drawings 1

working with a creative block

A creative block is due entirely to social conditioning,

Social conditioning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Social conditioning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


in that this creates expectations about what you will create, that cannot be fulfilled. First though we must identify what social conditioning is. Well. Best to describe it as pre-conceived ideas, beliefs, prejudices, rules, which are mostly good for society, but not for the individual. The difference between individual and society, being that, society is unfeeling. Mechanical. Whereas the individual is feeling and biological. So. Simply put. We fail to discriminate between what is good for us as an individual, and what is good for society, as a whole. Your expectations, being based on social conditioning, are simply not based on your inner needs; but on that social agenda that was programmed into you by virtue of you being born into a certain culture at a certain time.

(Sci-Fi Story.) A human is teleported to another world where everyone is tremendously creative and free but where there is no
social restraint or organisation whatsoever. The first thing the man sees is a man shitting the street and writing a sonnet at the same time. Gosh! The man enjoys himself tremendously, painting fabulous paintings, writing wonderful, post-modern, epic poetry!!!…. but is murdered the first time he goes to the pub, in argument over how frothy the beer should be! Gosh!)


Now. It is important for society to have rules and beliefs and laws. It is good that people promote social integration. It is good that people act in similar ways, especially regarding the less fortunate members of society. And yet, it is also good to be creative. It is good to express what you feel. And this means following your inner world, and that world may well be at variance the outer world. It may be negative. In simple terms the block is, how can I go against something I know to be good? How? And that will block you. It will trap you in a vicious circle you can’t extricate yourself from.

But let’s take a musical analogy. Say you believe that only complicated classical music is actually good or worth playing. This is a belief. A rule. Then to reproduce that musically you will have to spend many years practising to gain the necessary technique. And this is good if you achieve that goal. But realise. It is a creative block in many ways as this time will not be spent writing your own music and remember. Even a very simple piece of music, you could play with one finger, is still your creation, and not someone else’s. However. This not a fixed rule I am describing. It is quite possible for an individual to understand the pitfalls of ‘identification’ and to tirelessly study technique and still compose his own highly original compositions. This is an enlightened person. We all know them. Steve Reich. Frank Zappa. The problem of course being that we can’t all be genius. In this regard it is interesting to see how all piano lessons are geared to producing concert pianists regardless of whether it is statistically probable that the pupil will ever be a concert pianist!!! It would be much more sensible to gear lessons to something less ambitious and more creatively enjoyable for the pupil. This never done of course.

MOTHER.
“What! Are you saying my child couldn’t be a concert pianist! Arrrggghhh!!!!! Die You Mother-f**ker!

This also explains why vast numbers of people who had piano lessons early on, simply give up the instrument in later life, probably because they were not taught to do anything else, like compose, or improvise, or jam, or listen, but, BUT! just play Beethoven sonatas!!!!!!

But let’s look at writing. Say poetry. Poetry! What is socially conditioned expectation here? Answer is to be a poet, and to be published in a ‘quality’ publication. But to achieve that you will have to play the academic game. Your poetry won’t be ‘your’ poetry anymore. Instead it will be a response, academically, to the poetry climate. A very difficult and clever game indeed. (Plath played this game and won at it! But we must ask, at what price, considering how unhappy she was. What? You think it was all Ted’s fault?… well… there could be some truth in that.) That is if you have the ‘normal’ expectation. In this regard it’s interesting to note that very many well known poet’s like Blake, Villon, Rimbaud, positively did not play the academic game, we’re NOT published in ‘quality’ publications, and yet are the poet’s we treasure most! Hum. Above argument applies it must be remembered to those poets who want to be recognised as ‘Poets’!!! If you are happy being published in small independent mags all well and good and more power to you!!!!! And when I say your poetry, not your poetry, I mean you will be tricked out of finding your own true authentic poetry voice. I know there are exceptions to this rule. Clever bastards who do both at once, but in the main it holds good. Remember. It’s easy to simulate things if you are academically brilliant. And a true authentic poetry voice simple won’t conform to the norm. It will just conform to itself.

