Being a creative artist involves a unique set of perils different from other vocations. A real estate agent may commit suicide after his company goes bankrupt; a depressed novelist may kill himself over an unsatisfying paragraph (a slight exaggeration, but not by much). Exaggeration or not, creative artists are a notoriously anguished lot; while some of us might be well-adjusted and perfectly content with our lives, a great many of us suffer from constant self-doubt, chronic depression, violent mood swings, drug and alcohol addiction; some succumb to madness, others to paralysis, others to suicide. Most people assume that this is just part of the bargain of being a creative artist—that this is the way it’s always been and always will be. (Which is why up until 2008 your mother probably preferred you become a real estate agent than a novelist.) But is it inevitable that creative artists must live tortured lives, or is there another path available to us—one that might spare us from a life of anguish, addiction, and madness?

This was the question posed in a TED talk by author Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) a little over a year ago. For nearly twenty minutes, Gilbert argues that (1) artists since the Renaissance have been under the belief—or more accurately, the delusion—that they are the source of their own genius; and (2) that this delusion may in fact be the root cause of much of the suffering, madness, and self-destruction that characterize the lives of creative artists in the modern, post-Renaissance era. Gilbert goes on to explain that that this modern view of genius is starkly different from the Greco-Roman view; for the Greeks and Romans, creativity didn’t come from human beings, it came to human beings. This view served as a “protective psychological construct” that kept the artist both humble and sane. Humble, because the artist could never entirely take credit for his or her work. Sane, because if the work wasn’t good, it wasn’t entirely the artist’s fault—he or she could blame it partially on having a “lame” Genius.

In light of the grim personal history of creative artists in the post-Renaissance era, and in light of the anxieties Gilbert began to experience after her own literary success, she advocates a return to this Greco-Roman view of creativity. True, appealing to muses, fairies, daemons, and gnomes for our creative inspiration may run counter to our firmly entrenched rational beliefs; but it may also save the lives of our creative artists. As Gilbert says, “[I think it’s] better if we encourage our great creative minds to live.”

Soon after it was posted, the video of Gilbert’s talk quickly went viral, and has been seen nearly half a million times on YouTube alone (I myself account for three of those times). Clearly Gilbert’s “Big Idea” resonated with a lot of people—especially with other creative artists, since all of us have struggled with the anxieties that come from believing that we are the source of our own genius (or mediocrity). Such a creative belief system, to borrow Gilbert’s phrase, is like “asking somebody to swallow the sun.” It’s not only an impossible task; it’s also a potentially self-destructive one.

Indeed, Gilbert’s phrase about “swallowing the sun” is remarkably apt, since several ancient stories deal with characters whose major offense against God/the gods was hubris—and often their hubris involved reaching for or flying too close to the sun.

Exhibit A: The god Prometheus, who was sentenced to an eternity of endless torture for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to human beings.

Exhibit B: Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, and as a consequence burned his wings and plunged to his death.

Exhibit C: The biblical story of the Tower of Babel (which is personally my favorite story about the dangers of creative hubris). According to the story, the ruler Nimrod commissioned his people to build a tower that would rise to the top of heaven itself. They began to build the tower and succeeded in making significant progress. However, from up on high, God saw this and wasn’t pleased: “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). True to his word, God “confounded” their speech, so that Nimrod’s people, who formerly spoke one language, could no longer understand each other. As a result, they stopped working on the tower and scattered to various parts of the earth.

Consider these stories for a moment, especially in light of Gilbert’s “Big Idea.” Isn’t Prometheus the prototype of the modern creative artist—Percy Bysshe Shelley and his Romantic contemporaries certainly thought so—a hero-martyr willing to endure a lifetime of suffering in order to bestow something of value to mankind? Isn’t Icarus the reckless artist who ignores his limitations, and whose recklessness becomes his undoing?And hasn’t every creative artist, at some point in their lives, felt like the people working on the Tower of Babel? One moment you’re totally unified in purpose, actively making progress on your art, when suddenly your mind splinters into dozens of conflicting inner voices, each speaking a different “language” (doubt, megalomania, anxiety, despair) all of them threatening to undermine your creative endeavor—and perhaps your sanity.

