Something not often mentioned in the creative process is the repeated willingness one must possess to do things badly.
I was recently reading a chapter in a book called “Writing Down the Bones” where the author shares about her thousands upon thousands of spiral bound journals filled with bad writing.
Because bad writing is necessary.
Not everything that comes out of us is fully formed and perfect.
In fact, any artist of any kind worth their salt knows that one must be willing to create badly.
I’m reminded of an interesting practice I came across a few years back by an artist called “making ugly art”. The whole idea of the practice is intentionally making ugly art.
Not “art nouveau”.
Literally making the ugliest thing possible.
She demonstrates using colours, intentionally making incongruent mixes of mud devoid of any knowledge or awareness of colour theory. Even her shapes are intentionally bad.
Scribbles.
Scratches.
Pressing too hard on the pencil crayons.
Intentional ugly scribbles and clashing textures and mediums.
It’s ok, she says, for it to look like a muddy mess.
If you haven’t tried making ugly art, I highly recommend it.
Something happens.
There is something liberating. The physicality, the permission, the anger, sadness, and stubborn apathy … suddenly have a place to land on the page in front of you.
It doesn’t have to mean anything afterwards.
It doesn’t have to be shared or analyzed.
It’s done when you are.
And yet the simplicity of creating ugliness unleashes something within the creative soul.
No, not unleashes, but perhaps unclogs.
The way that sometimes a plumber is required to clear constipated pipes.
Yes.
I chose those words because that’s precisely what it is.
A kind of energetic, emotional, apathetic, creative conception of sorts.
Like in many circumstances, I don’t often find it helpful to dig for why. Does it really matter?
Is it helpful or constructive to analyze the decaying plant matter and mull it over and over again?
I think it’s more productive to make compost.
Ugly art is this.
It all goes in the same pot.
No matter if it doesn’t “go” together.
Much like compost, the process, the mixing, the alchemy is greater than the ingredients that went into the mixture.
Why do we as adults become increasingly less tolerant of doing things badly?
Why does our capacity for failure become so precariously fragile?
Perhaps one of the biggest truths and secrets in creativity and living a creative life is developing our willingness to do things badly.
To spend money on hundreds of journals that will be filled with bad writing.
To spend precious resources on beautiful paint, canvas, and cold pressed papers and be willing to “ruin” them in our learning.
How many brush strokes does it take to master your paintbrush?
How many pages and pages must you must write in order to uncover one small gem worth sharing with the world?
Many.
The truth of the matter is ugly art is a requirement of the process.
In a recent post, I wrote in part about my own healing process.
Healing too, is an art.
A creative process.
And so, I must ask myself time and time again.
Am I willing to do this, too, badly?
Am I willing to not know the answers and let the questions come through me in their own time?
Am I willing to splatter paint on the walls of my own existence, throw caution to the wind of colour theory, and any other rules that exist only in our current perception?
In Kim Krans’ archetype work, one of the cards is “The Vessel”.
I can’t help but wonder about our own bodies as a creative work in a way.
In the study of embryology we discover that our cells are alchemized in a kind of death and reimagining process that repeats itself again and again. You would assume that this creative process, this imagining and reimagining of the cells in what is to become our form, our organs, our nervous system, brain … you would assume this process has some kind of completion point, perhaps at birth, but you would be wrong.
We are not born “complete” finished products like a bun out of the oven so-to-speak.
As you and I are both aware our development – this death/rebirth creative process – continues onward through infancy, childhood, adolescence … but surely as adults we are now fully formed?
Not even close!
Surprisingly, the very same creative process – the dance of life literally between spirit and cell – continues on and on, over and over again until death and then perhaps even beyond as we slowly return to the earth.
All of this brings me to wonder …
Is ugly art even ugly?
Are all of these failed attempts at the creative process perhaps just an aspect of the creative process?
Is writing badly over and over again perhaps just required not as part of “junk” but part of reimagining something we can’t yet imagine?
What if the ultimate goal isn’ the finished piece?
How would be approach our creative process without “success” in mind?
What would come through us then?
I can only imagine.