The Creative Habit Read online

I was giving a lecture to students at Vassar not long ago. Working with the students’ autobiographies, I invited a dance student, a music student who brought his saxophone, and an art student to join me on stage. I asked the dancer to improvise some movement from a tuck position on the floor. I asked the saxophone player to accompany the dancer. And I asked the art student to assign colors to what they were doing. I admit I was constructing a three-ring circus in the lecture hall. But my goal was to bring the three students together by forcing them to work off the same page, and also to free them up to discover how far they could go improvising on this simple assignment.

  When I asked the art student to read out loud his color impressions, everyone in the hall was taken aback. He droned on and on about himself, feelings he’d had, stories about friends. Not a word about color. Finally I heard “limpid blue” come out of his mouth. I waved my arms, signaling him to stop reading.

  “Do you realize,” I said, “that you’ve just recited about five hundred words in an assignment about color. You’ve covered everything under the sun, and ‘limpid blue’ is the first time you’ve mentioned a color? I’m not convinced you want to be a painter.”

  As far as I was concerned, this young man was in “DNA denial.” I gave him a painterly exercise and he gave me a text-heavy response. A young man with painting in his genes would be rattling off colors immediately. Instead, his vivid use of language—limpid blue does not come in tubes—suggested that he really ought to be a writer.

  It would be presumptuous of me to think I had him pegged for a writer, not a painter, after that brief encounter. But if I got him to re-examine what he’s built for, then he was a step or two ahead of most people.

  I had a similar moment in my early years as a choreographer. I was at my worktable making sketches of dancers and their costumes. As I leaned back to admire the sketches, there was a fleeting moment when I actually whispered to myself “I could have been a painter.”

  I wonder how many people get sidetracked from their true calling by the fact that they have talent to excel at more than one artistic medium. This is a curse rather than a blessing. If you have only one option, you can’t make a wrong choice. If you have two options, you have a fifty percent chance of being wrong.

  It’s like a great high school athlete who plays football, basketball, and baseball equally well. If this athlete wants to continue playing sports at the highest collegiate level, at some point he will have to commit to one sport over the others. He’ll weigh a lot of factors: what comes naturally to him, what does he enjoy the most, in which sport does he have a natural advantage over the competition in terms of size, speed, endurance, and other critical measures? But in the end the choice should be based on pure instinct and self-knowledge. What sport does he feel in his muscles and bones? What sport was he born to play?

  In my case, I fortunately banished the “I could have been a painter” thought out of my mind as quickly as it had appeared. Maybe I did have a talent for interpreting the world visually. Maybe I did have a knack for creating visual tableaus that entertained people. Maybe I did know how to arrange colors and objects in space. All of these are skills from the painter’s tool kit. But even then I knew myself well enough to realize that no matter how much I enjoyed making sketches, the painter’s life was not for me. I didn’t feel it in my bones. I would tell my “story” through movement. Gotta dance.

  exercises

  5 You Can Observe a Lot by Watching

  Yogi Berra said that, and it’s true. Go outside and observe a street scene. Pick out a man and woman together and write down everything they do until you get to twenty items. The man may touch the woman’s arm. Write it down. She may run her hand through her hair. Write it down. She may shake her head. He may lean in toward her. She may pull away or lean in toward him. She may put her hands in her pockets or search for something in her purse. He may turn his head to watch another woman walking by. Write it all down. It shouldn’t take you very long to acquire twenty items.

  If you study the list, it shouldn’t be hard to apply your imagination to it and come up with a story about the couple. Are they friends, would-be lovers, brother and sister, work colleagues, adulterers, neighbors who run into each other on the street? Are they fighting or breaking up or falling in love or planning a weekend together or debating which movie they want to see? The details on your list provide plenty of material for a short story, but that’s not the goal of this exercise.

  Now do it again. Pick out another couple. This time note only the things that happen between them that you find interesting, that please you aesthetically or emotionally. I guarantee that it will take you a lot longer to compile a list of twenty items this way. You might need all day. That’s what happens when you apply judgment to your powers of observation. You become selective. You edit. You filter the world through your particular prism.

  Now study the two lists. What appealed to you in the second, more selective list? Was it the moments of friction between the couple or the moments of tenderness? Was it the physical gestures or their gazes away from each other? The varying distance between them? The way they shifted their feet, or leaned up against a wall, or took off their glasses, or scratched their chins?

  What caught your fancy is not as important as the difference between the two lists. What you included and what you left out speaks volumes about how you see the world. If you do this exercise enough times, patterns will emerge. The world will not be revealed to you. You will be revealed.

  6 Pick a New Name

  Imagine you could change your name. What would you choose? Would it be a name that sounded good or belonged to someone you admire? Would it make a statement about what you believe or how you want the world to approach you? What would you want it to say about you?

