EG: Reading those essays was really revelatory for me, because it helped me to be able to formulate in my own mind an answer to a question I have never been able to answer, which is, “Why did Eat, Pray, Love do what it did?” Why? Which is of course an emotion, but a different one from the sort of tearfulness and the vulnerability that I felt when I was reading Eat, Pray, Love. It makes you feel like your hand is being guided by the divine. They created all that stuff so that we could dedicate ourselves to pursuits other than securing food, water, shelter, and warmth. So you’re this thing that’s happening. It’s also about having a voice, which a lot of women, and minorities, and oppressed people in the world’s history have never had before. In the artistic or the creative worlds, the contradiction that I think you have to be able to imbibe if you want to be sane is, “What I’m creating right now is the most important thing in the entire world and it doesn’t matter at all.”. It’s going to be there, but it doesn’t get to drive. What if you can say, ‘I made a grave error here, because a younger version of myself, who didn’t know what was coming, made this choice,’ and now the older version of herself or himself, who’s standing in this position, can see this is not working?”. It’s all about communicating and engaging. It’s interesting, but is there something else, right? A: Perfect segue. “Eh, it’s a little too much trouble. Your fear is allowed in the car. A: You’ve certainly followed your curiosity and caught that tiger by the tail in the process. I feel like these are not very humane or accessible ideas for most people in everyday life. My friend Rob Bell has a wonderful thought about this, where he says, it’s all well and good to say, “Ah, nothing going on here. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of seven books, including Eat Pray Love, the novel The Signature of All Things, and most recently, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. It demands the full commitment from you, demands that you risk everything, that you throw every chip in the pot. I’m asking them to help me. We caught up with the brilliant, best-selling author — and sometime audiobook narrator — to discuss her impassioned manifesto on inspiration and creativity (aka, Big Magic), the unexpected and profound impact of Eat, Pray, Love, the secret to karaoke success, and a whole lot more. So, I invested my payment in the energy that was put into cultivating something. It was probably much more like a British. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. Shake hands, make friends. A bunch of 19th-century books and one 16th-century book. Come on.” I just felt this great passion while I was reading it. EG: The really interesting thing about reading for your own audiobook is that the ear hears better than the eye sees. This process of constantly being in the state of becoming. How has your life changed in the ten years since it was published? But I’m interested in your fear and anxiety. Why do we do this? Finding food, finding shelter, finding a mate, and enhancing my wealth, creating a position in the world, and I’m going to use that time to make something that nobody needs and maybe nobody wants, and maybe won’t be any good, and maybe I won’t even like. A lot of us have art scars, right? It’s all good. That’s not enough for human beings. On the other hand, I totally fucking believe this shit is real. Passion can also burn hot and it can burn out. And that can end up looking like anything. What’s next for you?I’m working on a novel about New York City in the ’40s and specifically about showgirls. © 2020 Condé Nast. It’s not the Christ child.”, What also often happens is that when you care so much about something when you’re making it, you carry that care onward into how much you care about what people think of it. But “beyond fear” includes fear. What could be more interesting than being a person where history has shown us that literally anything can happen to literally anybody at literally any moment? Are you braver now? And when you shift that care into there, you’re signing up for a world of hurt because you’re not in control of what’s going to happen to it next. It is a sacred and holy thing and, I’m happy to be a part of it every Wednesday night. It’s something that would have been weighed, so that everyone is given a certain allotment. Overview. It’s fantastic. It’s due next year. Is this what the audiences are looking for right now?”. And something happened to me, in the middle of adolescence, where I just had this realization that this is a weird battle to be having. It’s so bizarre. They’re waiting for lighting in the bottle. And I think we’ve all had experiences in our lives where something comes out of our mouth before we had even thought it through. Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. I have a very strong commitment to non-violence against myself, that extends, I hope, into a sense of non-violence against anybody else as well. We turned to someone who literally wrote the book on creativity, Elizabeth Gilbert. Constantly bothering to turn your head a quarter of an inch to look a little bit closer at something that caught your attention, and using that as a scavenger hunt to negotiate the weird experiment that is your life. You didn’t even know that that marriage was done until you suddenly, out of nowhere, said the words, “This isn’t working anymore.” You didn’t even know how much you hated that job until one night you hear yourself saying, “I literally cannot go another day at this place.”. The word “talent” comes to us from Latin. We love it, but it’s not enough. It’s a happening story, the action’s here. Life is something that the universe is doing. It gave us an iPhone. I think they’re sociopaths. If you stay too much on one side, the battery’s dead. For me, I was worried that it would be a time suck, that social media would just be a big distraction, and that it would be basically like the mean girls’ table at the cafeteria. There’s that lovely line, “Make an argument for your limitations and you get to keep them.” I’d been arguing really hard for my limitations and there is a place in the world for recognizing your vulnerabilities and recognizing your weaknesses, and then there’s a place where you say to yourself, “Okay, but yeah, enough.” Enough, because what I realized was that my fears were keeping my life very boring, and I didn’t want to have a boring life. Stop not doing the thing that you know that you’re being invited to do. And it’s not that they were evil or dark. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. EG: Well, I would disagree. And you come from tens of thousands of years of generations of human beings who are makers. With the gentle empathy and the recognition that probably no one will die from this, even though it feels like that. I really do feel like it’s not enough to write it down. That public singing, public collective singing, is a very important part of the human being. People who are just being told that they’re here to produce and consume and be a cog in the machine. EG: I can talk about inspiration in two ways. That is the state that we’re in. Say it and then be it. Your ancestors and mine. The most important thing I ever did in my life was that year, and that time spent alone in reflection and contemplation, and really getting as firm as think it’s possible to get when we’re such shifting, weird beings. On one hand, I can talk about inspiration in a way that will make empirical people not get hives, and the way that I talk about it then is to say, “It feels like …” We lean on metaphor. The problem is, people don’t live a curiosity-driven life because they don’t trust such tiny clues. You’ve got a voice now, so what are you going to do? You say in Big Magic you were a fearful child. They shunt them out into some special program for special kids, and then the rest are told, “You’re just here to be producers, and consumers, and to pay bills, and die.” That’s the message that you get, and meanwhile, Jennifer and Joshua turn into neurotic freaks because the entire weight of all of society’s dreams and goals for creativity have been put on their tiny, little, insecure shoulders, and so they’re crazy. I think making peace with what you’re not is a really important part of, of life, and maturity, and so the person who came out at the end of that journey is somebody who I made very good friends with on that trip. Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert. You’re taking the most precious resources that you have in the world, which is your time, your life—your short, mortal human life—and you’re going to devote it to making stuff that no one wants or needs. Gilbert, who’s garnered acclaim most famously for her book Eat Pray Love, seeks to impart to readers that the act of artistic creation does not have be a tortured, complicated process: it’s better to just do, and worry about questions of merit or quality only once a work is actually finished. We take something, we look at it, we don’t like the way it is, we change it. To be brave means that you keep going anyway. A: You mentioned despairing depression. It’s not enough, and you have to keep some part of your spirit, or your soul, or whatever you want to call it. You have to overhear yourself say these words. I might die. We’re connected, no matter how Ayn Rand-ish you want to get about how, “It all comes from me. I’m showing up with a lot of discipline and rigor to do this work. And to be fearless means you don’t even know what fear is, which means you’re missing a huge part of what it is to be a human being. That’s all secondary. Stars are exploding, new galaxies are forming. That’s how impressed I was with Big Magic, how profoundly it moved me, and the impact it had on relighting a dying creative flame. To inspire, is exactly what it feels like because anybody who’s ever had an idea, regardless of what that idea is — whether it’s an artistic idea, or a spiritual or emotional idea, or a political idea, or some sort of adventure that someone wants to take—it does feel like something