That's a suggestive hook of a line, a yoke of a line, uttered by Sydney Pollack in the documentary I posted of a few days back, namely "Sketches of Frank Gehry". It's brought up within the context of that portion of the dialog between himself and Frank that revolves round the oft uttered question "Now where did that come from?", in particular when generated in response to a work of art, as it might be for some work of architecture created by Frank, or some work of film created by Sydney.
I'd like to pass along some remarks of my own with respect to that same question, and related notions, of thoughts brought to surface after seeing that film. As usual I'll link some words to past posts of mine if and when I think they might be worthwhile to clarify or expand upon my use of those same words here. They needn't be followed to get the gist of what follows.
For those of you interested in proposed answers to this and related questions, primarily about what fuels and guides creative expression, I'd like to drop you a level of strata to a level of collected data and complementary ideas that attempt to do just that, by way of a few additional links to recent articles published in "Scientific American" magazine, that strictly speaking, also need not be followed and read in order to get the gist of what I write here, but that I will nevertheless make reference to on occasion in the course of this post. I'll provide the lot of them by way of the following suggestive titles:
- The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
- What Are We Thinking When We (Try to) Solve Problems?
- How to Unleash Your Creativity
With respect to the notion of talent, one thing seemed clear to me upon first viewing of this film, namely that both Gehry and Pollack would most likely concur with the tack taken in that first named article, that talent isn't necessarily inherent but something built in the course of experimentation and failure, with failure often viewed in summary hindsight as having not been a drag on achievement, but rather having been a necessary thing to learn from in order to spur any progress. Gehry for example tells of how he came to his calling, saying that in the beginning he took a class in perspective, taught by way of a man named Workman, who gave him a concluding F for his mark in the class. He said he couldn't stand it, so he retook it and aced it. He was also told at one point by yet another teacher to get out of the field, that it wasn't for him, that he ought to pick some other pursuit in lieu of architecture. It came as quiet a blow, but in response Gehry says it made him even more determined.
His way of handling architectural criticism seemed similar. He states that when faced with criticism of a negative kind, he'll try it on for size, like a pair of jeans, and think for a time that maybe there's something to it, something there in that critique, but in the end he wont take it in intellectually in the form of rules that must be stuck to, of the sort "I've got to do this or I've got to do that", punctuating it with "I just keep going... what am i gonna do?" and a shrug.
Another thing I rather liked were these words spoken by Sydney about being open to input from unexpected sources, using whatever one might run across as a motive tool for some work, a notion I like if possible to employ myself, finding time and again unexpected application for oddball things I've come across:
When we started on the documentary, I was really just saying, "I don't understand this Frank." I'm asking questions for myself, not an audience. For example, when I say to him, "Do you ever think of architectural shapes independent of a project you're working on?" it's because I do that a lot of the time. If I'm listening to music or something, I will start to see shots. I was curious to see if an architect also thinks like that. At first he said no. But then he got up and got a Hieronymus Bosch drawing, and I started to see it as an architectural composition.
Both men in this film come across as rather down to earth guys, all the while verbally admitting a strong competitive streak, one Gehry said he actually tries to mask with an "ah shucks" kind of exterior, an exterior someone elsewhere once summed up as his "Columbo" facade, that seems to me not so much facade as old coat worn for comfort, donned while walking and talking with others in one's life. Another hero of mine towed a similar line, namely the physicist Richard Feynman, a onetime winner of the Nobel prize for his revolutionary work in quantum chromodynamics . That particular coat, it also seems to me, is quite often worn by people of a genuinely courteous and warm sort, who are nevertheless at times driven by a powerfully kinetic internal combustion, the momentum of which can sometimes be of such strength as to run over others, but without malicious intent, being the result of an oft time powerful quest that though certainly quite personal is not necessarily egotistical. Gehry in any event doesn't strike me as a man with a Howard Roark bent, the "my view is the sole right view" lone architect type, as was so often the case for another architect whose work but not personality I've also much liked, namely Frank Lloyd Wright, a man whose family motto was "Truth Against the World", held high with such pride that neighboring families came to refer to the lot of that family as "the God almighty Joneses". Gehry made it clear that he both seeks out and respects collaboration with apprentices of the sharp eyed sort. Extra heft to that view is added by other things he says in the course of that film, for example that when we're young we go about the world preoccupied with ourselves, but "when you mature you come to understand the world doesn't revolve around your butt".
So far I haven't really added much more than observational interest to that film, or said much with respect to the question broached in my very first paragraph, namely the question "now where did that come from?" in response to some creative work, a question oft times expressed by the creator him/herself. Time I think now to do just that.