  This is not just an exercise in “what if.” It’s about identity—who you are and aim to be.

  I’ve always thought my creative life began the moment my mother named me Twyla. It’s an unusual name, especially when you combine it with Tharp. (Twyla Smith just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?) My mother had seen the name “Twila” in a clipping about the queen of a hog-calling contest in Indiana, and as she explained it, “I changed the i to a y because I thought it would look better on a marquee.” She had big plans for me. She wanted me to be singular, so she gave me a singular name.

  If it’s a parent’s job to make children feel special, then my mother did her job well. To me, the name is fierce, independent, and unassailable. It can’t be shortened to Twy or La, and it doesn’t take a diminutive well. (I have a good friend who always adds an affectionate Yiddish “leh” to names, but “Twylaleh” is too much even for him.) It’s a good name to have if you want to leave your mark in the world.

  More than anything, though, my name is original. It makes me strive for originality—if only to live up to the name.

  I am not exaggerating the magic and power invested in our names. Names are often a repository of a kind of genetic memory. Parents, who are the arbiters of all given names, certainly feel the power; that’s why they name their children after ancestors (or themselves). They honor those who came before while connecting their child with his or her past. The hope is that not only will some of our forebears’ genes pass down with the name, but also their courage, their talents, their drive, and their luck. (We named our son Jesse Alexander, after my grandfather Jesse Tharp and my husband’s grandfather Alexander Huot, because we admired their work ethic and their skill at building things. I figured if their genes were funneling into my son, he ought to get the names that go with them. Interestingly, Jesse is happiest when he is building things.)

  The essayist Joseph Epstein has noted, “A radical change in one’s name seems in most cases a betrayal—of one’s birthright, of one’s group, of one’s identity.” I don’t agree. In a sense it’s a commitment to a higher personal calling. And it’s not uncommon among creative souls.

  The ancient masters of Japanese art were allowed to chan
ge their name once in their lifetime. They had to be very selective about the moment in their career when they did so. They would stick with their given name until they felt they had become the artist they aspired to be; at that point, they were allowed to change their name. For the rest of their life, they could work under the new name at the height of their powers. The name change was a sign of artistic maturity.

  Mozart played with variations on his name for most of his life. He was baptized Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. His father Leopold referred to him shortly after his birth as Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb. The young Mozart generally referred to himself with the middle name Amadè or Amadé (Gottlieb, Theophilus, and Amadeus being German, Greek, and Latin, respectively, for “lover of God”). But he made a significant change at the time of his marriage to Constanze Weber: In all documents related to the marriage (except for the marriage contract itself), his name is given as “Wolfgang Adam Mozart.” By taking the name of the first man, Mozart may have been declaring himself reborn, set free from the past. “Mozart’s constant alterations of his name are his way of experimenting with different identities,” wrote Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon, “trying to tune them to his satisfaction.”

  The boxer Cassius Clay changing his name to Muhammad Ali is one of the great creative acts of the twentieth century. Cassius Clay was already the heavyweight champion of the world, but converting to Islam, throwing off the shackles of a slave name, and becoming Ali gave him an even larger identity for a much bigger stage. It helped make him the most famous person on earth.

  Done wisely and well, a change of name can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Epstein points out, “Eric Blair, Cicily Fairfield, and Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski became, respectively, George Orwell, Rebecca West, and Joseph Conrad—the first to shuck off the social class into which he was born, the second to name herself after a feminist heroine in Ibsen, the last to simplify his name for an English audience. Yet how right those names now seem, how completely their owners have taken possession of them!”

  My Creative Autobiography

  1. What is the first creative moment you remember? Sitting in my mother’s lap at the keyboard, listening to notes.

  2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it? I got lots of validation and feedback all through my early years, as most kids do when they’re being taught something difficult and they have to improve every day. My piano teacher was always pasting “seals of approval” on my lesson books, everything from gold stars to black stars to decals of rabbits and other farm animals. What I really remember though is the sponge my teacher used to wet the decals and stick them on my lesson books. She kept the sponge in a little jar on the side of the keyboard, and as I played, I always had my eye on the sponge. That sponge was not only the symbol of my reward, it was the tool for administering it. I felt connected to it in a special way. I loved that sponge. And I loved my little blue books that contained all my stars. I still have them. So, yes, someone was always around to see my little acts of creativity.

  3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had? To follow my own course in life and become a dancer, because dancing was what I did best. I wasn’t as good at anything else.

  4. What made it great in your mind? I went with my gut, not my head. Dance is a tough life (and a tougher way to make a living). Choreography is even more brutal because there is no way to carry our history forward. Our creations disappear the moment we finish performing them. It’s tough to preserve a legacy, create a history for yourself and others. But I put all that aside and pursued my gut instinct anyway. I became my own rebellion. Going with your head makes it arbitrary. Going with your gut means you have no choice. It’s inevitable, which is why I have no regrets.

