Read the full transcript of stage writer, director, and performer TJ Dawe’s talk titled “Can Creativity Save Your Life?” at TEDxSurrey 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Lost Joy of Creativity
Was there some creative thing that you did when you were a kid that lit you up inside, just filled you with joy, and you don’t do it anymore? And if the answer is yes, do you have any sense of why you stopped? It could be for any number of reasons. Maybe somebody else poured water on the fire of your desire to do that creative thing by making fun of you when you did it, or by not casting you in the school play.
Or maybe your very well-intentioned parents steered you towards something safe and practical. Or maybe you reached a certain age and the world just asserted itself and it took everything you’ve got just to stay alive and solvent and sane, especially if you have kids. Or maybe you did what I did and poured water on your own fire. Growing up, I hated playing outside, I couldn’t stand sports, but I loved exploring my imagination with a pencil and a piece of paper.
I drew all the time until I hit my late teens and I got frustrated with my own abilities and I thought, “If I’m not good enough to do this professionally, why do it at all?” And I quit. Or maybe you poured water on your own fire with a story you told yourself, like a friend of mine did. A friend of mine used to say to himself all the time, “I’m not creative, I work with people who are creative.”
Discovering Hidden Creativity
And then one day he heard himself saying this and he thought, “Wait a minute, is that actually true?
And if it is, does it need to be?” My partner and I run creativity workshops and the first thing we do at the beginning of the day is we go around the circle, each person there says their name and then they say what inspired them to come.
So we’re doing this one time, this one guy says his name and then he says, “I’m here because my wife wanted to come. I don’t have a creative bone in my body,” which is absolutely fine. We do the day’s exercises, at the end of the day we go around the circle again and we ask each person to say one thing they got out of the day. And this same guy says, “Today I came up with an idea for my third novel.” So not creative, huh?
I believe every single one of our lives would be better if we did some creative thing with at least some of our time. Not for money, not for fame, but just because it feels good. And what if that was all you needed to give yourself permission to do that creative thing? Feeling good.
Let me flesh out what I mean by feeling good. A few years ago I met a guy by the name of Keith Alessi. He had been a corporate CEO for his entire adult life and he was very good at it. He was well-paid, he was recognized, and then partway through his career he started teaching law school part-time.
He really enjoyed doing that. And then in his 60s he retires to finally get around to his secret passion, the banjo. Over the course of his life he had bought 52 banjos. Never played them.
He put them in a closet. Now he’s retired. Time to open that closet. Two weeks later he’s diagnosed with cancer. The doctors tell him he has a 50% chance of surviving one year and a 5% chance of surviving five years. He commits to his cancer treatment and boy does he commit to learning those banjos. He starts learning. He starts getting better.
And then he reaches out to a friend who had worked in theater and she helps him do something he had never done anything remotely like this before. He devises a stage show telling this exact story, including playing the banjo. And then he starts touring this, the theater festivals and small theaters and anywhere he can find an audience. And an interesting thing starts happening to him.
After every performance audience members want to meet him. And they want to talk with him. And they want to share their stories about creativity. Or about loved ones who’ve battled cancer.
He told me that the three careers he had in his life, if you rank them by pay and prestige, they go like this: Corporate CEO, law school professor, banjo playing storyteller. But if you rank them in terms of joy and fulfillment, the order goes like this: Banjo playing storyteller, law school professor, corporate CEO.
I asked him what advice he would have for anybody who has their own closet full of banjos and he said, “Take them out. See where they take you. They probably won’t take you where you think they’re gonna. They will probably take you where you need to go.”
Keith plays the banjo every day. He does the show whenever and wherever he can. He glows with love. And he’s eight years past his diagnosis.
Making Creativity a Regular Practice
Now I’m not saying that we should all quit our jobs and become full-time storytelling banjo troubadours. What I am saying is there is no need to wait till you retire to do that creative thing that’s in your heart of hearts. There’s no need to wait till next month. If we all did our version of playing the banjo with at least some of our time, we would do less stress snacking, less stress shopping, and less arguing online.
