Eat, Pray, Love Your Genius: Changing Our Outlook on the Creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert's TEDTalk, "Your Elusive Creative Genius," was filmed in February, 2009, three years after her most popular novel, Eat Pray Love, was published. This book was a New York Times Best Seller and as she refers to it a "freakish success." Coming off of this high, Gilbert was faced with daunting questions like, what do you do next and how will anything be able to compare? As Gilbert addresses in her talk, people are not afraid to pose these questions. When being presented with such a dismal outlook on the future, it can be quite easy to get caught up in the vicious cycle of depressive thoughts. Since the time of the Renaissance, society has looked at artists' works as a product of their own innate talents and creativity, but Gilbert suggests this one idea is the crux of a vast problem. This idea is what is leading creative minds to lifelong anguish and sometimes ultimately, the taking of their own life. She explains in this talk how she feels society needs to return to the mindset of Ancient Greece and Rome, when people believed that creativity came from some unknown source for some unknown reason. This outlook takes an enormous amount of pressure off of the artist and enables them to look at the creative process as an external conversation rather than an internal torment. And although some people might question the notion that there are "fairies basically following people around rubbing fairy juice on [our] projects," why can't we think this way? Elizabeth Gilbert's TEDTalk proves to us that it is possible to change the way we think about the creative process by referring to historical events, by drawing on her own personal experience as well as the experiences of other artists, and by connecting with both the audience's emotions and sense of humor.

During the time of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome people believed that creativity came to people from an outside force rather than from within the person. Romans referred to this entity as a "genius." They believed that this spirit lived in the walls of an artist's studios and assisted them with their work. In fact, she tells us that it was not until the Renaissance that people began to refer to a person as being a genius rather than having a genius. Greece and Rome were some of the most prosperous and creative societies of the ancient world. Their work was widely respected and their ideas were shared for centuries. Providing these as examples for her argument establishes Gilbert's credibility and shows that she did thorough research in preparation for this speech. 

Gilbert alludes to two different interviews that she did prior to her speech. The first was with Ruth Stone, an American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner. Gilbert relates to us how Stone described her process of writing poetry. Stone said a poem was like a thunderous train of air that chased her. She had to run to a piece of paper and a pen so that she could catch it, and if she missed it, it would carry on looking for the next poet. However, if she just barely caught it by the tail it would come out perfectly, but backwards on the page, with the first word at the bottom and the last at the top. Gilbert ends this recount by saying, "that's uncanny, that's exactly what my creative process is like." The second interview Gilbert describes was with Tom Waits, a singer-songwriter and composer. She relates that one day as Waits was driving down the highway, a very beautiful melody came to him. Naturally, he became very irritated because he did not have any way of writing this melody down and he knew that eventually he would forget the wonderful sequence of notes. Before he could get caught up in his own negative thoughts and petty frustrations, he stopped himself. He looked up at the sky and yelled, "Can you not see that I'm driving?" By providing both of these anecdotes, Gilbert adds humor and engages the audience. The audience is easily able to relate to these stories because although creative process varies from person to person, the frustrations that are experienced are the same.  

In her TEDTalk, Gilbert references the period of time during which she was writing Eat Pray Love. She was beginning to get caught up in the torturous, back and forth, internal argument and wanted to just give up completely on the manuscript. One day, as she began to have these thoughts, she remembered Waits and she stopped herself. She directed herself towards a random corner of the room and talked to her "genius." This simple act of separating herself from the creativity took away the frustration of the creative process and the pressure it was putting on her. She finally realized that she was doing her part. She was showing up for her part and now it was up to her "genius" to show up too. By providing this example from her own life, Gilbert proves that changing our outlook towards the creative process is not only feasible but also effective in helping overcome the hurdles that one encounters in being creative.

Creativity is a blessing; however, our outlook towards the process of being creative often times makes it seem like a curse. We should no longer accept the assumption that "artistry leads to anguish" because no one should ever be afraid to do the work that they feel they were placed on this earth to do. By looking at creativity not as something we possess, but as something that is on loan to us, we eliminate the enormous pressure to constantly live up to our past work or meet societal expectations. Elizabeth Gilbert's 2009 TEDTalk uses multiple modes of persuasion to effectively convince her audience to change their way of thinking. Ultimately, Gilbert is successful in persuading her audience that by separating the artist from the creativity and attributing it to an outside entity will reduce the pressure of the creative process by appealing to her audiences understanding, logic, and emotion.


