Living a Creative Life
Because bravery is not the same as fearlessness
Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life.
🥪 Bacon, Brie, Fig Jam, & Spinach Sandwich at Thomas J Walls in Edinburgh. I spent some time last weekend writing and people-watching in Thomas J Walls, a gorgeous coffee shop/brunch spot in a former opticians’ on Forrest Road in Edinburgh. The sandwiches aren’t cheap but they’re real door stoppers, full of great-tasting ingredients. The bread itself was thick slices of a crusty granary loaf, which felt like it was good for both my body and my soul.
📖 When the Dust Settles - Lucy Easthope. It’s fair to say I’ve started this year with a hefty dose of climate anxiety - not helped by seeing the Prime Minister travelling between London and Leeds (a 200 mile journey) by private jet(!). Lucy Easthope’s fantastic book about disaster planning and recovery was exactly what I needed. In particular, there’s a section about what it’s like being a woman in her field which I found extremely relatable: she writes about being ‘constantly accused of overreaction, of too much thinking and emotion.’ I’m lucky enough to work on climate response in my day job, but sometimes it feels like we approach the challenge as one of reporting and targets rather than the emergency response it really is - one of my goals for this year is to not be ashamed of the urgency I feel in responding to our changing climate (ad - Bookshop.org affiliate link).
📱@alwaysbecozy_ on Instagram. The brainchild of Alex Arnold, Always Be Cozy is, to quote the page’s bio, ‘a vibe, a state of mind, soft things when the world is hard, have a small luxury, we’re all going to die someday!’. I’m always trying to curate my social media feed to remove the things that make me feel bad and include more things that encourage me to treat myself well - this definitely fulfils the latter requirement! I talked a few weeks ago about in/out lists; Alex’s is definitely worth reading in full - but for a taster, she has snacking cakes, functional maximalism, and french fries on her ‘in’ list, and bath bombs, girlbossing yourself into the sun, and low-rise jeans on her ‘out’ list.
And now, to talk about bravery.
I’m taking a leaf out of Becca Freeman’s book and reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic (ad - Bookshop.org affiliate link) and although I’m only a little way in, I can already tell why she raves about it and re-reads it every January. Gilbert defines living creatively as ‘living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear’ - and doesn’t that just sound great?
She goes on to give the example of a friend who had dropped out of figure skating as a teenager, when it had become clear that she wasn’t going to be good enough to be a champion, but who had gone back, three mornings a week, in her forties. ‘She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy. Skating made her feel alive and ageless. She stopped feeling like she was nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties. She was making something of herself, making something with herself… skating is still the best way for her to unfold a certain beauty and transcendence within her life that she cannot seem to access in any other manner.’ This struck a chord with me, for the simple reason that I’ve just had my first ballet lesson since I moved house at the start of 2019. I never meant to stop dancing, I just couldn’t get to the studio I used to go to so easily after I moved, and then 2020 happened… but now I’m back at the barre, and I’m SO happy to be there. I told you a little bit about it last week - but until starting to read Big Magic I hadn’t made the connection to it being part of living a creative life. I’m going to repeat the advice you’ve no doubt already read countless times: if there’s something creative you enjoyed as a child but stopped because you weren’t ‘good enough’, see if there’s something available to you now that scratches the same itch.
One of my favourite films of the last few years is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2021 adaptation of the Jonathan Larson musical Tick Tick Boom; it follows Jonathan Larson (who wrote the musical RENT) as he tries to finish and sell his musical Superbia, and it’s all about the choices, fears, and pressures involved in living a creative love. One lyric in particular, from the song Louder Than Words (my fourth most-listened song in my 2022 Spotify Wrapped), has been revolving around my head for most of the 14 months since I first watched the film:
Cages or wings, which do you prefer?
Ask the birds
Fear or love, baby? Don't say the answer,
Actions speak louder than words
Will I get a tattoo of an open birdcage to remind me of this? I wouldn’t rule it out.
As often happens, I opened Big Magic especially ready to be receptive of its message because of the fiction book I had just finished: Kiss Her Once For Me by Alison Cochrun (ad - Bookshop.org affiliate link). Cochrun’s previous book, The Charm Offensive (ad - Bookshop.org affiliate link), was in my top 5 books of 2022, so I had high hopes for this romance, and the book absolutely lived up to them. Like the very best romances, its love story was accompanied by a message I know I’ll be thinking about for a long time: in this case, fear, what happens when you choose to let it rule your entire life, and what’s possible when you believe that you can step out of your ‘Perpetual Suck’ and that ‘ridiculously idiotic plans work out mostly for the best’. The core to this: being brave is not the same as being fearless: instead, it’s about overcoming those fears and living to tell the tale.
I don’t know about all of you, but that’s certainly something I could do with reminding myself every so often…
Speak soon,
Lily