Creative Spirit and the Value of Audience
Artists are people driven by the tension between
the desire to communicate
and the desire to hide.
The man is only half himself,
the other half is his expression
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “The Poet”
Isolation is the perfect time to create. All creatives—inventors, visual artists, poets, authors, musicians, performers, filmmakers, the person behind the superhero mask—typically find that solitude helps the creative spirit to find us and become our Muse.
And when the act of creation happens, something magical happens. Creation creates. Our art takes over. Our characters make choices. Our poetry makes our hands flow over the keyboard or with the pen. The fiction becomes real. And we get to ride the thrilling waves and glide on the wings of it all.
Then, to ourselves, we read or view or listen to or perform our creations, marveling in what has happened—something from nothingness.
At this time, the thrill of creation seems to be all that is important about being a creative.
But then, a strange desire overwhelms us. Suddenly, we want to share this work of art. If we are a poet or musician, we look for an open mic. If a visual artist, we seek a gallery or art show to represent us. A playwright, we connect with a theater, director, producer. And so on...
I will never forget the excitement of the first time I read my poetry in public. An “at home” mom in my thirties, I had just begun graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. I attended a coffee house poetry series—The Runcible Spoon Poetry Series, which featured literary artists such as Pulitzer Prize winners Yusef Komunyakaa and Douglas Hofstadter and Pulitzer Prize nominee Willis Barnstone.
I was a new poet, and I had been reveling in the joy of writing and reading my work to myself, astounded that I had created poetry. As I sat at a back table sipping my decaf latte, the series organizer, Dennis Sipe, placed the open mic clipboard on my table for me to sign. Who, me? Read in public?? Encouraged by Dennis and his friend Steve Gardner—Wow, they want me to read?—I signed, thinking, I can always say, when my name is called, “I’ve changed my mind.”
I doubted that I could ever stand in front of a room full of attentive poetry lovers, coffee drinkers and skilled poets to read what I’d written. I admit, I wanted to. But I was terrified. Terrified.
When I heard the featured and open mic readers, I was enchanted. One recited her work rather than reading it, and I was amazed. And intimidated beyond comparison.
Battling inside me were two strong desires—(1) to stay put in my seat drinking my latte, listening; (2) to stand at the mic, reading aloud what I’d written—to an audience!
Until the moment Dennis called my name, I was not sure which desire I would choose.
And then, when I was called, I did it. I walked to the microphone, said my name and started reading. It was exhilarating! It was as if the poem was reading itself. I was there, separate and not, rather floating above the experience, lingering in bliss.
When I finished and walked back to my seat, everyone clapped! The room was small, but to me, it seemed I walked forever through a parting sea of clapping people. People clapping for me and my poetry! I felt complete elation. This was a total high. I was hooked.
Afterwards, I wrote feverishly. I relentlessly practiced my delivery. I memorized some poems. I sought out additional performance venues for poets. First class or back alley joints. Didn’t matter. I’d become an open mic junkie.
This total high is a particular energy that occurs in the relationship of performer and audience. This particular high happens only when there is audience.
The phenomenon affected me so much that I knew I must learn more about this relationship of performer and audience. So I decided that one of my PhD minors would be Performance Studies, a field that later would help me organize how I would “frame” my dissertation topic.
Performance Studies is a fascinating field, encompassing almost everything humans do. We perform at work, when we converse, when we are featured in rituals such as graduations. My dissertation explores the performance of the three parts of a rite of passage to identity, a psychological and sometimes spontaneous event, a “calling” to the vocation of poet. This will be a topic for a later blog, perhaps…
Later, I even recorded and studied audience reaction to different poets with their styles of delivery at the Spoon series. And when Dennis moved to Washington D.C., he gifted me the position of organizing the Spoon series, which I lovingly ran for several years.
Being a creative in the spotlight, with others who gather to engage with us and with our art, or having our art spotlighted with an audience of one who is reading, viewing or listening to our work, a second creation happens—human community.
Without such forms of communal interaction, community stays static, keeping change and growth at bay.
My studies in this field led me to the story of Oglala Lakota visionary Black Elk. I don’t mean to appropriate Black Elk’s experience or to imply that his rare or unique experience is what all creatives experience or that it can be truly related to other cultures. But I find what he went through provides a way to ponder, as human beings within community, the importance of sharing our “visions” or our art.
At only nine-years-old, Black Elk received a vision taking him beyond his body and lasting twelve days. He relates that when “returning” to his ailing body:
…I lay there thinking about the wonderful place where I had been and all that I had seen, [and] I was very sad; for it seemed to me that everybody ought to know about it, but I was afraid to tell, because I knew that nobody would believe me, little as I was, for I was only nine years old. Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
(qtd. Neihardt, 48-49)
Over the next eight years, Black Elk felt increasingly isolated from community and even acted at times “crazy” as he kept his visionary experience secret. He relates:
…Sometimes the crying of coyotes out in the cold made me so afraid that I would run out of one tepee into another, and I would do this until I was worn out and fell asleep. I wondered if maybe I was only crazy; and my father and mother worried a great deal about me…I could not tell them what was the matter, for then they would only think I was queerer than ever.
