The creative void

Philip Patston creates a vacuum of rehabilitation, sickness and empty vessels while contemplating the value of the absence of creativity.

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Never, ever, ever head up a blank document with "creative void" and expect to be inspired to write something, because you won't. My Google Word doc sat blank for 24 hours, the title taunting me with malice, daring me to overcome its self-perpetuating lure. I had the idea to write about the absence of creativity after attending a two-day meeting of rehabilitation academics in Queenstown in late July, causing my own lag in creative flow for this blog. The theme rose again a week later when I was annihilated by 'flu and took to my bed for a number of days. Now I can't really remember what I was originally going to say about it, but I need to write a blog post...

Rehabilitation, in the context of my involvement, is defined as "a course of treatment, largely physical therapy, designed to reverse the debilitating effects of an injury." It is treated as a science, an aspect of medicine with diagnoses, plans, treatments, outcomes and measurements. It is studied, recorded, written about and debated. It's a job for the boys where the girls are allowed to play if they don't win. If you need rehabilitation, you're not allowed to play. It has, as a field, a lot of unanswered questions, which don't bode well with academics or scientists, particularly male ones.

I think rehabilitation is a creative void, positioned as a science. I see rehabilitation rather as an art. It is like restoring a house, redecorating, writing a new script, creating a new canvas, remixing a music track. Sure there are technical skills involved, but the outcome is undefined until the work is finished if, indeed it ever is. Rehab needs faith, trust, passion and vision.

Being sick is a creative void, too. As I lay in bed for four days with sweats and nausea and sore lungs, I felt I might never do anything in the creation realm ever again. I felt like an academic trying to determine an outcome for which there was no measure.

Author of "Eat, Pray, Love" Elizabeth Gilbert believes we may actually be creative voids, anyway. Rather than being the vessel of creativity, she proposes in this funny, personal and surprisingly moving Ted Talk. that we are merely the conduit for creativity.

This blog post isn't particularly a vessel of creativity, but it might be a conduit. It might begin you thinking about the creative voids in your life or work that need filling, or which perhaps give room for other forms of creation, perhaps even catalysing outcomes in others. If it does, do leave a comment, because these blogs of late have been rather void of commentary, and the editor has asked me to be more proactive in provoking such interactive discourse.