So if you would like to make creativity a regular part of your life, here are two very simple workarounds to make that happen. Because as easy it is to step into the creative space, it’s also really hard. But it’s really simple. So here are two workarounds.
Workaround number one, accountability. Practically nobody can bootstrap themselves into regular creative practice. It helps so much if you have somebody on your side in your corner. This can be a teacher who runs a class that you’ve signed up for.
This can be a tutor that you’ve hired just to work with you or a creativity coach. If you do this, these people give you deadlines. They give you feedback. And if you’ve slapped money down, that can be the exact difference between doing and not doing the thing that you desperately want to do.
Another way to get accountability is to find an accountability buddy. My friend Erica and I do this. Once a week on Fridays for about 20 minutes, we Zoom and we talk about what creative things we did that week and what creative things we hope to do in the coming week. You can get accountability by collaborating.
Or here’s one I stumbled on, by working alongside somebody. I co-teach an online class on how to create a one-person show. And part of that class is a once-a-week, online, optional, shut-up-and-write session. Here’s how it works.
At the appointed time, anybody who wants to logs on and we chat. We check in. And then after a certain point, each person says, “Well, here’s what I plan on writing today. Here’s what I want to work on today. Here’s what I’m going to work on today.” And then after a little bit, whoever’s leading says, “Okay, everybody, for the next hour and 15 minutes, let’s shut up and write.” And then you know what happens? We shut up and we write.
It’s always a surprise to everybody involved because we’re all self-conscious. We’re all roiling with negative self-talk. We’re all anxious. And yet, we get into the zone and we write.
And nobody is looking over anybody’s shoulder. You could be scrolling, you could be watching videos, but nobody does. We do it. And I’m not quite sure why.
Maybe it’s because we’ve all known that this chunk of time was coming all week, so our creative minds have been cooking stuff up for us, whether we realize it or not. Or maybe it’s because we’re not in this alone. There’s other people there. And the shared intention just kind of lifts us all up because we’re all in this together.
Maybe it’s not those things. Maybe it’s something else entirely that I haven’t thought of. I don’t know. I don’t need to know. All I know is that it works. It’s simple. It’s free. It’s the easiest thing to set up.
So if anybody here wants to set up their own shut up and write session, you can do it. This is not proprietary. All you need is two people. You can do it in person, you can do it online, and it doesn’t even have to be with writing.
You can shut up and draw. You can shut up and macramé. You can shut up and cook. And that brings us to workaround number two.
Workaround Two: Rewriting Your Story
Workaround number one is practical. Workaround number two is conceptual, and here it is. Rewrite your story. Write the story you’ve been telling yourself about your relationship with creativity.
Have you been telling yourself you’re not good, or that you’re not good enough? Have you been telling yourself you’re not creative at all? And if you have, ask yourself, is that actually true, and if it is, does it need to be? And if the answer you’re coming up with is yes, take a look at the things you do over the course of an absolutely ordinary day, like putting a sandwich together, or making the bed, or arranging the objects in a room, or posting something on social media, or describing something to a friend, or taking a rectangle of dirt and turning it into marigolds and zucchinis.
Every single one of those things is creative, and if you do any of those things, guess what? You’re creative. You can think of yourself like that. You can turn the dials up on that part of yourself if you want to.
So if you would like to step into the creative space, here’s a first easy step for anybody. Set aside five minutes, and that’s it, just five minutes. Five minutes, and then, during that five minutes, doodle a silhouette of a cat, or fold a napkin into a slightly more interesting shape than you otherwise would have, or play three chords on the instrument of your choice, or write down a description of a moment you can remember where time stood still, or put on a song you absolutely love and wiggle your body to it. Congratulations, you’ve just done something creative.
Then the next day, do it again for five minutes. Who can’t spare five minutes? And again the next day, and the next day, weave this into your life, incorporate this into your sense of yourself, reignite the spark of that desire to do something creative. Doesn’t matter if you make a dime. Doesn’t matter if anyone ever finds out that you do this. The only thing that matters is doing it, how it feels, how it changes you. Thank you. Thank you.
