I am terrible at keeping track of my sources, and that would make me a god-awful academic. But maybe the verity of this story is less important than the story itself, at least today.1
I recently heard a story about Hayao Miyazaki, the animator and filmmaker behind Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Boy and the Heron. Apocryphally, when Miyazaki works on a film, he spends a great deal of his own and other’s time developing the story, imagery, character design, etc., until, after a certain point, he gets stuck.
Everything seems wasted and like a disaster.
At this point, he half abandons the project, spending no time whatsoever on it. At this point, you'd be more likely to find the Master himself tending the various plants in Studio Ghibli or sharpening pencils.
After a month or two, someone eventually tips off Toshio Suzuki, a big, important executive at Ghibli (who, I suspect, is already well aware of Miyazaki's behaviour). Suzuki then goes and gives Miyazaki an earful and a hefty finger-wagging. Miyazaki finally mobilises himself and his genius and pulls out all the stops.
Just stop and imagine planning a (halfway) optimum creative process. Imagine the GANNT chart representing it. Can you imagine anyone in their right mind premeditating a process like Miyazaki's?
Step 1.
Do lots of leg work.
Step 2.
Pretend I'm the gardener for a while.
Step. 3
Get ratted out and get a bollocking from my boss.
Step 4.
Pull my finger out and make (yet another) masterpiece.
It's ludicrous.
Yet all of the artists I know in person and most of those I admire from a distance have some version of this: a consistent and reliable way of working that defies all rationality and common sense yet lies deep within their artistic endeavour.
Sure, you can rationalise Miyazaki's thing after the fact and say, “Well, in this phase, he’s in this cognitive mode, and in this phase, he's in this one."
Yeah, yeah. There's truth in that. But I also believe there's a very real place in this process for the drama of it. If he were to plan what he does anyway, there wouldn't be the (at least I imagine) surprise that the same thing happens again or the intensity of the urgency stemming from the executive intervention.
Half of our being knows what we're doing, and the other half does not.
Where I'm going with this is this:
It is my assertion what you actually do in your artistic process is (in my "humble" opinion) infinitely more interesting than what you "should" be doing.
Part of artistic maturity is having curiosity and a sense of humour about the strange, amusing and embarrassing twists and turns behind your magnificent opuses (should that be opi?...2). I'm also not advocating that you have this process well-mapped out or well-articulated; it’s more that on one level or another, you can recognise it, however easily or uncomfortably it sits with you.
We may start clear and determined, sail a Zeppelin through the clouds of doubt, march through the fog of uncertainty, have flashes of brilliance, and eventually put something, at best, three-quarters complete, into the world."
How can a "creativity formula" come close to this?
It's not that I'm advocating you suffer. I don't for a second support any fantasies about the great, misunderstood, tortured artist.
But our nature is to suffer and be flawed and wonderful creatures. We live somewhere between being broken and being sublime.
And when we make our art, don't think that takes a holiday.
Well, OK, I did find a source for it. It’s taken from Sharing a House with the Never-ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli (Alpert, S.M. (2020). Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press.). An excerpt can be found here.
According to Google Gemini:
The plural of "opus" is actually not "Opi." Here's the breakdown:
Latin origin: "Opus" comes from Latin, where the pluralisation follows specific rules depending on the noun's gender and declension class.
Neuter noun: "Opus" is a neuter noun in Latin.
Third declension: It belongs to the third declension class, which has specific pluralisation endings for neuter nouns.
Plural form: For neuter nouns in the third declension, the plural changes the ending to "-a." Therefore, the correct plural of "opus" is "opera."
⠀Alternative, less common plural:
Opusse: While uncommon, you might also see "opusse" used as the plural of opus. This follows a more Latinized and grammatically correct approach but is rarely used in everyday English.
⠀In conclusion:
Preferred plural: "Opera" is the most common and accepted plural form of "opus" in English.
Less common alternative: "Opusse" exists but is rarely used.
Sebastian- Thanks for sharing this. I love the way you put this: "But our nature is to suffer and be flawed." Couldn't be more accurate. Hope you're doing well this week.