Good story. I just read the NYT review of Jonathan Gottschall's The Storytelling Animal and have purchased it on my Kindle. I could work anywhere amidst anything... except people watching me paint (and maybe that's a crucial point that reveals my preference for creative solitude). Either alone or not, I'm a firm believer in make-believe, or the compulsion to make up stories even when engaged in present, demanding activities. Once when driving a came to a four-way stop sign. Cars had stopped at all four approaches. Which driver would go ahead first? We all waited for the other fellow's decision. I imagined that we were all inventing stories about that, quickly determining a scenario, even playing out an instantaneous collision, shooting, near miss, and the repercussions to be faced:death, injury, lawsuits, family tragedy, costs, or even sudden good fortune. It could be the beginning of a novel. In my painting I realize that the best fun is creating narratives about the shapes and colors as I work. In the end I think the painting becomes a prompt for storytelling. I've got a large show opening next week at an Illinois museum. I've titled it Narrative Abstraction. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, August 5, 2012 9:32:13 AM Subject: Re: Does your artistic creativity require more "stillness"? In a message dated 8/4/12 8:03:59 PM, [email protected] writes: > Wasn't it Dickens who wrote surrounded by a house-full of unruly, > screaming > brat-kids? > Yes. In his noisy living room on Doughty street, he would sit, evidently absorbed in his writing, and then utter aloud a pertinent comment on a remark made in a far corner of the room. Twain also wrote surrounded by children. When I was a book publisher, one of "my" authors was the Yorkshire veterinarian James Herriot. Before he began writing he was a good raconteur. After recounting an engaging description of some episode in his work, he'd frequently say, "I should write that down." At last, when he was about fifty, his wife told him, "You always say that, but you never do it." Properly chastised, he made himself sit alone at his typewriter while his wife and two children were out in the living room watching tv. James felt lonesome, deprived of the fun -- and he wasn't writing. At last he dragged his typewriter table into the living room. Only there, surrounded by his family and the tv, could he begin to write. In fact, he found his nomde plume on the tv (his real name was Alf Wight): He was watching what we call "soccer" and the goalie's name was Jim Herriot.
