Having a creative outlet

It has always made me grateful that Daddy made sure we had a start in playing Irish music, and took the time to make sure that we knew what it was all about. For the first couple of years we practiced our reels and jigs painstakingly (and probably painfully for Mammy; remember these were fiddles and tinwhistles!). I would not say that it was actually pleasurable to learn, nor to listen to. 

But that first couple of years of input started to have outputs quite quickly, and it is such a satisfying experience to have some black dots that seem to make no sense and then eventually at the end of it there is a tune that has a logic and lift all of its own. We played in a ceili band that actually made a very nice sound with all of us playing together. In my own case, I think the penny started to drop when I started to go to the Irish music session in the Regent pub in Leeds when I was about 14. I must have thought "A fun activity with your friends in a place where they sell alcohol and people actually enjoy what you are doing?" What's not to like?

Anyway, the upshot was that I have always had a 'creative outlet' via Irish music. Wherever I have lived there has usually been a session somewhere, and the older I get the more I actually enjoy playing at home just for my own entertainment. So like the magic pepper pot, this music has never stopped giving something to me, and it shows no sign of ever running out. And it has all those qualities of creative outlet that you see in other people and in the way they live and the way then enjoy life. 

I would not say that every single person has something that you would call a creative outlet but I think most of my friends and family do. For some it is music, for others writing, for others cooking or gardening. I know several highly-committed painters and sketchers and more than one poet. Angie is an expert and productive seamstress (if that is the word).  The common feature seems to be that you do it for the simple pleasure of doing it and that something is produced at the end of it, whether that be a landscape, a hanging basket, a tarte tatin or a rendition of 'The Kylebrack Rambler'. I think you could even make a good case for reading being a creative outlet, because your brain has to populate and bring to life the ideas or plot in the book you are reading. Many artists and writers talk of their compulsion to paint or write, quite distinct from whether anybody actually looks at their work or reads it. The 'compulsion' side of all forms of creative activity does make it seem that there is something in our very natures that requires it. 

So if we do need a creative outlet, why?

Well, you could just say that it is for pleasure, in the same way that lying in a hot bath or drinking six pints of Guinness or having sex is pleasurable, but I don't think pleasure is all that there is to it. I think there are a few sides to our strong need for a creative outlet. 

Maybe it is play. Maybe the simple childhood memory of making a den, or inventing a game or building a model out of boxes and cartons has left such a strong connection between pleasure and 'making' that we have to have an equivalent even if it does not require egg-boxes. Perhaps the strictures of normal adult life, where things have to be done 'effectively' and 'for a purpose' leaves us screaming out for something that is simply done for the joy of play. And the joy of seeing what that play has produced?

It could also be to do with the idea of 'flow', as proposed by the eminent but difficult-to-pronounce psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This was the idea that you can do certain activities which require such a combination of focus, learned skills and purpose that they become both extremely effective (in what you are aiming for) but also immensely pyschologically-liberating. 

In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."^[18]

This seems to me to be a very good description of how I feel when playing music and, from the look of it, the way that my friends feel when they are involved in their own creative activity. And if you have ever looked at your watch after an unexpected three hours solid spent gardening or painting or writing, and thought "where did the time go?",  maybe that is 'flow' staring you straight in the face. And so could it be that one of the key features of our creative outlet is that it enables us to escape from our ego? That by doing the thing that is so integral to our selves and to our lives, we actually step back from ourselves a bit and instead of thinking, we just do.