Biting the apple

And it gets caught in your throat

I’m not used to taking my time. It’s something I know and don’t like about myself. When I get it into my head that I have to do something or be something, I know how to take the steps to make the change, but get unbearably frustrated when it doesn’t happen immediately.

Knitting has been a very good antidote to this. Hate to say it, but all the wellbeing advice they give you about having a hobby where you’re a complete beginner is absolutely true: it’s really really really good for you. For me. As annoying and angering as knitting is, it’s been so useful to be objectively shit at something, making wonky things, missing stitches, adding stitches, knitting in different tensions, having to unpick whole swathes of a project. I have to pay attention, be on my toes, be alert to instruction rather than arrogantly waving it away. There’s a satisfaction I’ve discovered that’s really unlike anything I’ve experienced before, when I bind off the final stitch in a project that’s caused me a particular amount of pain, and it looks exactly like the pattern said it would, and I can hold it in my hands and even wear it or give it to someone for them to wear and use. It must be like what God felt before free will was invented, a bunch of perfect human bodies rolling out one after the other on the factory conveyor belt wearing blankly happy smiles.

There are knitters and fibre artists who use the form in a much more freewheeling way than I could ever imagine, who would certainly say differently. I need the safety net of a pattern to fall back on and can’t imagine free-handing a project only to measurements. It’s enough for me right now to swallow someone else’s instructions and emerge with something vaguely like it promised it would be. My knitting is very low stakes: for me and friends and family. If I had to bring it into the public arena, I think I would still feel proud of it, because it’s like I’ve performed metallurgy, making solid objects out of string. Low stakes, but still something.

Recently, I’ve been trying out different types and ways of writing that are different to the cut-and-dry, instant gratification type writing I have been calling mine. That’s not to denigrate what I have done—I am still incredibly proud of everything I’ve written, even if I would not necessarily write it in that way now. But I’ve wanted to try writing in ways that stretch me. Because I’ve been writing in some way basically ever since I could hold a pen, it doesn’t always feel challenging to me. It doesn’t always feel easy, but it’s always there, I can trust that something will come out that I can work with if I sit and stare at a screen for long enough.

These little experiments in writing differently have been so gratifying, proof to myself that I’m more than the box I put myself in. I’ve passed through the stages of creation where I’ve been tapping happily away, starkly convinced of my own talent and genius. I’ve turned away to do other little experiments, tapping happily away at those, turning back to the original experiments only to find they’ve spoiled under my nose. The petri dish has become infected somehow and withered the words on the page in front of me. After time and brain space away, what I had thought were the prophetic outpourings of the world’s next genius were in fact only passable. Despair.

I was Eve in the garden of Eden. I had bitten the apple and imbibed a critical eye, only to turn it on what I had made and knew immediately that it just wasn’t very good. It’s crushing to find that something you thought you were if not really good at then at least alright at, something that came as naturally to you as eating crisps or running a bath, has slipped from your grasp when applied in this new way. I’m grasping at the knowledge that it’s all part of the journey, it’s good that I can know what’s good and what’s not and create something in the face of that, chipping away later to make something that might be alright. Right now, I’m standing red faced and ashamed, clutching for fig leaves to cover my nakedness.

It’s almost boring to recount this because it’s such a universal part of the creative process. This is both a burden and a comfort—though obviously I’m the most special thing and the most unique person ever to have existed, thus my thoughts and experiences are totally singular and interesting, it’s been lovely having conversations with friends about how silly and similar we all are. I look at their work and think: wow, what a mind, how perfect, how brilliant, and yet couldn’t possibly imagine the same being thought of my work because right now I’m in the Everything Is Shit And I Will Never Make Anything Of Worth phase.

Recently, T and I watched the film The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, a 2013 documentary following one of the masterminds behind Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, as he muddles his way through creating The Wind Rises, what was supposed to be his final film. I watched it two days after watching his actual final film, The Boy and the Heron, where I had been utterly subsumed by the breathtaking animation and the beautiful surreal portrayal of grief. In the documentary, Miyazaki chainsmokes and grumbles his way through the storyboard, complaining all the while that his cat has no schedule and no obligations while he has to deliver an ending for a film that his studio have already started working on. Miyazaki is widely hailed as a genius of filmmaking, has made some of the most moving and glorious, sumptuous and emotionally wrenching films (see: Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke etc etc etc). I couldn’t help but laugh heartily when he pontificates on the uselessness of filmmaking because it felt so familiar. Creation is the ultimate act of navel gazing that to persevere and cause yourself frustration and pain in the process feels so stupid, so pointless, so entirely ridiculous. And yet, he emerged at the end of it with a film that is so beautiful that it is the first of his films to make him cry. I watched The Wind Rises on a National Express from Leeds to London a month ago and still found it one of the most moving cinematic experiences I have maybe ever had.

It will take time to claw my way back to feeling like I can ever create anything good, and right now I feel like grumpy Miyazaki complaining bitterly about being forced to finish a process that is entirely of his own making. I would really recommend the documentary if you’re feeling similarly and need to be taken out of yourself for an hour and a half.