While not all of these stories are ostensibly about the creative process, they nevertheless contain an important insight, anticipated by the ancients and borne out by the private lives of creative artists since the Renaissance: reaching for the sun is dangerous business. And ultimately, that’s what every creative endeavor is (or at least should aspire to be): a reaching for the sun, a bold attempt to attain the heights of heaven and live to tell about it. Of course, embarking on any bold creative endeavor is a sure way to trigger the forces of self-sabotage, inner confusion, and torment. In the above-mentioned stories, punishment was meted out by God/the gods; but in our own era, creative artists have become quite adept at inflicting punishment on ourselves, as the lives of artists from Edgar Allan Poe to Kurt Cobain tragically illustrate.

The question becomes: is there a way to spare our present-day Prometheuses from a lifetime of suffering? Is it possible to keep the future Icaruses of the world from plunging to their deaths? Is there a way to save our creative minds from succumbing to the inner voices of Babel and descending into self-sabotage? And keep in mind, I am not posing this question as a detached observer, but as a creative artist myself, one who has personally experienced the anguish and self-doubt and “babeling” voices that attend the creative process—and who has also asked himself: “Is there a better way?”

In her TED talk, Gilbert says yes, there is—even if it may seem suspiciously New Age-y to many creative artists and our post-Renaissance, rationalist sensibilities:

Give up on ever becoming a genius. Instead, ask for help from your Genius.

This doesn’t mean that creative artists need to find religion (although if we do, that certainly is our right). What it does mean is that if we want to avoid the dangers of “swallowing the sun,” it would behoove us to create one of those “protective psychological constructs” that separates us from our Genius (lame or otherwise), and by doing so safe-guards our psychological, emotional, and physical well-being.

Admittedly, the idea of separating yourself from your Genius doesn’t fit well with our Romantic notions of individual artistic achievement; nevertheless, many artists since the Renaissance have relied upon such constructs to help them with their creative process.

Walt Whitman, for example, split his personality into three parts: there was “Walt Whitman, one of the roughs,” his mortal, physical self; there was the “Me Myself,” Whitman’s essential self, undisturbed by circumstance, who was, as he put it in “Song of Myself,” “Both in and out of the game and watching wondering at it”; and finally, there was “The Soul,” the ultimate cosmic source of Whitman’s creative genius that occasionally allowed him to merge with it to write works of incredible poetic power.

A contemporary artist who relies upon such a construct is the novelist Stephen Pressfield. Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art, unabashedly admits to invoking the Muse to help him combat “Resistance,” his term for the impersonal forces that seek to undermine and sabotage our creative endeavors. As a former Marine, Pressfield sees the creative process as a battlefield, one that the artist must return to everyday. But in order for the artist-as-soldier not to get beaten down by Resistance, he must invoke the aid of the Muse. He can’t win the battle alone.

Finally, acclaimed writer Ray Bradbury, who turned ninety this year, has gone so far as to say that taking credit for his books is in some ways an act of plagiarism. He may have been the vehicle, but his works were actually composed by “the other me”:

Did R.B. write that poem, that line, that speech?
No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.
His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;
Say not my name.
Praise other me.
(“The Other Me,” from Zen in the Art of Writing)

These are just a few examples. There are countless others, and no two constructs need be alike. Whether you view the creative process as a battlefield or a playground is a matter of personal choice. Likewise, who or what you invoke for help is up to you (while other artists may invoke the Muses of antiquity, perhaps your muse bears a strong resemblance to Jerry Garcia). The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter what you call your Genius; it only matters that you call your Genius. But keep in mind, the purpose of these constructs isn’t to make you a great artist. Their purpose, to put it bluntly, is to keep you sane and keep you alive, to function as a buffer between you and the mysteries of creation, between your fragile mortal mind and the awesomeness of the sun. And it’s in invoking our Genius that we realize that our talents, and our occasional bursts of “genius,” are really just gifts sent to us on loan from the Universe. So that our proper attitude to anything we create shouldn’t be “I am a genius” or “I am a failure,” but rather, “I can’t take all the credit.” Or, even better: “Say not my name. Praise other me.”

Granted, an element of madness will always attend the creative process; this can’t, nor I think shouldn’t, be escaped. (As Plato noted, it’s impossible to write great poetry without “the madness of the Muses,” and I think this insight extends to all the arts.) Of course, there’s madness, and then there’s madness—and if creative artists wish to continue doing our work and avoid the risks of “swallowing the sun”—and perhaps even lead happy, well-adjusted lives—we would do well to organize our madness into a workable system. And if that requires us to invoke the aid of God, the gods, fairies, muses, daemons, gnomes, elves, or smiling Jerry Garcias, I for one am perfectly in favor of it.