has come into you from outside of you. Like, do you want to do this? Those are a great comfort to me, and I love, love, love her voice. The waking up at four o’clock in the morning and you’re still thinking about this thing and you can’t shake it. Permission plus perfectionism, as far as I can see, are really the two issues that make Big Magic and the question of creativity something that we have to discuss. Also, there’s that sense that if you didn’t go to the right school and you don’t have the right degree and you don’t live in the right city, then the arts are not for you—that the arts belong to the special, the tormented, and the professional. This is my tribe. There’s this auditorium full of selves, all sort of screaming at each other at the same time, and often in conflict with each other. You’ve got this road, and there’s your curiosity, and everything that it leads to on this side, and you’ve got your fear, and your fear is like, “No.” Whenever I come to my fear, even now, I say, “I’m listening to you, and I know that you don’t want me to do this. And most of our lives, we say no. Sweet family nickname, because I was an incredibly fearful, and anxious, and nervous kid. I think there’s even a TED talk about this that has some very good sociological data to back it up; that there’s a part of your brain that can’t tell the difference between you talking about doing a thing and doing a thing. I know that depression is anger turned inwards, and it’s usually anger turned against yourself. That’s it. What it gives you are clues. And then go back to, “This matters, it doesn’t matter.” It feels like that should make you crazy, but actually it makes you sane because, you know how batteries work? It’s not a double rainbow with a unicorn running through it. Some would say there are those who are born with talent, or natural gifts. I had a conversation recently on NPR where this woman who’s so lovely, who so truly obviously wants to take me seriously, was trying to give me an out and say, “It’s almost like you believe in magic the way that you talk about it,” and I’m like, “No, I totally believe in magic.”. It’s possible to be both rational and magical in your thinking. The essence of creativity is the relationship between a human being’s efforts and the mysteries of inspiration. For example, I was fascinated to find out that The Signature of All Things grew out of your interest in gardening.I think one of the easiest things in the world to do is to engage and follow in your curiosity, because the stakes are so low. I don’t know what you have within you, but I think the most interesting possible way to walk through the world is to assume that you have some pretty interesting stuff within you. You are something that is happening. Your talent — when you were in the army, which, in the Roman Empire, everyone was — was your salary. Here’s just a sampling of the gems you’re about to discover: You have hidden treasures within you… and so do I, and so does everyone around us. A snowman. So, go make your art even if it might not be “good,” whatever that even means, whoever gets to determine that. Things are being born, things are dying, things are being made, things are falling apart. “This” could be substance abuse. She shares her wisdom on finding the freedom to create, the secret to unlocking your magic, and the power of keepi… It’s not a freakish accident that you’re feeling nervousness. EG: Exactly. This is a joke I make often, but I have the soul of a very serious writer, and I have the personality of an airline stewardess or an aerobics instructor. Who cares? When you narrated Big Magic, did you discover things by reading them out loud that you hadn’t really been aware of or did certain things just really spark for you? There’s a great deal of power in that statement because it echoes, and reverberates, and exists in a world now that challenges you. Inspiration, for you, is grounded in curiosity and following that curiosity in an authentic and open way. You recall the preindustrial time when art, science, and spirituality didn’t have strong divisions; you celebrate the divinity in creation. You have to constantly be standing in the middle of the tension between those two contradictory ideas. I’m not the Eat Pray Love type. And, of course, I found it totally the opposite. They’re able to, for instance, look at their families and say, “These people mean everything in the world to me. If I can shake those two trees a little bit, than maybe we can get some more people ceasing to simply be consumers, and to become makers instead. I can read my own memoir, because it’s basically just my journal. Per continuare a leggere, clicca qui: > Fiducia - Estratto da "Big Magic" libro di Elizabeth Gilbert. You know, I really do feel like I can divide my life between, “Before Eat, Pray, Love” and “After,” and I don’t mean before the phenomenon of Eat, Pray, Love and after. We’re the vehicles for this. And what that is, is big magic, because it unfolds aspects of yourself that you never knew you had. They’re always going to