Backmonkeys

The saving grace of the creative life

In the time of those who came before us, if you had a problem, some malaise, or a general trend of what just seemed like lousy luck, you might go visit that person who was in touch with such things: the bruja; shaman; or elder.  That individual was important to the community, but often, not totally beloved. They were often placed, or chose of their own volition to be at the edge of the community, perhaps even in a place not accessible, but a place that you had to make special effort to visit.

Visit them you would, perhaps bearing an offering or gift. After pouring out the tea, tossing bones, or looking into the fire, they might see that in fact, there was a demon, or a monkey riding on your back, that wasn’t visible to you. And then they might make a pre or pro-scription for how to rid yourself of that affliction.

Spend the whole day in the studio working by adding a bit of paint into a blob of another, seeing little shifts in the color, or forms on the canvas. After some time working, and you quit the studio for the outdoors, all the colors and forms seem to be exploding with a whole other energy. This happens with people who work in sounds, or words, or movements; in whatever media. In work we get hyper-sensitized to perceptions, and develop the ability to see those back-riding monkeys and demons that are invisible to others. We, the artists, musicians, the writers, the dancers, sculptors, choreographers, and architects - the creatives - we become the seers and shamans of our times. 

We are very rarely what you’d call normative in our ways of thinking; in our own, many, many different ways, we fall into all sorts of differences: ADHD, ADD, acute awareness, hyper sensitivity,  or simply, “on the spectrum” or, neuro-divergent. Some people say these distinctions are nonsense - that, in fact, we all are somewhere on a spectrum, with our strengths and weaknesses in some form or another. And indeed, perhaps we creatives are not after all a special class of people - that all people have the capacity to practice creative pursuits. There is one thing for certain - we are those who have decided to make it a focus of our lives.

Because of that, we, as much as anyone, need the support of community. There’s little wonder that most of the rich art of the past was done by creatives in community. It's there that this incredible thing called “cultural ratcheting” takes place, where art is built upon art, thoughts and knowledge upon thoughts and knowledge.

 Perhaps the actors and dancers in our family are the few groups of creatives who spend a lot of time studying feelings, and living in “troops” and “companies” but for most of us, we might spend more time in seclusion or perhaps some time  going back and forth between community and seclusion. For that reason, we do well to develop skills in community discourse, such as reflective listening, Non-violent communications (NVC), and practicing consent-based behaviors.

These all have the added benefit of asking of us to dig deeper into the study of our own minds. In NVC, we’re asked to watch out for “false emotions;” those emotions that pre-suppose the intention of others. In the face of feeling ignored or disrespected by someone else, how do we dig deeper into the core feelings underneath those indignities? It isn’t easy; but by taking on that work, we can develop more resilience as creative people.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to generalize about creative people. If I think about it, I also know plenty of creatives that do wonderful in society, although at times, not always respecting their own boundaries. They allow people to behave in ways that they wouldn’t stand for if the subject of that behavior was a good friend. Again, those communication skills mentioned above can help there, too, and little by little, we learn to ask of those around us to live with us in a healthier way.

Often, we are masters of caretaking our tools. Brushes, chisels, beloved pens, all the myriad extensions of our bodies that we use in our creative work. And yet the most important tool in the entire process is ourselves. It could be that we should be teaching these skills in our art schools and conservatories. How do we survive a bout of anxiety so profound that it feels that our skin is being electrified. Or being so depressed that we just wished we could simply dissolve into the floor. 

Often, the backriding monkey is some form of trauma. Once you start looking, you begin to see it everywhere - whether you’re in a country that has experienced generations of violence, or in a economic powerhouse of a country that has had generations of people returning from the horrors of armed conflict.  You see the trauma of racism, classism, and misogyny. And once you see the prevalence of trauma, you might become more compassionate, forgiving - more giving - in the presence of others. 

I heard recently of someone stating that art didn’t really have the power to effect change. It wouldn’t save us from climate change, or global poverty. But I would counter that, if in the practice of our arts, we do have the potential to impact the great challenges of our time. If in our work we can cause people to think differently or feel differently, there can be shifts in the underlying biases causing harm.

We have a portion of people who go around being incredibly sensitive to the world. Instead of saying “creatives,” we said “those who practiced perceiving minute differences and thus trained themselves to be hyper-acute,” - after all, that's what creatives do! They also play in the realm of patterns (seeing patterns in data - apophenia! ) and odd juxtapositions - often inverting conventional thinking. In the face of all the world’s problems, wouldn’t it be terribly useful to have such a class of people? I can’t say for sure that they will resolve those demons, but they might be our best chance!