  5. What is the dumbest idea? Thinking I could have it all.

  6. What made it stupid? Its built-in futility, given how I work. To lead a creative life, you have to sacrifice. “Sacrifice” and “Having it all” do not go together. I set out to have a family, have a career, be a dancer, and support myself all at once, and it was overwhelming. I had to learn the hard way that you can’t have it all, you have to make some sacrifices, and there’s no way you’re going to fulfill all the roles you imagine. We thought, as women in the sixties and seventies, that we could change everything and remake all the rules. Some things changed, and some things pushed back. What makes it stupid is that I set up a way of working that was in direct conflict with my personal ambition. Something had to give.

  7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea? I was a senior alone in a dressing room, next to a dance studio. I was in a discussion with myself, and it had been going on for four years, ever since my sophomore year when I left Pomona College to go to Barnard College in New York City (the heart of the dance world). I looked at my body in the dressing room mirror and, in that moment, I saw the potential for a dancer. As I was changing into practice clothes, I felt as if I were putting on a uniform, and I thought, “Yes, I want to join this team.” That’s when and how I made my life choice.

  8. What is your creative ambition? To continually improve, so I never think “My time may be over.”

  9. What are the obstacles to this ambition? The pettiness of human nature. Mine as well as others’.

  10. What are the vital steps to achieving this ambition? I often think of myself as water flowing into a rock. The water eventually finds its way out the other side, but in between it seeks out every hole and channel in the rock. It keeps trickling forward, gathering force until it bursts out on the other side as a raging torrent. That’s my career experience. I don’t have steps or ladders. I don’t improve in steps. I’m the water slapping into the rocks. I gather force and then…explode.

  11. How do you begin your day? I wake at 5:30 A.M., head across town for a workout at the gym (for fourteen years with the same trainer, Sean Kelleher).

  12. What are your habits? What patterns do you repeat? I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio, the rehearsals with my dance company, the return home in the late afternoon to handle more business details, the early dinner, and a few quiet hours of reading. That’s my day, every day. A dancer’s life is all about repetition.

  13. Describe your first successful creative act. When I was eight, living in San Bernardino, California, I was always forced to practice alone in my room. But I wanted human contact and some commentary on what I was doing. So I would gather the kids in the neighborhood and convince them to come with me into the back canyons where we lived, and there I would design theatrical initiations for the kids. This was my first creative act, my first moment of being a floor general and moving people around. My first choreography.

  14. Describe your second successful creative act. Sixteen years later, my first concert, Tank Dive, 1965.

  15. Compare them. They’re the same. In both I’m organizing people in time and space with a ritualistic intent.

  16. What are your attitudes toward:

  Money? Hate that I need it.

  Power? Challenge it if you don’t have it. Don’t abuse it if you do.

  Praise? Don’t trust it.

  Rivals? Bless them.

  Work? What I live for.

  Play? Work.

  17. Which artists do you admire most? Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Balanchine, and Rembrandt.

  18. Why are they your role models? They aspired, they approached, they matured. They passed “Go” more than once. Their work ended up light-years beyond where they started.

  19. What do you and your role models have in common? Total commitment. I strive to follow their example. I try to emulate their staying power and constant growth. I am different because I am a woman. There is a big difference between how a male artist gets to live and what the world expects of a woman, artist or not.

  2
0. Does anyone in your life regularly inspire you? Maurice Sendak. I talk to him every Sunday, and he always provides the best chuckle of the week. He’s the only person with whom I can just blurt, uncensored. And he does the same thing. We’re like two wicked children. It’s a delight. Dick Avedon also inspires me because of his ongoing discipline, his ongoing ambition, his ongoing efforts at self-education, and his ongoing grace. He has real ingenuity. Even when he’s using old solutions he’s still inventive.

  21. Who is your muse? My dancers.

  22. Define muse. That for whom you long to labor.

  23. When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, how do you respond? Enthusiastically. I can get there. Let’s go.

  24. When faced with stupidity, hostility, intransigence, laziness, or indifference in others, how do you respond?

  Stupidity: Run, don’t walk.

  Hostility: Get nicer.

  Intransigence: Push back.

  Laziness: See Stupidity, above.

  Indifference: Move on.

  25. When faced with impending success or the threat of failure, how do you respond?

  Success: With relief.

  Failure: More work, fast.

  26. When you work, do you love the process or the result? I love to study the beginnings of things. The first steps are the most interesting ones—when you’re just beginning to find your way into a problem, whether it’s artistic or philosophical, and when you don’t yet know what you’re trying to solve and how you’re going to solve it. To me there’s something very solid about the first time something is achieved. I know when I’m working that the very first time I get something right it’s righter than it will ever be again. I cheated on the answer: I love the process—all the time. I love the result—the first time.