Intimate Creativity
Partners in Love and ArtBy Irving Sarnoff Suzanne SarnoffTHE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS
Copyright © 2002 Irving Sarnoff
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-299-18054-6Contents
Illustrations...................................................ixAcknowledgments.................................................xiIntroduction: Exploring Intimate Creativity.....................31 Relating and Creating.........................................232 Transcending the Culture of Individualism.....................453 Embracing a Collective Identity...............................694 The Unending Conversation.....................................965 From Inspiration to Implementation............................1206 The Harmony of Equals.........................................1447 Making Art/Making Love........................................1658 Couple and Community..........................................190Epilogue: The Composite Picture.................................214Appendix: Interview Questionnaire...............................229Notes...........................................................233Index...........................................................247
Chapter One
Relating and Creating
Loving and creating arise from the same basic core of yearning for the ultimate in human fulfillment. Both are experienced as a gratifying change from desire to consummation, from an imagined possibility to an accomplished reality. In going through this transformation, people derive tremendous enjoyment from releasing their pent-up tensions and expressing the constructive energies they have stored up within themselves just by being alive.
Love is so vital to our sense of well-being that we equate it with the central organ of existence-the heart. When we love and are loved in return, we say our hearts are overflowing with joy. When sorely troubled by our love-life, we describe the anguish as heartache and heartbreak. Even newborn babies need affection and sensual fondling to thrive, and love-starved adults can become depressed or physically ill.
Lovers crave union with every facet of their beings. They want to devote as much attention and care to each other as to themselves, and they desire to give and receive erotic pleasure. In fulfilling this innate need to express the affectionate and sexual wholeness of love, partners offer the best of themselves to one another and share the heights of emotional and physical satisfaction. Everyone is also born with the "instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity," as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has pointed out. "Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives," this expert on the psychology of creative behavior believes. "Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity." It is our capacity for language, concept formation, learning, and creative expression that distinguishes us from all other animals. The process of creativity is so intriguing because "when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab comes close to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get ... and so rarely do." And the benefits extend to others: "The results of creativity enrich the culture and so they indirectly improve the quality of all our lives."
The great majority of artists produce their work as solitary creators, conforming to the individualistic approach that still dominates the world of art in western society. Undoubtedly, the process of individual creativity yields its own psychological rewards. Bringing original ideas and esthetically pleasing objects into the world can be extremely gratifying. The same may be said about giving free rein to one's own imagination-without having to stop, consider, discuss, and incorporate offerings from another person. In addition, what an individual communicates and produces gives something of his or her innermost self to others, providing them with enjoyment and enlightenment. Others' positive reactions, in turn, bolster the artist's self-confidence and faith in being inventive.
It is impossible, however, for anyone to give and receive love without relating to someone else. Love can be fulfilled only by participating in a relationship with a real partner. On this point Alexander Lowen, a pioneering practitioner of bioenergetic psychotherapy, remarks: "Love as a psychological experience is an abstraction ... an anticipation that has not found its realization. It has the same quality as a hope, a wish, or a dream." And he concludes, "The appreciation of love as a psychological phenomenon must not blind one to the necessity of its fulfillment in action." Similarly, in his classic I and Thou, the eminent philosopher Martin Buber explains that the potential to relate lovingly cannot be actualized in social isolation; it is brought out by two people in their direct encounters. Buber believes this capacity for relating is the finest and most unusual of all human potentials for creativity.
Yet most lovers do not perceive one another as co-creators of their relationship. Nor are they aware that they themselves determine all aspects of this interpersonal creation. It is commonplace to hear people refer to their intimate connection as "it"-as if their relationship were some alien object imposed on them by an unfathomable and capricious source beyond their control, a "thing" they had no part in creating and have no further personal responsibility for directing. Such partners may say, "It is working," or "It isn't working," or "Hopefully, it will work out," when they are actually talking about the quality and outcome of their own creation.
