seem more realistic after we have have had to endure four years of a cartoon villain in the White House.

Though my book is now five years old—ancient by industry standards, I know—because it's set in the 1990s, in some ways it was always "old" to begin with. But it's still new to all the readers who don't know about it yet, and that gives me a reason to keep promoting it. So what that means is that I'm still open to doing interviews about it and giving free ebook copies to reviewers, and of course, virtual classroom visits.

Here are all my posts about A Bitter Pill to Swallow:

 

From the Archives: A Bitter Pill to Swallow illustrations, 1996-2000

A nice place to write a story

#WeNeedDiverseBooks 

Judging books by their covers and learning from them

Book Cover Design, Part 2

The Other Doll Project, Part 1

Book Cover Design Part 3 - Back Covers Need Love, Too

My new stores for A Bitter Pill to Swallow

And here are the podcast interviews I did:

Open Ended, Episode 74, "Petty or Not"

Shelf Addiction, Episode 35, "Diversity in YA with Featured Author Tiffany Gholar"

 

The official site for A Bitter Pill to Swallow is here:

http://www.abitterpill2swallow.com/

If you're looking for something to read, check it out.




My YA novel includes:
- a girl who is afraid to go outside
- a boy who is an extreme germophobe
- a quarantine

So even though it was published in 2016 and is set in the 90s, it might feel very timely right now.

Find out more here:https://t.co/DYh3hvmkGC

— Tiffany Gholar (@tiffanygholar) July 19, 2020

The inevitable was bound to happen

Triumph of Fear, a painting by Sandow Birk from 2016, proved to be a harbinger of things to come.

 

 

I'm not a patriot. I don't feel a sense of ownership or belonging when it comes to my citizenship in the United States. I've always felt like an outcast. I've always felt disregarded, disrespected and dismissed by the powers that be. I've never let myself get emotionally attached.

 

Why would I ever feel loyal to a place that treats people like me like this, or this?

 

I consider myself a citizen of planet Earth, a member of an international Black diaspora, a part of the global community of artists. And America is just where I tell people I'm from on the very rare occasions when I'm abroad. I don't feel any particular connection to America or any love for this country. I just live here.

 

I wasn't sad to see what the crowds who descended on the Capitol did last Wednesday. Its halls aren't sacred to me. I wasn't shocked to see the angry mob gathering. I wasn't surprised. What happened last Wednesday was inevitable. The plot was set in motion when a spray-tanned con man descended his golden escalator and dragged us all into the abyss. The subtext became the text of his American Carnage inaugural address. And last Wednesday was the day when Checkov's gun was fired.

As the siege began, I felt numb. I only began to feel sadness and anger when I considered how peaceful protestors had been treated so violently last summer, and in the early days of Black Lives Matter (and every day in between), and the disabled activists yanked from their wheelchairs, and the brutality visited upon the water protectors at Standing Rock, and the casual pepper spraying of Occupy activists, and the intimidation tactics used against high school students imploring their representatives to do something about gun violence. As someone who was enraged about the actual stolen elections in 2000 and 2016 and disappointed that so little was done about them, I couldn't help but indulge in imagining what it would look like if leftists were the ones to descend on the Capitol en masse. And I think the protests would have been nonviolent, probably sit-ins, but the reaction to them would have been extremely violent. We never would have made it inside the building. And why? Because of the challenge to the status quo. Things are very different when the protestors are wealthy and fighting for the status quo to stay that way. Things are very different when law enforcement is working in harmony with the coup. Journalists were maimed by aggressive police who targeted them last summer while they were simply reporting on peaceful protests; last Wednesday some of the officers seemed to be letting the hordes of intruders into the building when they weren't pausing to take pictures with them.

Watching them was like watching a movie. I even made popcorn at one point. What kept me glued to my TV screen was witnessing the restraint shown to invaders brandishing actual restraints, plus weapons and blatant symbols of hate groups, and the apparent nonchalance toward people who authorities would later discover had brought explosive and incendiary devices with them, and even a gallows. 