Entirely rational? Maybe not. But as Gilbert suggests, being rational hasn’t necessarily been good for the happiness and emotional stability of creative artists over the last five hundred years. And although we shouldn’t turn our backs on reason completely, perhaps creative artists need to abandon our “rational” efforts at becoming geniuses, “open up the door,” and in the words of The Beatles, ask our Genius for help.

Who knows—with a little faith and hard work, we just might get it.

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PROFESSOR CLIFTON EAST:

What happens to a dream deferred, brothers and sisters? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

That was the prophetic question posed by that brilliant brother, the poet Langston Hughes, so many years ago, the question that Sister Lorraine Hansbury later investigated in her brilliant play inspired by Brother Langston, and that folks in my generation, the civil rights generation, had to struggle with as we battled against the crippling forces of white supremacy, political injustice, social alienation, and existential despair.

What happens to a dream deferred? It’s a question that all great artists grapple with in one way or another. Whether you’re John Coltrane and your territory is the unpredictable, improvisational battleground of jazz music, or Anton Chekhov and your territory is the unpredictable, improvisational battleground of everyday life, with its countless tales of quiet desperation and broken dreams.

It was the question that Dr. King grappled with and made the unending cause of his life. He grappled with it intellectually, extending the best of the Western Socratic philosophical tradition and fusing that tradition with what he’d learned in the black church — not to mention with what he’d learned from the prophetic teachings of folks like Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi. He grappled with it politically, taking what he’d learned from books and ideas and wedding that to an uncompromising commitment to social justice and racial equality.

And he grappled with it spiritually, because he knew that the civil rights struggle was much bigger than the struggle for racial equality here in America; that it was bigger than passing progressive legislation and electing progressive politicians, that it was bigger than Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers and Emmett Till and those four little girls who died in a church in Birmingham — that ultimately it was even bigger than him.

The civil rights struggle wasn’t a battle over America’s laws; it was a battle over America’s soul. Over whether or not this nation could live up to its own Jeffersonian ideal or continue to live in Jeffersonian denial, over whether white brothers and sisters had the moral courage and political willpower to look into the faces of their black brothers and chocolate sisters and recognize that they too sing America, that they too are America — their skin may be a little darker than mine, the cadence of their voice may be a little different from mine, their moves on the dance floor may be a little more soulful than mine — but they’re my brothers and sisters nonetheless.

Dr. King wasn’t just fighting for the souls of black folks. He was fighting for all our souls. All our dreams. That’s what his dream was all about.

And like Socrates, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, like Mahatma Gandhi, like so many revolutionary freedom fighters before him, Brother Martin chose to lay his life on the line for that dream rather than defer it another day longer.

But these days, brothers and sisters, in the age of Oprah and Obama, we find ourselves asking a different question: what happens to a dream deferred when the president’s a black man?

What happens when you reach the Promised Land — or should I say, when white folks keep telling you that you’ve reached the Promised Land — and suddenly we find that America has partially delivered on the promise of its Founding Fathers by electing an undeniably talented, linguistically gifted, politically astute — if occasionally too politically centrist for my taste — brilliant African-American to the highest office of the land?

Does that mean we now live in a post-racial world where the vicious legacy of racism and white supremacy no longer holds sway on the collective postmodern American psyche?

Is Barack Obama the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream?

Or let me rephrase the question: Is Barack Obama the fulfillment of Dr. King’s Dream or the American Dream?

Because let’s be clear about something, brothers and sisters: those are two totally, fundamentally different dreams. They may share some similarities on the surface, but they’re radically different. The first is the dream of greatness; the second is the dream of success. The first was inspired by the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of man. The second was inspired by the universal desire to be The Man.

Dr. King’s dream was aimed at the downtrodden, sustained by community, and built on love. The American Dream is advertised to the downtrodden, sustained by competition, and built on the free market.

Make no mistake, brothers and sisters: Dr. King didn’t sacrifice his life just so folks could attain the American Dream. He didn’t want you to be successful. He wanted you to be great. He wanted America to be great, to live up to its potential. And in much the same way, I want Obama to be great. But right now all he is is successful.

Now that may impress most folks. Indeed, it should impress folks. Takes a lot of talent and political genius to defeat the Clinton machine, demolish the GOP, create a national grassroots movement made up of progressives, centrists, and disaffected independents and do it as a caramel-complexioned brother with a last name that rhymes with Osama. So yes, the brother is talented. Multi-talented, without
question.