A Loving Relationship Is a Collaborative Creation
Two people begin to create a loving relationship from the moment they experience a transporting click of attraction, a feeling of being involuntarily drawn to one another. To cultivate the emotional and erotic wholeness of their nascent love, however, they have to use their volition to make a myriad of agreements about how to express it. Some of these agreements are verbal, like arranging to go on dates or discussing where and how to spend their time together. But even more of their agreements are nonverbal, made simultaneously by both partners through facial expressions and gestures.
Because their communication is often very rapid, they may feel caught up in a process that bypasses their volition. Nevertheless, both are deciding what to do and comment upon, what to ignore and remain silent about. All of this decision making is jointly creative, since it brings into being experiences and expectations that had never existed before, either within or between these two people.
Building up a mental picture of the thoughts and feelings they are communicating, partners develop the same configuration of meaning about what is happening between them. Of course, both retain their own self-images. But now each also has a mental image of the other and of the two of them interacting together. And they carry this complex picture around in their heads-even when they are apart.
Both lovers grow increasingly cognizant of being partners in a psychological entity that did not exist when they first met. Eventually, they openly acknowledge the newly constructed connection between them. Now, instead of seeing themselves as just a "me" and a "you," they also see themselves as a "we." This common conception of their "we-ness"-along with the matrix of their agreements-constitutes the essence of the relationship the two of them are creating together.
Stephan Fry, the English actor who plays the part of Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde, describes the energizing effect of the feeling of "we-ness" very well. "I realized ... that fulfillment lay partly in work, but didn't lay entirely in it. That I would be more fulfilled if I found love and companionship." After finding a boyfriend, he also discovered, delightedly, that he had become half of a couple: "I love this thing.... You're talking about a film and you say, 'Yes, we saw that, we saw it in so-and-so.' And I haven't used that 'we' for-well, ever, really."
A loving relationship is more than the mere summation of each person's input. Through the interpenetration of each one's consciousness, lovers meld their individual contributions into a novel and unique conception that neither could create or enact without the other-just as nobody can converse, make love, or conceive a child without the involvement of someone else. This collective creativity enlivens a couple, multiplying their energy and pleasure in being together.
Romancing the Integration of Love and Creativity
Before uniting their lives in a loving relationship, people tend to see themselves as heroes or heroines in their own minds, formulating favorable images of what they will achieve over time. These mental projections give unattached individuals an ongoing impetus to strive for the accomplishment of their personal goals. But after creating their "we," lovers are mutually inspired to compose a common dream or romance-a vision of how they want to live in the world as a couple. What social values do they stand for? How do they hope to express those values through the kind of work they do? What are their priorities? How will they balance personal achievement with the cultivation of their loving relationship?
Unlike a painting or a scientific report, however, a relationship is intangible. It is not a palpable organism, as are the individuals who construct it. Nor is it an inanimate thing that can be set apart and readily observed. Consequently, committed lovers become highly motivated to create a perceptible product that symbolizes the fruitfulness of their intangible merger: having and rearing a child, building or decorating a home, sharing a hobby, or starting a business together. All of these creative accomplishments serve as an external focus for the nurturing inclinations they feel toward one another and become an integral part of their romance.
A couple's romance is not a trivial or misleading illusion that interferes with their ability to accept reality. Instead, it gives them a vital and unified sense of purpose for a future that they can work toward enthusiastically. It augments their individual reservoirs of energy when they are together as well as when they are apart. And it provides a permanent repository of exhilarating memories that they can draw upon for encouragement. Ellen Berscheid, an expert on the psychology of emotion, speculates that "perhaps it is only people who can continue to dream dreams that include their partner who can stay emotionally alive within a relationship."
Ethel Person, a noted psychoanalyst and author, has observed that many adults entertain "the dream ... to find a love relationship which is also the locus of creative collaborative work." Perhaps those who entertain this fantasy hunger for the chance to open up fully to someone who will listen with genuine interest. They may imagine that doing creative work with a lover would allow them to be as honest and trusting as humanly possible. Despite all the duplicity required to function successfully in today's economy-or because of it-many people feel imprisoned behind a false front they are aching to shed. They often yearn to "let it all hang out" and still be accepted by a partner.