There's another yoke of a line I've always liked, that I've lifted from Iris Murdoch's book "Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals", one that ripples with interpretations that appeal to me much. The line is this:
"You have to work very hard to understand, then throw away the ladder"
So that it's clear my interpretation(s) are of a personal sort, I'll summarize its intended interpretation, in it's original context. Skip it if you aren't interested, since it isn't relevant to how I choose to employee it.
That line is a translation of a metaphor appearing in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", one that he in turn borrowed from the critic/philosopher Fritz Mauthner. This work (ie "Tractatus") that tries to latch onto the whole of the world by way of words alone, basically says in conclusion that it can't be used to do so, but rather shows to those who have truly understood what they've read, that words in and of themselves are useless to do so, that there are things of this world for which alternative means must be employed in any meaningful attempt to latch onto them. Put another way, he more or less constructed a ladder to be employed for the purpose of scaling a tall building, which if actually traversed step by step, upon reaching its top rung, shows instead that it can't be done, not by way of this ladder, or any other of its kind. Consequently if your object is to reach the top of that building, throw away the ladder as a possible means to do so. You must resort to something else.
If you're interested in more detail concerning this metaphor, the best I've read yet can be found in Rebecca Goldstein's book "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel"
For me that line tends to toggle between two independent interpretational poles, depending on the mode of my mind when I choose to reflect on it: either after having scaled the walls of some constructed mental structure, pausing to take stock of what I've learned in consequence; or when I've "hit the wall", after having struggled hard, unsuccessfully, to resolve some seeming intractable problem.
The first interpretation isn't one I'll write much of here, other than the following few words. It's one mathematicians will likely latch onto quick without need for elaboration, simply an acknowledgment that after constructing for example some long arduous proof of the truth of some difficult conjecture, the insights gained in the course of doing so, perhaps with respect to new techniques employed, or new connections seen, are what's truly important, not the retention in your head of each and every rung traversed in order to acquire them, the sum total of which compose some ladder of proof. You can also think of it as an acknowledgment of the importance of "Seeing the Forest for the Trees".
The second interpretation is one I want to write a bit more about, in that the sum total of the Scientific American articles I've cited above seem to me elaborations of it. I don't consider myself exceptionally smart, just "average" smart, and I don't say that just to come across humble. I truly mean it. And yet I do also believe it's possible for me to do "great" things, to create "great" things, to understand "great" things, even though I may never do so to a degree I feel sufficient. But to do so I know I'd have to be doggedly persistent, accept frequent failure, be as open as possible to any and all input, keep exploring, keep experimenting, etc etc. To take advantage of all of that however, one other thing seems to me necessary to add to the mix, above and beyond the rest, something that also comes to mind when I read the line "You have to work very hard to understand, then throw away the ladder".
If a problem I'm trying to solve is particularly difficult, if for example I'm having a hard time finding what words seem right to express something I'd like, if I have a nebulous idea of something I'd like to communicate but can't make it jell into anything sufficiently concrete, 9 times out of ten this is what I'll choose to do if I can: I'll sit down and sketch my first thoughts of it quick, I'll write and rewrite them expanding on this and that thought as much as I might, until either I've got what I've sought or I've hit a wall I can't cross. If I've hit a wall I know exactly what to do. I'll walk away from it entirely, without making any plans of any kind I might follow to complete it. I've set the mental gears in motion, meshing this cog with that gear, a built machine that won't stop, not as a result of my simply stopping to attend to it. I've worked very hard to understand, but find I yet cannot, choose to ignore my ladder of so far accumulated thought, and redirect my conscious mind to some unrelated task. I know that underground mental machine will keep toiling away, adding connection to connection, meshing gear with cog, building itself by sheer momentum until someday in some way that abandoned problem is either resolved and its solution delivered in a burst of awareness, one of those pleasant "Aha! Now where on earth did that come from?" laugh out loud moments, or I'll feel an undertow of a kind that drags me back to my desk, to take another stab at what I'd abandoned, only to find thought comes fluid where once it was turbid, everything snaps together with ease over the course of an evening, until I've accomplished what I set out to, oft wondering at the ease of it in relation to those past difficult abandoned dead end attempts.
The fact of the matter is I did just that with this post, after having wanted to write it two days ago now, but finding my thoughts too nebulous to express and words not forthcoming to write. I set it aside till today, and find now as I type, both word and thought previously sought pouring forth with seeming small effort, as if copying it in mechanical fashion from words put to paper on some previous night. I don't want to give you the impression that over the span of the last few days I've thought not a single thought about what I now write. That's not the case. I have, but in brief bursts, during some of which I've jotted down fragments of thought that seemed to the point, so as not to lose them, some small number of which I've reworked into the words you're now reading. I'll rework this post many times too before actually posting: pruning, tweaking, playing with words. But I have everything I need now to do the job right, in the way I originally wanted to just the other night.