Let’s finish off with painting. Panting? No! Painting!!! The ‘cant’ here is that before Picasso could paint abstract or ‘wrong’ pictures, he has to first paint like an old master. What is this saying? It’s saying you can’t just paint. Express yourself. That bad. So it’s a block. It’s saying no. You shouldn’t. You’re not qualified. It discourages, doesn’t it? Think. So let’s reverse argument. If Picasso great because he could first paint like old master then so is anyone else who could do that, and there were lots of his contemporaries, who could, and they, they Horatio, are all quite forgotten. Panting, or panting, like an old master for them, didn’t mean doodley-squat. It didn’t help.

So here is same thing. An expectation. If you want to paint a picture, but if you think it must be a picture which other people will agree, is a certain sort of picture then, then, you have a block. Because, suppose you don’t possess ability, at that moment in time, to technically paint that picture?????????
Then you can’t paint, and you is stuck.

So to finish off. There will be many people who disagree with me here. They will require some more user-friendly and less challenging solution to the creative block phenomena. Or it will have to be some unique personal psychological hang-up thing. This will be so they can hang on to their block, because, let’s face it, it is useful to them. They have an investment in it. Well. I can’t help that, and to those people I say good luck. This then for the odd few, who may agree with what’s below.

CLOUD OF DOOM (Cartoon)

Aztec BEEB

The crypto-fascist in his techno-speak,
Glibly gibbers, it might be Greek,
This alien-speak of an oily tongue,
Forked by the lightning of its own song!

Now hear the jargon of our jarring sun,
Conjugating the verb of our despair,
Finding a methodology for the disease,
That talks up all with a promiscuous grin.

This slippery speech of the unaccountable few,
Who bury the truth with every twist of their lip,
Who pervert all in their perverse path,
To fit their crypto-fascist techno-speak.

The Ross Brand debacle, it seemeth to moi, all stems from the from the fact that being a public service body, the BBC simply fails to do the job a public service body is supposed to do, i.e. to address , cure, or at least point out, the ills of the culture it is part of. (Greek tragedy did this and was paid for with public money, like our licence fee.) The Beeb most patently fails to do this effectively, and so I think there then occurs a pressure cooker effect, where the pressure of not doing what they are supposed to do, builds up and up and up, until, finding a weak point, (Ross and Brand)is found, and it inevitably bursts out in some kind of perverse or unacceptable form.

Let me say this again. The BBC is a lot like, A LOT LIKE, the N.H.S. It is paid for with public money to ensure, ENSURE, health for all! This health, in BBC terms means having programmes that deal with serious themes in an intelligent and honest manner. For example, a play by the late great Dennis Potter. Now, everyone at the BBC knows this, but in the interests of personal careers it is swept under the proverbial carpet in favour of some more appealing formula that has better ratings and is more user friendly; and the result of this suppression is a kind of BBC hysteria, which will erupt every now and then in a breach of the defences and an outpouring of purulent matter!

Of curse the BBC would argue they are doing their job by providing dramas like ‘Capturing Mary’ (Poliakoff.) and ‘My Zinc Bath.(Hare.) Let’s have a close look at these BBC flagships.

My Zinc Bath. Now how do you say ‘high culture’, ‘serious’, ‘worthwhile’, on TV? Answer. You have people say clever things in an elevated almost Shakespearean language about a ‘serious’ subject. To the popular mind this kind of thing always means ‘high culture’. Then you do the other thing people equate with the gravity of a project. You actually get a Hollywood star! Imagine. A Hollywood star!

Now. this is strategy. in reality, no one could understand what the point of this drama was. Because there was no story. It had no real characters. And why are they going on about addiction? Why? This never explained. And is it really like Shakespeare? Answer. No. Shakespeare’s characters say clever stuff but aren’t clever themselves. Often they are created to exhibit the pointlessness of cleverness, for its own sake. This definitely a theme in Hamlet. And what actually happens in MZB? Answer. Nothing. They pontificate. End. If ever there was an exercise in grandiose hot air. This was it.