Such individuals may sense the delicious freedom involved in creative collaboration-the chance to set their own standards, work at their own pace, and spend long periods of time together in the privacy of their own space. Clearly, those who nurture this alluring-but unrealized-dream of being immersed in a bubble of undivided intimacy are stirred by the same longings that the pairs in this book are putting into vibrant reality.
* * *
Christo and Jeanne-Claude are glowingly wrapped around each other. The passionate and infectious warmth of their mutual affection exhilarated us throughout our interview. They were instantly smitten by one another when he came, as a penniless artist and refugee from Bulgaria, to Jeanne-Claude's well-to-do home in Paris to paint a portrait of her mother in 1958. Because of the difference in social status, her parents vehemently objected to their involvement. Unable to purge each other from their deepest desires, she defied her parents' prohibitions and married Christo, incurring their wrath and rejection for several years.
Once they gave themselves to each other, nothing could divide them. As Christo said to us, "The love is the most important thing." Jeanne-Claude certainly felt the same way. "I was physically crazy about him." Amazingly, she was exactly his age, born in Casablanca on the very same day, June 13, 1935, that he came into the world in far-off Gabrovo, Bulgaria. This coincidence fueled their romantic fantasy about having been destined for one another. Jokingly but fondly, they often refer to themselves as twins. Since being joined, they have blended their talents and energies to face life as a team.
Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher also felt an immediate rapport, a harmony of outlook and sensibility. Sammy had come to the San Francisco Art Institute to begin his graduate studies. He was very impressed by an exhibit of Anthony's work and asked a friend to introduce them. Anthony had just completed his master's degree and was planning to move to New York, but he decided to remain in San Francisco so that he and Sammy could continue to develop a personal relationship and explore the possibility of working together. After about one year, they decided to collaborate.
In contrast to their art, which comments on the dehumanizing impact of technology, their relationship is buoyant with expressions of mutual care and concern. As Anthony exclaimed in his first telephone conversation with us, "Working together is so romantic." In our interview, he affirmed that he felt privileged to find a lover with whom he could collaborate so intimately. Elaborating on these sentiments, Sammy said that their satisfaction after completing a body of work "brings out feelings of love for each other and enhances the notion of accomplishing something-not only as artists but also as a couple."
In doing our study, we discovered that all of the co-career couples have made a romance out of successfully combining love and artistic creativity. Co-authors and co-stars of their own love story, they make their dreams come true in the real world. As a result, they feel mutually empowered and validated.
Intimate Creativity as a Pathway to Relational and Creative Growth
A couple's profound commitment to intimate creativity continually requires each partner to interact with the other. They could not create a steady stream of work unless they also created the interpersonal skills necessary to sustain their harmony and productivity. This simultaneous process of relational and artistic creativity is the principal means by which these partners fulfill the four basic promises that are intrinsic to every loving relationship.
Unity
In becoming a couple, people go through a major psychological change. Formerly, as unattached individuals, they coped with life and the world on their own. Now, linked by the common creation of their loving relationship, they liberate one another from the confining boundaries of a solitary existence. Both of them build on the foundation of their unity by honestly sharing their separate thoughts and feelings, hopes and apprehensions, quirks and eccentricities. As the relevant empirical research reveals, "the more that people self-disclose to each other, the more progress is made in their relationship and the better the quality of that relationship."
Lovers also become more united every time they agree on what they want to do as a couple. Some of these agreements are quite easy to reach-for example, deciding to participate in a recreation or pastime that both regard as enjoyable. Other decisions may evoke sharp differences that take a lot of time and effort to resolve: whether or not to become parents, how many children to have, and how to rear them. Nevertheless, when a couple unequivocally agrees to cooperate in pursuing any particular plan of action, they become more unified.
Having agreed to unite in every facet of their lives, partners in love and art are extremely dedicated to the welfare of the relationship that encompasses both of them. Voluntarily subduing their self-centered and competitive inclinations, they cooperate to ensure their effectiveness as a loving couple and as a professional team. Commenting on the various activities she and Christo share, Jeanne-Claude said, "He doesn't do it for me and I don't do it for him. We do it for us."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Intimate Creativityby Irving Sarnoff Suzanne Sarnoff Copyright © 2002 by Irving Sarnoff. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