be together because your creativity asks you again, and again, and again to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. That still is a whisper, right? There are things that just have to be spoken, and then, once they’re spoken, there’s a great deal of power. That’s really cool. I’ve met fearless people. I think that is why I don’t walk around in fear of diving into another deep, despairing depression again. With Big Magic, her latest out in paperback, she digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective on creativity. They’re a polarity between positive and negative. You can not trust that you even have it, so you won’t even dare to spend a dime of it. What the critics say. Tomorrow’s going to look exactly like today. What is stopping a lot of women from engaging with their most creative selves is first and foremost the sense that they don’t have the right to do it. EG: It should give you more time to be creative. Please don’t make me explain that. It might lead you to your passion, or it might not. What that has to do with your life, I don’t even know why that’s even something that’s keeping you up at night. If you’re going to sing karaoke, you’ve got to sing an anthem. It doesn’t get to ever suggest detours. And the final fifth one, Wolf Hall by Hillary Mandel. Do you believe in hard work, or do you believe in magic?” And I was like, “Yes. ELIZABETH GILBERT, giornalista e scrittrice, vive nel New Jersey (per ora). Her new book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Riverhead), which grew out of her hugely popular TED talk, directly addresses the fans Gilbert has won over the … PREVIEW: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic is her ode to creativity and inspiration. A: Do you have any favorite audiobook narrators? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. And our tour guide is none other than the legendary Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Right? Some strange force that is calling you to try to make this thing. It’s just a thing that I made. For audiobook version of The Signature of All Things, I remember making a really strong petition saying, “There’s only one person who I want doing this, and it’s got to be Juliet Stevenson. And she did. Look, if there’s any place in the world where you want to have magical thinking, it might as well be in creativity, because the stakes are so low it doesn’t really matter. Elizabeth Gilbert: “Big magic” is my term for what happens to you when you are making a thing. Let’s have this be as peaceful a neighborhood as it can be. Elizabeth Gilbert has written a new book called Big Magic. They’re the creative ones in the class. It’s a vehicle for me to explore ideas that I’ve had for a while about female promiscuity. Our ancestors had that, and then, if you look at children, they’re born doing this stuff instinctively. You also narrated Eat, Pray, Love. I’m interested in becoming brave, and there’s a big difference there. Would you talk a little bit more about that, and also the common thread that seems to tie together all the contributors in the book? Writers tend to be interior people, but you also have a very public role as a writer and speaker. For me, my whole life of creativity has not been about becoming fearless. It’s happening right now, and you’re a part of it, and I think we get stuck. Ad Choices. If you don’t think that what you’re trying to make is the most important thing in the world, then there’s no reason to bother trying to make it because it’s so hard to do. Please don’t talk about it now while I’m trying to do this, because right now I have to do this thing.”. Whenever you can use metaphoric language around people who are really uncomfortable with mystery, they relax. It’s not like you sold your house and shaved your head and moved to Nepal. Autore. The great artist and cartoonist, Linda Barry, has this fantastic way of describing this, because she teaches people who are not artists how to make art. Let me help you out with this. These are the people I come from. It’s about a way of being in the world. For me, the most interesting part of that entire engagement is not necessarily the thing that you end up making. So, karaoke has become, I believe, the new church choir. Why are we so different from every other species on earth? It might peter out and lead you nowhere, but you didn’t risk much. There’s no traditional culture in the world that does not engage in public collective singing. Evidence of creation is around us at all times. Your fear never wants you to enter into a realm of uncertain outcome, because all it knows is that it has to go for the worst case scenario, which means any uncertain outcome ends in your death. It’s what making that thing does to you internally. Like you could have an extra couple coins that you were thrown. They draw, they sing, they dance, they play. EG: I always say, “If you’re alive, then you’re a creative person.” I know there are people who will buck against that. Passion’s greedy, in a way. You take your efforts and you enter into this very bizarre, often otherworldly, collaboration with the mysteries of inspiration. Where you didn’t even know you wanted that, until you heard your voice say it. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. I think it’s a false choice, and it’s a false duality. Yet curiosity is a generous instinct that just gives. How many units it sells. Big Magic - Libro di Elizabeth Gilbert - Vinci la paura e scopri il miracolo di una vita creativa - Scoprilo sul Giardino dei Libri. Could you talk a little bit more about that concept? Self-hatred. It reveals things that can sometimes be very painful. They’re waiting for something very grandiose, when in fact, it’s this almost invisible trail of breadcrumbs. So it’s not enough to just say, “You have it or you don’t have it,” and I also love this idea some people have it, some people don’t. There are thousands of years of reasons why women might think that their voices don’t matter. Sometimes it’s an epiphany. You’ve thrown it, and then you’ve got to go catch up with it. And then all of a sudden, these people who contributed to Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It were inspired by something that’s coming from without, as well. It causes you to walk on the edge of the cliff of daring, at the edge of your capacities. EG: ”Total Eclipse of the Heart.” If you’re going to sing, here’s the thing. It’s your piece of the pie. To a certain extent, of course. I’m a joiner. You can bury it because you’re so afraid that someone will steal it. “Oh, this is the city where my family lives, so I’m staying here.”, Somewhere in the pages of Eat, Pray, Love, at different various moments, all of those people saw me questioning that, and saying, “But what if your life actually does not have to look the same tomorrow as it looks today? We’re antennas. It’s all good.”. Your grandparents and mine, were people who made things with their hands. We don’t know how 19th-century Americans spoke. Although the book came out in September, I wanted this interview to be my first post of 2016 so her words would inspire you to read Big Magic , stop making excuses and get out there and do the thing that makes you happy. EG: Your soul has to hear you say it. And even really empirical, rational, scientific thinkers will say, “And then this idea came to me.” They always say it that way, right? That’s truly what it feels like. The wisest people I’ve ever met are the people who are capable of holding two completely contradictory ideas to be true at the same time. My friend, the great performance artist Sarah Jones, has a wonderful way of saying this. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of 288 pages and is available in Hardcover format. That’s another thing that needs to be spoken aloud, before you can move on to the next point. A: You’ve said, “If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.” Could you explain that a little more? And then comes the weird part of the alchemy, of turning it into whatever it’s going to turn into, but what you have to figure out how to be is the most-sober — and I mean that in all the definitions of the word — the cleanest, antenna. I mean before the journey of Eat, Pray, Love and after. This is how all of humans for all time have discussed the sensation of inspiration. They just flip like this. The essence of creativity is the relationship between a human being’s efforts and the mysteries of inspiration. Play with our soundboard and get the inside scoop on how sounds effects wizards took sci-fi where it had never gone before. Gilbert continued the work started in Big Magic with her Magic Lessons podcast in which she interviews famous creatives including Brene Brown and Sarah Jones. “Big Magic” is a manual with universal aspirations that feels narrowly personal, a crash course in the mental habits of the highly effective person named Elizabeth Gilbert. Big Magic is different. Big Magic is a manifesto. You take your efforts and you enter into this very bizarre, often otherworldly, collaboration with the mysteries of inspiration. Don’t make me turn this car around!”, A: Sticking with the theme of fear, I love the subtitle of the book, “Creative Living Beyond Fear.”. No animals were injured in the making of this poem.” It’s more about walking hand in hand with your fear and making space for it rather than trying to drive it out. I don’t even know where to begin answering this.” The short answer is, “No, I’m not concerned about my fear and anxiety.”. If you choose curiosity over fear again and again—not just once, not just twice, not just at some particular key moment, but habitually—you’ll end up creating a life that is different than anybody else’s life. It feels like a sort of haunting or an imbibing from some spirit from another world. As opposed to expire. No other animal would do that. Maybe those two things shouldn’t match up, but they seem to, because the way it works for me is that I draw my inspiration and my excitement about the world through engagement with the world, and I include other human beings as part of the world.