 

 

 

 

Of course, they didn't have the same rapport with the Black officers who were there because "blue lives matter" is fundamentally opposed to Blackness. What did surprise me was that no one stopped them from getting inside the building in the first place. With all the security theater we've been forced to live with since 9/11, I had expected the Capitol to be more secure. 

The Capitol, the place where for generations decisions have been made that left countless American citizens dead, diseased, poisoned, wounded, widowed, orphaned, traumatized, indebted, exploited, uninsured, underpaid, unheard, impoverished, imprisoned, stranded, enslaved, excluded, disenfranchised, unprotected, uneducated, and homeless; the place where decisions were made that have left so many dead around the world because of unjust wars, imperialism, corporate greed, disregard for climate change, and American arrogance. A place where sometimes the will of the people goes to die because it is at odds with what lobbyists want. A place where sometimes legislators have done the right thing, despite the inherent sleaze, grift, corruption, backroom deals, horse trading, and horrible compromises endemic to the American political system. A temple to the ideals America rarely lives up to, built by people whose lives were destroyed by slavery. But it was targeted last Wednesday not in the interest of any demands for justice or reform, but in an effort to make it the stronghold of a strongman's hateful minions who want to take "their country" back from the rest of us.

Once the mob got inside the Capitol, I was worried about the legislators inside the building. But at the same time, I felt their leadership had brought this crisis upon themselves. Some of them supported the rioters in word and deed and gesture. 

 

 

Josh Hawley saluting the crowd that would later invade the Capitol

 

 

 

And too many others spent the past 4 years trying to work with a tyrant as if he was an ordinary politician, as if they could reason with an unreasonable man, as if authoritarianism can simply be voted out, as if elections are automatically guaranteed to be free and fair just because of the American flag. And all along they ignored the warnings of experts and seemed to distance themselves from their own members whenever they spoke out about the dictator-in-chief. What happened last Wednesday was the consequence of their hubris. The Republicans who supported the illegitimate president throughout his reign of terror, encouraged their constituents to "stop the steal" since the 2020 election began, and refused to do anything meaningful to stop him are complicit. And so are the leading Democrats whose default position of acquiescence and an avoidance of confrontation (offset by a few meaningless gestures expressing their displeasure) did nothing to slow the momentum that built up to the January 6 coup attempt. 

 

 

What was this supposed to do?

 

And isn't it weird that social media companies shut off one of his primary sources of narcissistic supply before any legislators did (even though it took them forever)?

 

 

 

This is supposed to be a democracy, not a monarchy.  So it's the people's house, the people's furniture, the people's artwork, bought with our tax dollars. It should be obvious that doesn't give anyone the right to use legislative chambers as their personal chamber pot, but that didn't prevent their disgusting acts of defiance. Besides evidence of having no home training, there's a psychoanalytical symbolism in that act, and possibly traces of coronavirus, and definitely traces of DNA that can help identify whoever did that.

 

 

 

They claimed to be patriotic, yet they stormed into the halls of Congress like a band of marauding pirates. They're the types who use photos of ancient Roman statues as their avatars and Latin usernames when they're on social media, but they acted like pillaging Visigoths. 

 

 

Before you laugh, consider his white nationalist tattoos.

 

 

 

 

There was so much destruction left in their wake. And who is left to clean up the mess they made?

 

 

 

Now, in the aftermath, pundits, politicians, and the President-elect have the clueless audacity to proclaim "this is not who we are" again and again as if repeating that lie will make it true. Useless talking heads on cable news have asked why the police were "unprepared" that day, not willing to see the obvious collusion or connect the dots between a well-documented increase in law enforcement agencies being infiltrated by members of hate groups and the current administration's gutting of the agency that used to fight against domestic terrorism. Another bullet in Checkov's gun. 




Even the language used to condemn the white supremacists is problematic (a "black mark?" A "dark day?") 

 

 

 

You want to use "banana republic" as an insult after what the USA did in support of United Fruit Company in Central America? You want to keep feigning innocence like the white 22-year-old "girl" who tackled a Black teenage boy she accused of stealing the smartphone she carelessly lost?

