If you want to become a
really good artist, musician, writer, scientist – If you want to do creative
work in any field, you need a distraction free environment and an unlimited period of unbroken time. There
are people who claim they can create in chaos but I don’t believe them. Some
can work with distraction around them, but not create. If you want to be
innovative in any field, you must arrange your life so that when ideas
finally begin to flow, you can stay with them as long as necessary. EVERY
creative person I know,or have read about, insists on solitude without
interruptions. If you have to stop to put wash in the dryer or answer the
phone, the FLOW is lost, often never to be retrieved. You will be amazed at the
difference unbroken time makes in the quality of your work. If you’re writing
poetry for example, you can’t get up every ten minutes to check your e-mail, or
answer the phone; it disrupts the rhythm of what you are doing and you have to
start all over again. Not everybody has a life they can control that way, but
if you can’t fully immerse yourself in your work for a distraction free period
of time, nothing terribly new and interesting is going to happen and you are
going to do the same old, same old again. That’s why so many creative people
stop being creative once they achieve success. The phone keeps ringing; they
have to give talks, go to parties, be celebrities, etc.,etc. They probably did
their most significant work before becoming famous. The smart ones know
how to protect their “flow” and, like Philip Roth with his writing cabin in the
woods can keep coming up with new ideas into old age.
When you start looking at
the lives of “geniuses,” most seem to have done their best creative work when
young. I don’t believe it’s age that stops the flow of ideas, it’s the
obligations of a mature life (marriage, children) coupled with the distractions
of worldly success. Einstein did his most innovative work before he became a
celebrity. I’ve read that most math geniuses made their discoveries when they
were young (and had lots of undisturbed time). Artists like Picasso might live
in social turmoil during the day but do their creative work at night when no
one is around. I remember reading a biography of the artist Philip Guston, one
of my favorites. He would lock himself in his home studio and (despotically)
insist on total silence in the house. His long suffering wife and children were
ordered never to make as sound; no phone calls or visitors were allowed,
anything that would disrupt the flow of the “great man at work” was forbidden.
And it paid off with the best, most creative art of his life.
Renee Kahn
