Why I Do What I Do … — Richard Holman

Whenever I’m asked why I do what I do – writing about and coaching creativity – I say it’s because I believe creativity is one of the best things we human beings are capable of. Which sounds good and wholesome and all, but it does beg a follow up question … why is it one of the best things human beings are capable of?

And answering this question is tougher. That creativity is a good thing is something I feel intuitively to be true, but is there more to it than that?

Well, there’s a lovely little book by Albert Camus called Create Dangerously. In it the writer, philosopher - and occasional goalkeeper - states that ‘art cannot be a monologue’. In other words, it’s naïve to think that any work of art, be that a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, is a fixed object that exists as the perfect repository of the creator’s intention or meaning. As Marcel Duchamp, another French intellectual -though one who preferred chess to football - put it, ‘Any work of art is completed by the viewer, not the artist’.

It’s much easier to find a photo of Camus smoking than one of him between the sticks.

When we engage with creative work we bring along our lived experience, our personality, our situation, even our mood, and we recreate that work anew. Indeed a work of art really only becomes a work of art the moment someone other than the artist encounters it. Not only does this mean that an artwork is never fixed and can only ever be a living thing, able to change and mutate depending on the circumstances of the viewer, but it also makes us a participant in the work. And if the work resonates with us we can’t help but feel a connection back to the artist. They’ve seen the world in a way that speaks to our own experience and there’s something profoundly reassuring about that.

But more than this, a really great piece of creative work makes us feel not only a connection through the work back to the artist, it also makes us feel a connection to our fellow human beings. In another slender but brilliant book, On Connection by Kae Tempest, the musician and spoken word artist describes a 2017 study of theatre goers which found that while watching a performance audience members’ heartbeats become synchronised: they respond in unison to the action on stage, speeding up and slowing down according to the narrative. And even when we engage with great work alone, to be moved by something that we know has moved others reminds us of a simple but profound truth: we are not alone.

Not only is there an artist out there who sees the world in a way that speaks to me, but I am just one of many for whom the work resonates. Maybe this is why whenever we watch a great series or read a compelling book we feel the urge to share it among our friends. We want them to become part of the audience too.

I know that whenever I’ve seen a film I’ve loved, or been to a great gig or heard a brilliant piece of stand up comedy, as I leave the venue afterwards I feel a deep connection with everyone else who was there. We have shared something. And right now so much of the way our society is geared seems to be about engendering the opposite – amplifying discord, exacerbating divisions, celebrating the self at the expense of community.

So this, I think is my roundabout answer to the question of why I think creativity is one of the best things we human beings are capable of. And given that it is, on reflection, a little long-winded I’ll leave the last word to Brian Eno, who’s managed a much neater encapsulation …

‘It’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us.’