I am so angry about the meaningless gestures of forced forgiveness, the insult to injury in the goal of "coming together" with people who want me dead. (And want anyone who disagrees with their bizarrely conspiracy theory informed worldview dead as well!) 

 

Can we not?

 

 

I can't stand to hear any more false equivalencies between "both sides" the media has been promoting since 2016, giving the made-up excuse of "economic anxiety" as the dictator's supporters' primary motivation. I'm sick of the pleas to consider the "forgotten Americans" who tried to take over last week. How are they forgotten when reporters haven't stopped interviewing them in diners for the past 5 years? Who could be more forgotten than those of us who can't even assert that our lives matter without people screaming at us for saying so? The dictator's supporters are given psychological profiles and sympathetic backstories while our motives are treated as though they are as unknowable as the behavior of wild animals. 

I'm also mad that last Wednesday's madness overshadowed the historic Georgia election. And that more people were arrested for protesting the unjust verdict (not guilty) in the trial of the policeman who shot Jacob Blake on that day than were arrested for the coup attempt. Not to mention that it happened in the middle of an ongoing pandemic, on a day when the death toll was climbing even higher.

Seeing the pictures coming in from the individual rioters was also infuriating. There's something about the glee on their faces that echoes the expressions of the faces of lynch mobs 100 years ago. 

It's the self-satisfied smile of a woman who believes that she'll never get caught, and certainly won't face any repercussions if she does. Look how proud they are in the shirts they designed just for the occasion.

How they reveled in the festive melee, live-streaming their rampage on social media for their followers. Some of them were wandering around like tourists at first. They were responding to their leader's invitation to march to the Capitol. All that was missing was him opening up the White House for a raucous celebration, kind of like the one after his idol Andrew Jackson's inauguration.

 

 

You don't want to meet your adoring public face to face? You're not throwing them an after party at your place?

As the chaos continued, their father figure appeared in a video, telling them he loves them and they're very special. He told them the go back home while still emphasizing that the election was stolen from him. I should note that he was an absentee father figure, because although he blustered about marching with the crowd to the Capitol, up until that point he had been nowhere to be found.

And then law enforcement played a fun game with them, giving them a 24 hour head start before announcing the manhunt. Their escape was abetted by the airlines that ignored the pleas of flight attendant unions to keep them off their planes. The arrests of the most visible rioters seem symbolic.  So many of the perpetrators are still at large, and they're not just buffoons incapable of climbing walls. 

 

 

There were plenty of militia members in the horde. And I'm sure some of them have used the stealth they learned from their military and law enforcement training and have likely returned to their communities undetected and unsuspected. What they were able to accomplish has only emboldened them and taught them strategies they can use to plan their next coup attempt. 

But sure, let's reconcile with these abusive people. Let's let bygones be bygones. Let's ignore the fact that this attack was planned out in the open on social media where everyone could see it, and that there were coordinated attacks the same day at state capital buildings.

There seemed to be a troubling lack of both situational awareness and self-preservation in the response by the legislators to resume the day's proceedings but delay and delay and delay any punishment for those who incited the attempted coup, both in their midst and in the White House.They could have been assassinated or held hostage, their offices were ransacked and papers were stolen, yet something about their reaction reminded me of the band on the Titanic, resigned to their fate. Some seemed too hamstrung by precedents, procedures and traditions to take swift action. Others had to face the monster they created, still unwilling to do anything about it. Maybe they were still dazed by what had just happened to them, but it seemed bizarre and incongruous to me in some ways. And it wasn't lost on me that things would be very different if the electoral college had been abolished and Washington, D.C. had statehood, but those two issues always seem to be put on the back burner or deemed unreasonable or unrealistic. It should be apparent now that both initiatives are overdue. And now the 11th hour impeachment on the horizon, like Twitter's long-delayed account suspension, feels like too little too late.

Last Wednesday was a day of irony, double standards, and hypocrisy. Its events revealed America's continued refusal to reckon with reality. Last Wednesday was a mirror. And America might finally see just how ugly it truly is when it looks in it. Yes, America, this is what you've always been.

