I’ve mostly stopped reading the creativity-guide genre, having read enough of them to not only recognise it as a genre, but also to be familiar with the tropes that make it such. But I remembered Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit being enduringly popular during my time in the library service in Po-town—particularly among the sort of folk who would not be borrowing Seven Habits or Who Moved My Cheese—and I was curious to know whether a dancer/choreographer would have any distinctive takes. So when a copy floated by last month, I thought “OK, why not”.
For the most part, it’s still a genre piece, of course—though a fairly upmarket and literary take on it, and I liked her voice on the page: self-confident, but without either cockiness or any chips on the shoulder. There were also a few new-to-me riffs and ways of looking at things: thinking of a work in terms of its spine, for instance, as distinct from its theme, and a way of looking generosity which was revelatory enough to merit my clipping it here a few weeks back.
What really stuck with me, though, is the emphasis she puts on discernment and judgement as a creative/artistic capacity. Because Tharp’s role has an extensive managerial component—running a dance troupe and getting a show from first concept to opening night sounds like a truly gargantuan undertaking, and makes me glad I’m a writer, obliged only to manage imaginary persons and situations—she talks as much about the need to assess potential colleagues and collaborators, if not more. I’m sure she has to assess the work-in-progress, too, though here it seems she relies more on trusted others; that self-confidence seems to kick in quite early for her—thanks, it seems fair to assume, to what seems to have been an incredibly supportive upbringing—allowing her to get the thing made without questioning it too much.
As for me, I’m always questioning my own stuff, right from the get-go—and while this is almost certainly a manifestation of discernment and judgement, it’s also often detrimental to the work itself (or at least to the finishing of the work) which is perhaps why I’ve never thought of it as an artistic capacity. Quite to the contrary: I’ve always assumed it’s the cross I bear for having been a critic at the same time I was learning to write.
One of Tharp’s stories convinced me otherwise. I forget the name, but she briefly mentions a famous New York playwright who made a point of going to a lot of truly awful shows, on the logic that he could actually learn a lot more from a failed effort than a success. This really clicked for me, and made me realise how much of what I do is entirely powered by this sort of discernment. I struggle to do it with my own work, until it’s had some time to lie fallow—and with fiction-for-foresight gigs, that time is lacking, more often than not!—but I have a frankly merciless eye for other people’s writing, fiction or otherwise. This is why I’m a good copyeditor, and a good (if challenging) collaborator on creative projects: it may take me a while to work out exactly why, but I know when something is not right, and I’ll find a way to fix it.
Somewhat ironically, perhaps, that knowledge is often pre-verbal, which is why it can take a while to work out the “why” of the wrongness. It is also to some extent subjective, as are all artistic instincts—but not entirely, and perhaps not even mostly. With hindsight I think my assumption that it was almost entirely subjective is what allowed me to dismiss it as a genuine creative capacity; there is, in my head at least, quite a gap between “that’s not right” and “I think that’s not right”.
But as this idea of Tharp’s has sat with me these last few weeks, I’ve come to believe that gap should be closed, or at least narrowed.
There is, to be plain, a great deal of shit writing in the world these days, even before we start counting the generative slop. This is an inevitable function of the democratisation of the means of production and (to a lesser extent) distribution—a democratisation which, to be clear, I have myself benefitted from.
The really blunt way to put this would be to say that a bit of cultural elitism might not be a bad thing right now. By way of illustration, the surging enthusiasm of Hollywood for “AI” scripting tools, and of the record labels for push-button music-extrusion “solutions”, goes a long way to explain why mainstream movies and music have become so shitty: the people making the decisions about what gets made and marketed simply don’t have the artistic discernment that the job requires. (On this point at least, I am firmly on Team Gioia.)
Yes, there’s still lots of great films being made and music being recorded, way down in the long tail where (to be fair) we were warned they would end up. There’s still good fiction being written, too, but here the problem seems more advanced economically, with the publishers going so hard on chasing the fads of the moment that nothing else gets a look-in.
The bubble is the logic of the age, it seems.
Thing is, I too internalised the dictum of poptimism just as much as anyone. I always thought there was a lot of rubbish about, but I recognised that assessment as subjective, and therefore no more valid than anyone else’s opinion: my trash might well be someone else’s treasure, etc etc.
And my assessment is subjective, of course—but it is also informed. It is trained, educated and exercised. It is discerning. It hasn’t made me rich, but it has kept me employed—and that’s no small achievement in these turbulent times.
I’m not about to declare war on landfill literature, because what would be the point? But I am going to stop telling myself off for judging things to be crap, and I’m going to start recognising that discernment as an important part of my creative armory and my business offer.
(“Fix that bot-generated report for you, guv? Mum’s the word!“)
Artistically as well as economically, the internet promised us a world without gatekeepers. What it actually gave us was a new set of gatekeepers: algorithmic, inscrutable, proprietary, rigged; interested only in Number Go Up.
I like these new gatekeepers no more than the old ones; perhaps even less, at this point. But when you live on a street teeming with hucksters and hawkers and carpetbaggers of every stripe, and the guests you actually want can’t make it through the importuning crowd, you start to realise that some sort of gatekeeper would be a good thing to have. If we don’t want them imposed from on high, then they’ll have to come from the bottom up.
And, well: “be the change you want to see,” and all that jazz. I’ve basically argued myself around to reprising the role of minor cultural critic, haven’t I? We’ll see how that goes; I had more time (and energy) two decades ago than I do now.
But at least now I understand properly what criticism is for, and what are the stakes. Look around: you get the art you accept.
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