But I know he can do better.

The Irish novelist James Joyce once wrote that history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. After over four hundred years, it seems America is still trying to wake up from, or rather flee away from, its own collective nightmare, the nightmare of slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy. The nightmare of American poverty and America’s failed war on drugs and Hurricane Katrina. (Personally, I’m still trying to wake up from the nightmare of The Jonas Brothers, but that’s a different story.)

And perhaps many Americans hoped — audaciously hoped — that by electing Barack Obama as our President, we could finally lay the Ghost of America’s Pernicious Racial Past to rest, never to be disinterred or disturbed or mentioned or alluded to ever again.

Racism? “We solved it. Just look at Obama.” Systemic barriers to opportunity? “We fixed them. Just look at Obama.” Police brutality? Economic inequality? The insidious problem of the color line? “Stop complaining, black man. Just look at Obama.”

Now, as much as I love and admire Brother Barack, he ain’t Harry Potter. He’s not the Chosen One. And to all those white folks, and even some folks of color, who may believe that we now live in a post-racial utopia where everything is peaches and honey, and that we’re all just riding on one great big post-racial love train, allow me to reply with a less than intellectually rigorous yet straight-to-the-point rebuttal: bull-turkey.

We must come to realize that although we’ve made wonderful progress, tremendous progress, audacious progress when it comes to race relations in this country, despite all that, we have not yet reached the Promised Land, I’m afraid.

So when will we reach the Promised Land?

When America grows out of its perpetual adolescence and becomes a nation of adults. When each and every one of us becomes maladjusted to injustice. When we stop confusing success with greatness. When love, and not the dollar or the euro or the yen, becomes the true global currency. When we let go of our fantasies of wealth and decadence and 15-minutes of viral video fame and face our nightmares. Because as Dr. King knew, we can only reach our dreams by facing our nightmares.

And who knows — maybe we’ll never reach the Promised Land. Maybe I’m being too optimistic, too pessimistic, too unrealistic, maybe I’m simply too maladjusted to injustice and I should just stop complaining and accept the fact that what we’ve got now is probably the best we’re gonna get. Least in my lifetime.

Well, the only thing I can say to that is to quote that brilliant brother John Lennon: “You might say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.”

Arriving at the Promised Land isn’t the point. The point isn’t to live in the Promised Land. The point is to imagine the Promised Land. And to do everything you can to get there. And as long as my mind is sound, my body is strong, and my soul is lifted, I’m gonna keep on imagining, I’m gonna keep on fighting, and I’m gonna keep on dreaming. About greatness, not about success.

So what does happen to a dream deferred, brothers and sisters?

I guess it all depends on which dream we’re talking about.

I have enjoyed and taken inspiration from these sixty seconds for many months now. This is really astonishing, inspirational commerce-art:

The spot is called “O’ Pioneer” and it is one of the core components of an ambitious marketing campaign put together by Levi’s and their advertising agency, Widen + Kennedy. The campaign went live last year, ever so cleverly, on the Fourth of July and linked the Levi brand with a new and energetic take on the American dream. The ad at hand was directed by the up-and-coming filmmaker M. Blash; but the imagery was inspired, perhaps overseen, by veteran photographer Ryan McGinley, who also shot the print and outdoor materials for the campaign. The copy is actually poetry. It’s an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Pioneers! O Pioneers” read all grainy and raspy by the Will Gear.

My praise for the spot is both straightforward and complex. Straightforward because electric (and patriotic) poetry overlaid onto fevered, sexually-charged visuals strikes all the right cords in my heart. The glammed up apocalyptic look and Christopher McCandless-esque models further resonate with me. And finally, that high voltage, that evangelically taut summons, flashed at the end (––Go Forth––) makes me want to get off my butt and do what I got to do.

Complex because what is occurring behind the scenes has a sophisticated and thoughtful design. How so? It invokes and coalesces so very much. It’s all here: History, Politics, and Art. July 1776 folds into February 2008: Jefferson and Obama merge. The visual motifs of McGiney revitalize the verse of Whitman. The gold rush pioneer morphs into the post-recession innovator or agent of change. All the while, the quintessentially American Levi brand and its quintessentially American values of self-reliance, hard work, independence, and hopefulness endure.

Yeah man, it just does. I gotta rip off these overpriced Italian jeans, zip on some Levi’s and hit the road.