creative forces

 

Blog # 113… January 2021

Happy New Year!   As we leave 2020 behind, let’s try and preserve the thoughts, few as they may be, of good things that happened last year...the recent conjuncture of Jupiter and Saturn springs to my mind, I'm sure you have some ideas too. Remembering forms our knowledge and our behavior; we forget so our brains are clear from clutter and there's room for new material. Time softens the edges of memory, so, as I wondered a couple of blogs ago, maybe as time passes we’ll guard some good souvenirs of last year.

I don’t know about you, but I feel as if I aged more than a year in 2020. It has to do with not being as physically active, but there’s something more: the closeness to death around us, the absence of hugs - even handshakes, and the lack of a variety of experiences. Looking at the same landscape, lots of it the four walls of home (and don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful to have a home!) not seeing a range of people or places, all contribute to a general lack of the stimulation we’re used to. And we know what lack of stimulation is doing to our brothers and sisters in Long Term Care Homes!

So, I was delighted to hear of Emily Urquhart’s book, The Age of Creativity, where she explores the lives of aging artists,  her relationship with her father Tony being the centerpiece.  Reading the book has been both enlightening and encouraging – back to my opening remarks about memory. Mixing her research into the aging brain and memory with studies of the later lives and work of artists, Emily points out how many of them continue their practice, even exploring new styles and forms in later life, drawing on inner resources if their memories are failing. There’s some evidence that the thinning of the cerebral cortex releases inhibitions, useful for creating art, could be problematic in other ways though.

Because artists are mainly freelancers and not subject to the confines of conventional workplaces (not supported by salaries either) they have the option of working as long as they're able, so the maintenance of their creative activity is interesting - but does it relate to the rest of us? Can we maintain or even develop our creative selves as we age?

The last nine months have tested our ability to react, adapt and cope with the many changes forced on us suddenly. We’ve been scared, bored, lonely, sick or depressed, sometimes all at once, and yet, we’ve survived. That’s honed a certain creativity that needs to be recognized. We’re making do, working with the available materials, stretching our minds and maybe lowering our expectations, appreciating different, smaller pleasures, reaching out and helping and comforting each other. Doing all that is creativity at its finest, equally as valuable as a piece of art.

Twyla Tharp is a dancer with not only an unforgettable name, but a strong sense of preserving physical agility and strength into old age (she’s in her late seventies). In her book Keep it Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life she shares her sense of keeping a body strong and limber as it ages. She emphasizes physical movement suggesting simple things like squirming for a few minutes, moving whatever parts of your body you can, before climbing out of bed in the morning and making what you do during the day larger and stronger -  striding rather than just walking. Using your muscle memory to stand or sit a little straighter and breathing more deeply, contracting some muscles and relaxing them in a rhythm... I'm doing that as I write this. 

So, the takeaway is that appreciation of art forms and creativity itself don’t leave us as we age, it just doesn’t always take a tangible form.  Movement too can take many forms, from wiggling your toes to dancing around the kitchen, the important thing is, as Twyla says Keep it Moving.

I loved this from Wintering by Katharine May, ”We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us…given time, they grow again.”  The subtitle is The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Hope our leaves will grow again, will check with you about that later.