Introduction to Creativity and Failure

I am backstage at my job as a stage technician. Tonight's performance is an opera showcase. Opera is an infinitely elaborate art, even for a smaller showcase like this one. Performers wear intricate costumes and sing to large audiences without the aid of a microphone. Meanwhile, a screen above their heads displays the English translation of the songs they are singing. The songs themselves require a high degree of technical perfection. When someone is operatically trained, you should expect precision, volume, and evocative singing.

Personally, I love opera. I enjoy the campiness of musical theater, but I struggle to appreciate the cloying sound of ever so many musical theater songs. Opera takes the gaudiness and fanfare of a musical and combines it with the beauty of classical music. For me, this show was a rare opportunity to enjoy opera music live. My job was to escort opera performers to their entrances, an unglamorous task that still made me feel like a valuable contributor to the production.

An image from a performance of Puccini's "Turandot." While our stage's setup for this show was not nearly so elaborate, I think that this image expresses much of what I love about opera. By Н. Ф. Швец, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62857954

 

 

After a stunning solo performance, a performer walked offstage and was met by one of her colleagues. "You did really well," the colleague said.
"No..." the performer replied.

"Really, you did well."

"No, I didn't."

This overheard conversation made me wonder about artistic failure. While I do not have the vocal training to perfectly assess a performance, I had heard this song several times before, and there didn't seem to be any glaring fault in her rendition of it. While, I, as an inexperienced creator of painted, sculpted, sung, and written work, often doubt my artistic performance, I was surprised to see this admission of artistic failure by a professional. At this time, I was absorbed in my ceramics class. Ceramics brought me a kind of unadulterated joy, along with providing a safe space for failure. In academia and the oft-referenced "real world," failure can come with consequences. If you fail exams, you might not pass the class. If you consistently fail to execute work-related tasks correctly, you are likely to get fired.

Meanwhile, in ceramics, failure is just part of the process.

You forget to score the sides of your ceramic ball, and it cracks in half. Next time, you remember.

You decide that using gold glaze over green slip is a good idea. When the piece has been fired, it is a hideous multi-layered brown color. You know to try a different glaze color next time.

Photo credit goes to my ceramics instructor.

You become obsessed with making the sides of your pinch pot even. In the process, you make the walls so thin that the pot requires constant re-hydration and begins to crack. You scrap the project and start over, knowing to be less of a perfectionist next time.

The opera singer's sense of failure and my own experiences with failure led me to choose failure and creativity as my project topic for my Rhetoric of Creativity class. During my exploration of this topic, I have begun to wonder about how non-artistic failures impact creativity. How do professional failures and failed relationships impact creativity? I think about the artists--Vincent Van Gogh, for instance--who have created from the depths of mental illness and profound instability. Personally, I cannot separate failure from depression. Depression manifests differently for each individual, but my depression often comes from a sense of being in the cool clutches of past/present/imminent failure. It comes from a sense of profound shame. I conjugate my failure in the past, present, and future tenses (I have failed / I am failing / I will fail).

To me, the comfort of great art is that it, by necessity, must come from failure. Like a beginning ceramicist, the artist must perfect their craft through a series of failures. And, like the professional opera singer, they may find that they continue to encounter failure along their artistic journey.

My next blog post will focus on creativity and failure in the midst of COVID-19. In the meantime, I want to hear from you in the comments! How have your failures--either professional or creative--impacted your creativity? How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted your creativity?

Best wishes,

Lydia