(qtd. Neihardt, 164-165)
At seventeen, concerned by his own strange behavior and feelings of estrangement, he finally confided in “an old medicine man by the name of Black Road.” Black Road advised:
You must do your duty and perform this vision for your people upon earth…Then the fear will leave you;
but if you do not do this, something very bad will happen to you.
(qtd. Neihardt, 165)
Again I do not mean offense to this great vision event of the renowned Oglala Lakota wicasa wakan Black Elk nor do I mean to oversimplify, but I read Black Road’s advice in this way:
If you are given the gift of creation, if the Muse visits you, you might need to perform your gift, your art, to your community. Sharing your “visions” could be advantageous for your own health as well as for the health of community.
In Euro-American culture, before radio and television, performing and sharing creative works happened by family members and friends in parlors, each contributing to the entertainment: reading aloud, playing an instrument, singing, dancing… Each also listened and responded.
When radio and television entered the family sphere of living rooms, tech-forms took center stage, becoming the sole performers, relegating the humans breathing in the room to being audience members always, never performers.
And the tech-form performer in the room is, of course, unresponsive to and even unaware of us, its audience. We don’t even clap because the performer is not really there. No human recognition happens. The energy between performer and audience isn’t created.
Additionally, in today’s society, typically someone has to “earn” an audience by first achieving some type of societal status.
Here’s the beauty of open mics and the many sharing events that creatives offer each other: we take turns stepping up to be “featured” and we also take our “seat” to engage with and support the creative work of others. Open mics are the contemporary parlors where people alternate in performing and listening, sharing our creativity.
In our current pandemic “moment,” some of us have more isolation and solitude in which to create than B.C.-19 (Before Covid-19). We all have more opportunities to share our work and to support the art of others because, resilient in creating community, we nearly overnight became an expansive cyber culture. In fact, Zoom rooms, taking us into the homes of both performers and audience members globally, are another form of contemporary parlors.
Joining Zoom rooms will never be the same experience as people gathering in a vibrant theatre or an aroma-filled coffee house or a cozy bookstore or an uplifting art gallery, applauding our creativity with vibrant clapping or appreciative comments. But, video communication does allow us to include people from anywhere in the world, which, in my opinion, is a beautiful thing.
In summary, I see creativity as a four-act play:
1. The Act of Creation (usually in isolation; solitude is important)
2. The Act of Revision and Practice (often in isolation; community for feedback is helpful)
3. The Act of Delivering Art to an Audience (with community, either in person, in publication, or via online options)
4. The Act of Audience Response (with and from community: clapping; comments at the event or later; comments on blogs; supportive, positive reviews for published works on any of the review sites; chats among audience and with presenters on interactive video conferencing, on webinars or on Facebook live events.)
Just as Dennis and Steve encouraged me years ago, I encourage you to join open mics as a creative. (Often, people are invited to be featured creatives after participating in open mics.)
I also encourage you to be part of the community supporting creative works by attending online events highlighting creativity or by commenting on blogs or providing supporting reviews. If you choose to be audience and not performer, that’s great, too. Audience is essential and invaluable in fostering creativity and growth of community.
In fact, I would say audience is crucial.
I invite you to try, if you haven’t already, Creatives in Conversation Hour, which is just one free online sharing venue—there are many. Creatives in Conversation gives creatives of an array of creative forms—including arts (literary, visual, musical, performing), business, and non-profits—a chance to feature their creativity, perform, and to also support others.
Such online gatherings are ways we build community, share visions, and grow.
Work cited: Neihardt, John G., Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Ogalala Sioux (New York: MJF Books, 1972).
“Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving.”
― Jodi Picoult, Second Glance
Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”
― James Baldwin, quoted in Life Magazine (24 May 1963)
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
“In writing, words can be magic. We spell words and, arranged well, they can put a spell on us.”
— Mary Dezember, marydezember.com
Photo by Mark Williams on Unsplash
“Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
Blog author Mary Dezember, shown standing between two of her community, son Sean Ritchel and daughter Elaine Ritchel, after her reading and launch for Still Howling, hosted by Strangers Collective (in Santa Fe, NM), 2016.
about the blog author
Mary Dezember, PhD, is a poet and author of fiction and non-fiction. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature, specialization in Comparative Arts, from Indiana University in 2000, with PhD minors in Art History and Performance Studies. Professor of English, she teaches Comparative Arts, Art History, Creative Writing and Literature at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Her publications include several non-fiction essays and articles and two books of poetry: Earth-Marked Like You (Sunstone Press) and Still Howling (CreateSpace Independent Publishing). Her novel, Wild Conviction, is in the works to be published by Inkshares.
Shown performing at her Still Howling launch hosted by Strangers Collective, 2016.