On mining the messy feelings in creative ways

& week 6 of 52

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you” -Hafiz

It’s Week 6! Are you with me?

When I think about this year-long experiment, I think about how not to waste time and, instead, embody each moment. I think about taking all my messy feelings and putting them to work.

I think less about managing emotions and more about listening to them. After all, creativity can be sophisticated reactivity. Feelings like anger and angst have fueled much of my creative work, especially when I was fresh out of grad school.

I’ve been angry lately, but I won’t tell you why. Not yet. Instead, I’ll broach the topic of anger retrospectively to get to the present. The question driving today’s blog is how we can work with feelings like anger and not let them distract us from the true potency of our experience and artistic voice.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso, painted after the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War

Here’s an example of what used to FUEL me.

As a grad student, I remember the sinister mixture of imposter syndrome and anger, mostly at myself. While I was grateful to be there as a high school dropout, and I met incredible friends and teachers, I also met those who were less supportive or passive-aggressive—the human animations of my inner critic.

“How are you even here?” a semi-famous writer and CNF teacher once asked me.

I didn’t know. And the question asked so overtly in a breakfast diner in Vermont—the farthest I’d ever been away from home—lit a fire.

I began to notice how certain people were groomed for success. Without getting too in the weeds, I saw upclose the literary world was no meritocracy. And even if it had been, I wouldn't have had an advantage. I was academically and monetarily behind.

But my writing sample had gotten me in, and I knew I had a story to tell.

So. From a place of inadequacy and anger, I wrote my thesis draft about how, as a rule, only the wealthy were historically famous writers (esp. memoirists) for a reason—the practice demanded time and resources that people hustling for a living do not have. I wasn’t wrong. I did a lot of research to back up my claim, and my husband, a student of economics, put together an economic model that substantiated my obvious but unspoken truth.

Not surprisingly, I was shot down quickly by a professor (a different one from above) who said, “Your argument is nothing new, and it’s not literary.”

But it felt new. It felt urgent even, because no one talked about the privilege of art in 2008 or 2009. The “no” answer is one I wouldn’t accept today, especially not in my final year (see: AYTL), but at the time I acquiesced and wrote a new paper.

The undercurrent of anger I felt about her response and the guilt at my inability to stick up for my idea fed my desire to write and publish the following years. I was determined to defy the odds. My perspective and experience may not have been new, but they would be shared. I was sure of it.

As counter-productive as that sounds, anger became my friend. She gave me great pep talks. I would share the working-class story and injustices of currency exchanges—socially and professionally—again and again. That’s what I wrote, in myriad stories, for years.

As I matured, my anger about human rights violations broadened. I got slightly more political. Anger led me to explore topics where I felt there was no justice, such as women’s healthcare violations and the sickening cloud of superiority some people seem to be surrounded by. Anger was an endless topic to explore on the page.

Now, I see anger differently.

I still get angry, as aforementioned. And according to the number of listens to my meditation on anger, I’m not alone in feeling the emotion regularly. I think that's just fine. Let’s get angry! I want artists to get angry. I want teachers to get angry. I want good people to get angry. Not to be violent or waste time, but to explore the power of that emotion and see what's on the other side.

What better than anger to note who we are amidst the ever-flowing change of life? What better than an artist's anger to explore the world with less apology and more momentum? After all, we have no time to hide from what's uncomfortable.

That said, we all know how harmful anger is if she sticks around too long. I think of her as that toxic friend who showers you with empty compliments, but after a certain number of hours or days, transforms, stealing back the compliments with veiled jabs.

In the short term, our friend anger can give us a boost. She can visit and tell us to make a mean face. We cross our arms and enjoy the self-satisfaction of a good scowl, and she cheers us on. But if we're truly clear-headed, we notice ourselves in the mirror and can’t help but laugh at our self-importance.

Anger doesn’t understand humor. We say, “A fish swims into a wall …” We say, “Dam!” We say, “Get it?”

But she continues to scowl. “Fucking wall!”

This is when we need to see anger to the door.

I have committed to (and am recommitting to) letting my anger with current events go. I will use it, but I also find humor in the jabs and try to stay humble enough to remember perspective is always limited. Because behind that angry energy, there might be something beautiful, even magical—something like happiness, just waiting, as Hafiz says.

This week, I am focused on working with anger, and moving beyond it. My writing is focused on what lives behind the veils, behind the obvious. And I am nothing short of elated as I allow this unveiling, one week at a time.

AYTL/Writing prompt: You read about my creative journey with anger. Now, explore your own. But if you’re in this yearly challenge, don’t just write. Embody your anger. Let her bring up everything you’ve not been addressing. Turn on some Jinger if you have to (if you watch that video, go past 1:14), or take a run. Let it surface in meditation, but don’t try to be polite. THEN, write for 10 minutes and let anything that pisses you off come up as raw and organically as possible.

If you do this with intention, you’ll have material. But more, you’ll begin to see what irritations have been accompanying you recently. Just because we do not acknowledge our anger, does not mean she’s not there.

Give her some space. Let her open your eyes to the FULL experience of life, even the unpleasant parts. When we confront rather than circumvent emotions we call negative, as Levine notes, we liberate ourselves to live.

We open to the little angers, fears, and doubts, not circumventing them just because we are able to, which decreases aversion to pain and displeasure, and increases our ability to do the work that we were born to do. —Stephen Levine

What lives behind your anger? Is it humor? Happiness? Hurt? Joy? Ecstasy?