 

 

This is the inevitable outcome of a culture that believes its own hype and refuses to do better, too high on its own affirmations and platitudes about its supposed exceptionalism to accept any critiques, no matter how valid or urgent. It could become the kind of country it thinks it is and claims to be if only it would face the truth about itself for once. As James Baldwin said, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

 

This is the inevitable outcome when a man who seems to have no conscience faces no consequences for his entire life, not even when occupying the highest office in the country. There is something anticlimactic about chickens coming home to roost. The inevitable was bound to happen.

 

 

Art by Victoria Cassinova

 

Links:

Petition to hold the GOP accountable

"They Say This Isn’t America. For Most Of Us, It Is." By Kaitlyn Greenidge    

"‘It Was No Accident’ Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on surviving the siege." By Rebecca Traister

"Who Cleans Up After a Coup Attempt?" By Cate Young 

"Their Lives Are Defended. Ours Are Ruined" By Dante Stewart

"The Whole Story in a Single Photo" by Clint Smith 

Dr. Cornel West Reflects on Trump's Fascist Coup Assault on the Capitol Building and America's Long Catastrophe, The Chauncey DeVega Show
Georgia Runoff with LaTosha Brown, Black Diplomats Podcast 

In the Thick Podcast: Capitol Coup

Episode 152: EMERGENCY PODCAST SYSTEM – “We Were Sitting Ducks” (featuring Congressman Dan Kildee, D-Flint), Rumble with Michael Moore 

 

 

10 things turning 10 this year

The bleakness of the weather and my personal life led me to hibernate for the winter. My hibernation entailed coming straight home after work to exercise, cook, and read. I saved my studio time for the weekends. When 2011 began, I was afraid to dream, and I didn't want to want anything anymore. Wanting things would only lead to disappointment.
 
(from Imperfect Things)

 

I'd rather not even bother looking back at 2020. I almost wrote a retrospective about it, but decided not to. Why dredge up so much misery? Instead, I'm looking back 10 years ago to 2011, a year that I began by deliberately setting no particular goals other than the aforementioned plan of self-imposed winter hibernation. Interestingly, I was able to accomplish a great deal in 2011, not by setting lofty goals for myself, but by just taking things a day at a time. And I think that hibernation period was good preparation for my current social distancing hermitage. Here are 10 things turning 10 this year, in no particular order:

 

1. My artist statement for Post-Consumerism  

2011 was when I finally came up with an artist statement about Post-Consumerism that I found satisfactory. Here's my blog post about it.

2. Verdant 

Verdant still reminds me of ripe avocados.

3. Fall in Love With Art

 

2011 was the year I had my very first Fall in Love with Art event at my studio for Valentine's Day. A serendipitous discovery of a beautiful Black Barbie doll wearing a dress covered in red lipstick kisses (while wandering the aisles at Target) inspired me to create a photo series showcasing miniature artwork with a Valentine's Day theme.

 

4. Ruby Horizon

 

My second commissioned painting, Ruby Horizon, was made for my cousin's home.

 

5. Weeping May Endure for a Night 

 The final painting of the Dark Night of the Soul series.

6. Mod Era Doll Project Photos

 2011 was when I started to extend the timeline of The Doll Project series.

 

7. Composition in Primaries 

 Composition in Primaries was my first multicolor Post-Consumerist painting.

 

8. Frozen Bride 

 A visual depiction of what being in a long engagement can feel like.

9. Flower Power Collage

 

I made this collage in the spring of 2011 when my outlook on life was improving. There's no blog post about it, but it is available in my Zazzle store on variety of products.

10. Cerulean Rhapsody

Cerulean Rhapsody is still my biggest painting, made from the box my easel was shipped in, inspired by the color of my laptop (which is also turning 10 this year!). 

Finally, here's something turning 5 this year: my young adult novel, A Bitter Pill to Swallow. I published the final version January 20th, 2016. 

 

 

Looking back at 2011 helps me as I look forward in 2021. And hopefully this year will be better for all of us.