The day after watching "Sketches of Frank Gehry", I watched yet another film I own about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, a documentary made by Ken Burns. In it there's a segment in which Edgar Tafel, a onetime apprentice of Wright's, speaks of the day in which Edgar Kaufman phoned the Fellowship where Wright and he worked, to inform him that he was on his way from Milwaukee to see the plans for the house he asked Wright to design, a place for a family picnic spot in Mill Run Pennsylvania, a place that would later be made famous as the house named "Fallingwater". Apparently Wright smiled and replied that he'd be there to greet him with those plans when he arrived, even though it was generally known that nothing had been penned for the place in all the many months it had been on Wright's plate. Tafel relates in obvious enjoyment of how Wright amazed them all then and there, sitting down with pencil and paper, jotting down plan after plan, with elevation after elevation, explaining while doing so how sketched room related to sketched room, the purpose of each, elaborating on a host of other assorted meaningful elements, until at the end of 3 hours with his assistants assistance bringing paper and new pencils to aid him in work, Kaufman finally arrived after his long 3 hour drive, only to be greeted with effusive warmth by Wright and finished plans much to his delight. And of all Wright's buildings, I have to admit that's probably my favorite.
Of course there's no speculation at all in the film about just how Wright did this thing described in my previous paragraph, just expressed admiration and wonder at the doing of the deed, something you can't help but grin at in response, a shared grin too with Tafel, not just at his obvious enjoyment in the telling, over the wonder of that old question "now where did that come from?" I suspect it came from some, in large part, unconscious motive means similar to what I've described in the paragraph that precedes it , not a thing conjured up out of thin air as if by magic, yet still from a place with the mystery of magic about it, being a place out of sight and unconscious.
And with that I'd like to return to the subject line of this post, namely "talent is liquified trouble", inserting words of Pollack's you wont hear uttered in their entirety in his Gehry film, about that very metaphor. After watching that film, I was curious enough about many of the things he and Frank verbally shared, that I just had to do a bit of web research to follow up on some of them, finding more they had to say of each in differing contexts. Here's a portion of an interview of Sydney Pollack by Alex Simon, that originally appeared in the June 2006 Issue of "Venice Magazine":
Alex: It’s like religion, then. Different philosophical forms appeal to different people. Some are effective with certain people’s psyches, and others aren’t. The reason I’m going into this is that I found this film very psychological, in terms of how Gehry’s process worked, and how so much of his childhood and background goes into his work, particularly the fact that he felt like such an outsider growing up as a Jew in Toronto, right down to the fact that he Anglicized his name, from Goldberg to Gehry.
Sydney: Yes, I agree. It’s very interesting.Alex: Did you have the same experience being a Jew growing up in Indiana?
Sydney: Well, there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the 50s, but by the time I moved to New York, when I was 17, I didn’t find any in New York, but as a kid, yeah, absolutely. I felt that.Alex: A lot of artists grew up not fitting into the norm. Did feeling like an outsider help shape you that way?
Sydney: Yeah, particularly in terms of the turning inward. Any dissatisfaction in your day-to-day life either breeds real neurosis or art, or both. (laughs) I think almost everybody who looks for a creative outlet has been steered there by their imagination that gets stimulated by some sort of turning inward. That’s why I said in the film that Meisner defined talent as being, essentially, “liquefied trouble.” In the luckier people, the liquification of the trouble allows it to leak out of the trap its in, and morph itself into the expression of something creative. Whereas if it doesn’t liquefy, if it just stays solid trouble, it expresses itself just with neurotic behavior and a troubled human being. But I don’t think there’s a really genuinely creative person alive who isn’t somewhat troubled. It would be an oxymoron to say “He’s a completely untroubled artist.” But not every creative person is an artist, either. I wouldn’t call myself an artist. I work in the field of popular culture. “Artist” is a word that someone else has to apply to you. You can’t call yourself an “artist.”
After reading this I couldn't help but think of an article that appeared in the "New York Times" not all that long ago, about the now 96 year old artist Louise Bourgeois, whose works were at the time on display in the Guggenheim Museum of New York (the building itself designed by Frank Lloyd Wright). If you follow her linked name and read the result, I think you'll find it interesting too, and understand why it came to mind when reading this stuff. She recommends channeling trouble in just this way.
Sometimes when feeling truly awful, I'll make something unintentionally beautiful, that comes with cracks perhaps only I and a small few might see, cracks that detract, that subtract, that dim its light a degree for those few perceivers, something beautiful to most, out of something awful in me. We all know the story of the angel who fell from grace into darkness. But in the quiet moments, how many ever wonder "will the angel ever redeem himself, perhaps in some such similar way, moving from disgrace back to grace, a being even brighter for the change?"
