Suddenly priorities change as “Precious Cargo” can’t be left alone to fend for its self and when it does it tends to go overboard onto the horrible teens. All energy is sapped up and time that was meant for creative thought vanishes into pleasing this bundle of insatiability.
The full quote – from Cyril Connolly – is: "There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway."
I guess it shouldn’t worry me too much, possessing a decent job instead of relying on my obscure, untested and very much unqualified artistic inclination.
I find myself generally in inclination of writing more and shooting more when I’m away from my common self and when in the presence of children, that side is found to be diminished, or all focus will be taken by said hypothetical, imaginary children.
On the other hand, I envy those who seem to have found the elixir to endless creativity while in the position of parenthood, even more so as a single parent. Selective examples include JK Rowling and Edith Nesbit. Can you imagine the burden that rests on those shoulders and the temptation to slip into sense of mediocrity by taking up a normal job just to make ends meet… To forsake the promise of greatness doing what you so love only just to meet the requirement of the financial parasite also known as … Jim, Jill, Bob, Bo etc etc…
How does one regulate the apparent magic of having children around the house and wanting them to be enthralled by the magic (to kids) by being an adult at the same time? Treats, when’s enough? How do you get the train of thought back after a sharp piercing scream wanting attention? Last I checked, there wasn’t a People’s Republic of Parenthood, which has all the answers.
Its no surprise that at the present, there’s a significant existential void and gratification really is a temporal means of patching it up. But you know what thrills me to no end in this context of creativity? It always feels like a game… it should feel like a game and not a means to an end. There’s a “what’s next” feel to it… there’s always emotion attached to a written piece that is written and a photo taken.
Then came this strange realism… Isn’t it then like childhood? Wasn’t it always a game of discovery? Aren’t kids unafraid of failure? That everything amuses them? Kids never cared about the painful daily fluctuations of reputation or self esteem…
Am I actually in this mind frame claiming kids are great, after all my “ugh… hope it doesn’t bite”? Writing they say is a peculiar balancing act between freedom and discipline, I suppose some are blessed with free days doing whtever they like (as I wish I could) and be distracted by anything that is worth being distracted about.
On the other hand, there are days when clarity is required for writing and the pram in the hallway… isn’t that just a symbol of distraction?
“Tranquility and control provide the best conditions for completing the work you imagined. But surely the real trick is to produce the work that you never imagined. The great creative moments in our history are almost all stories of distraction and daydreaming – Archimedes in the bath, Einstein dreaming of riding a sunbeam – of alert minds open to the grace of chaos.”
Strange things about artists on the other hand is this ability to produce their greatest work in the worst times of trial… I don’t know, I’ve been blessed. However, I personally adore the following paragraphs…
“Writers have produced great work in the face of things far more stressful than the school run: being shot at, in the case of Wilfred Owen; being banged up in jail, in the case of Cervantes or John Bunyan. Yet that pram is lodged in our imaginations, like a secret parasite sucking on our juices.
In fact, if you go back to Connolly's terrific book, you'll see that the pram is only one of the many Enemies of Promise. Others include a public school education (so emotionally overwhelming you can't move on) and success, surely the greatest enemy of all. But no one warns you about these. It's just the pram.
Why does it retain its power to chill? I don't think it's about fear of distraction or domesticity. I think it's a fear of babies. Being a parent – or really loving someone other than yourself, whether that's your children, parents or your lover – forces you to confront a horrible truth: the fact that we get older. The amazing boy who was born when I was still a student is a man now. There is no way that I can still think of myself as "quite young, really" or "a child at heart". Parenthood confronts us with our own mortality, every day.
As a society, we are in flight from our own mortality. What makes society of wannabe youths so monstrous is that we’re in this constantly in terror from our adulthood. The thought that it is going to be our turn forever. It's not.
The mess we've made of this planet comes partly from the fact that we all feel we're going to live forever. Has art done much to make us think differently? When I think of art that tries to address these things – well, there's not much of it, and it's not much cop.”
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