I repeat. The elevated language thing. The stars. The emotive subject. It was all a trick. It lacked any true dramatic substance.

Capturing Mary. It’s about a house. A big house in Mayfair or somewhere. Gosh. And all the stuff that happened in this big important house. Gosh. And it’s Maggie Smith, in the house. Then along comes the subtly evil Greville White, flitting in and out in his subtly evil way, and he’s played by DAVID WALLIAMS! Gosh. How street cred. And the story’s told by the son of a cleaner. A cleaner! I mean. Cleaner’s aren’t posh. Think! And what happens? Well. You can’t tell. It’s all a bit too subtly evil to know what is going on. Still. It is big house. In Mayfair!

So? Is this drama? Or is it glossy posturing made plausible by the presence of heavyweights like Smith and Gambon? I think it undoubtedly no. It ain't drama. It's another hollow vessel. Also, what I would say is that under the glossy surface of these ‘dramas’, what they really show is a certain contempt for their audience, in that they are not designed to enlighten, only to impress.


How many more ways can you say it? The BBC has become too corporate. Now in their mania to maintain standards all progs homogenised or ‘homo’ genised, to look and sound the same. It like conformity gene run rampant. The cloned leper in his Ivory Tower colony. Imagine if BBC executives were Aztec Priests, all ripping out hearts to appease the God of standards. Imagine going up to them and saying “You must stop this senseless bloodshed!” Would they listen? But how can they? The sun of standards will not rise tomorrow, unless they rip out hearts so there is no choice, is there? They would not listen.

THEY’D PROBABLY RIP YOUR HEART OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Again the ‘cant’ states that we must cater to minorities, yet the minority that would like authentic drama, or stuff that does make you think, or feel, is conveniently ignored.

In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth Hal at first humors Falstaff and fools about but at the end he sobers up and says, now, enough infantilism! It is time to grow up! Take on responsibility. But this what never happened at the Beeb. It’s like Falstaff is running the whole show!

Let me say this again . Why has the BBC become like an English version of MTV? I mean next month, they’ll probably do a rap version of Jane Austen! Why are they allowed to say something is ‘drama’ when we all know damn well it ain’t Samuel Beckett! That some tosh about M.I.5. and terrorists, shouldn’t really be labelled ‘drama’. This gives it a status it has not earned. Does not deserve. Drama to be called drama should have at it’s core weighty moral or metaphysical issues that make us question our world. Make us think, fer kirstsakes!!! What we have instead is a bunch of idiot producers, vying with each other to be the one who made the programme that got the most viewers. Just to be one better than someone else. Moronic.

The Ross Brand debacle struck a chord because it was an attack on an English institution (Sachs) and we we’re outraged because we all know England, ENGLAND, could be great, should be great, but obviously isn’t now where the BBC are concerned. And that’s kinda sad, because we could easily do better.

The powers that be,
the ‘ruling elite’,
the Authorities,
comprised of Newspapers like
‘The Protector’,
or Public T.V. Companies like
The CCT,
Or political parties like
The Techno Lib-Lab Goodtime Fascists,
Were presented with something
A thing, (unspecified)
& they examined it
& judiciously considered it
& after due time they said;
“Oh dear. How sad.
We’re afraid this something, (unspecified)
We have been presented with
Doesn’t fit the academic model!
It isn’t clever enough.
Articulate enough.
It hasn’t the required sophistication.
It appears, well… useless,
Not to put too finer point on it so regretfully,
We will have to reject it.
Trash it.
Dump it.
Sorry.”& that’s what happened.
It got trashed. Dumped.
Dispensed with.
& what was it?
This thing (unspecified)
That they had been presented with??????

* * * * * * * * *

It was a new born babe.