Contemplating endurance

In the NY Times of Decem­ber 13, there was a mar­velous inter­view with singer/songwriter Tori Amos. It cov­ers many things, her art, the arch of her life, being a par­ent, but most of all about the cre­ative life. She is quot­ed as say­ing it’s “about dis­ci­pline. You have to push your­self.” It’s also, she says, about endurance.

Most often, I believe, when peo­ple think of cre­ativ­i­ty, they focus on the life of the mind, of spir­it, on intu­ition, tal­ent, and work­ing towards the gifts of cre­ativ­i­ty. To be sure, all of those things count, but in the midst it all that there is plain old phys­i­cal endurance. Work­ing on a piano all day, stand­ing before an easel all night, sit­ting before a com­put­er for eight hours and pok­ing keys, what­ev­er the art, it’s all phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing. There is also a ten­den­cy, cor­rect­ly so, to asso­ciate art with youth­ful­ness. But I sus­pect it’s not so much youth as the ener­gy that is the gift of youth. 

I sus­pect I’m think­ing about this because, one, I’m try­ing to meet a tight dead­line on a new book, and two, I’m about to turn sev­en­ty-five. Maybe both will occur on the same day. I’d rather enjoy that.