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Tolkien and Creativity: Creation as Jazz - Part 1 · Mythmakers

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  Welcome to the first part of Tolkien and creativity. It's such a huge subject that we split the
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  podcast into two parts. Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy
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  fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia
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  Golding. I'm the director of the Centre and I'm also an author and one of my frequent favourite
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  guests to have with me on this podcast is Jacob Brennaker. And so I'll let Jacob introduce himself
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  this time. Thank you. Hi Julia and hi everyone else. I'm DeBrennaker. I am a scholar of the
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  fantastic including Tolkien and mythology. I'm also a narrative designer for Robinsburg or games.
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  Brilliant. I love the way Jacob that you combine the both the academic interests with a very practical
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  outworking of this thinking about how does this translate into narrative games. It seems that
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  fantasy does this brilliantly. It lends itself to you know leaving the world of fantasy and going
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  into other areas. Right we have decided today that to tackle the topic which interests both of us
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  really fundamentally and that is Tolkien and creativity. And so you get a sense of the the text
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  that we're dealing with to discuss this particular subject. We're going to focus in on three with a
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  gesture towards obviously the works everybody knows from Tolkien being the Lord of the Rings,
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  the Silmarillion and the Hobbit. And the three which you may be less familiar with are a piece called
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  Mythopia, something called Leaf by Nigel and an essay called On the Fairy Stories. So perhaps Jacob
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  you might want to tell us what each of these pieces are and where do they fit in Tolkien's canon.
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  Yeah yeah yeah and yeah here's so and you the way that you limb out was chronologically which
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  is fantastic. I think that works really well. So Mythopia is the first of these three pieces. It's
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  a poem written probably around 1931 or so. And this is so and we'll get to the specifics of the
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  texts individually. So just kind of broad strokes. This kind of seems to have grown out of a
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  conversation that he had with C.S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson and debating the merits of Myth.
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  If if is due to something that is simply not true or not historical, this is Tolkien's kind of
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  refutation of that position held by Lewis. And so it's it's not a terribly long poem but it is
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  dense illusions meaning and well worth considering. And you kind of see here the working out
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  of his ideas of the value of creativity in life in general and how meaning yeah go ahead.
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  Yeah and unusually Mythopia I don't really associate this with Tolkien. When I think of his
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  poetry I think of them as stories, story poems, ballads very often and comic verse. Mythopia is
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  more like something you'd expect from Alexander Popes essay on criticism or essay on man or
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  something. It's stating an argument. So it seems in quite an unusual poetic tradition for Tolkien.
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  Am I wrong about that or is it the other one like this? It's the only one that I think I think
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  is like genuinely kind of self-reflective where it is most of them like he said he's kind of telling
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  stories about something else and what he's doing in his first elsewhere is creating himself
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  on you know kind of secondary worlds or embedding stories that exist within a secondary world. So
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  this is meant to be read in the context of our world, our reality. So in that sense I think it
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  certainly stands apart in that way from how he conceptualized the stories that he was creating
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  in the poems that he was writing. Yeah and if there's any super duper expert out there who actually
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  can come up with another example for us let us know because we're not it's possible we may have
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  missed something but I think it's the only piece like this. Okay so that's Mythopia. The next one
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  is Leaf by Niggle. So tell us about this and how people can read it. Where is where'd they find it?
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  Yeah so this one is in you can find it in a few different places you can find it. I'm
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  if you can find it in the Tolkien reader I know you can find it in Trillion Leaf which is
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  have a collection of essays which is where you can find all of these three works there you are
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  with those people watching this. This is an old version of Trillion Leaf but you can get
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  more up-to-date version but yeah it's collected in that. Yeah Harbour Collins in the United States
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  it was the publisher of that and yeah so that one so you can find it there. It was originally published
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  in a journal and it was published I think in 1945 someone was actually published with written in
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  1938-39 and situating this within Tolkien's works. This is he's been working on
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  in this stretch of time working on Lord of the Rings but he's kind of let the manuscript sit.
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  Well it's been over several years it seems that if he's kind of let it just kind of
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  marinate and he'd been quite frustrated with the process and you know he had this there's this
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  giant tree in his backyard that you could see while he was laying in bed and his wife was very
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  worried about the tree because with the wind and whatnot that she was afraid that it might damage
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  the house and so they clip it and Tolkien thought it was a tragedy of epic proportions that
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  this beautiful tree was being you know hideously disfigured and so thinking about this tree and
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  it just like it kind of touched something in him and he started kind of reflecting upon his own
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  creative life and so this is kind of I think among the most autobiographical you'll get of Tolkien's
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  work aside from the letters where he's you know explicitly talking about day-to-day things that
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  happen and instances but this is really a moment where Tolkien is in the midst of his frustration
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  of writing Lord of the Rings reflecting on what it means to be an author an author of the fantastic
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  and author of something that other people might sneer at or think as being not worthy of engaging
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  with or reading or something that's silly or meant for children what does that mean what does
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  that look like and we'll get us under the details there but this appears to have this process of
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  working through his own kind of creative anxieties maybe even some regrets it seemed to have maybe
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  catalyzed something in him that gave him what he needed to get back to the Lord of the Rings
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  manuscript and complete it which so then that was published and then later this essay or story
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  leaf by Nicole is published after Lord of the Rings but it was written before you know prior to
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  the full publication and that's kind of where it fit in that process yeah and before people start
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  writing in I think it might have been a neighbor's tree was a neighbor's tree okay possibly
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  um because I was just rereading it today and I think he he doesn't sound as though he's responsible
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  for the lobbying of this tree so we don't let's not blame the Tolkien family for
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  tree massacre um and then finally um we've got on fairy stories which is also widely available
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  in various critical editions uh hopefully it's also available in the tree and leaf
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  paperbacks that we mentioned where you can find the leaf by Nicole for the obvious reason that
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  they're they're coming at the same topic from different directions so tell us about the on fairy
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  stories the origin of that particular piece yeah so with on fairy stories so it came out of a lecture
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  that uh Tolkien was uh asked to give uh at the University of St Andrews in Scotland uh and this
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  was the annual Andrew laying lectures Andrew laying famously known for the different fairy
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  books right so you have the you know the the blue fairy book uh read going through all the colors
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  of the rainbow and he was a collector of myths uh from the world itself and uh so that was kind of his
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  legacy was collecting um discussing comparing uh different world myths um including fairy stories
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  which uh Tolkien kind of argues as a kind of subcategory of myth a different the slightly different
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  not not all myths are fairy tales um and so so he was asked to give this lecture and uh and he
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  takes that lecture and then uh revises it uh and it's becomes uh yeah it becomes an essay that's
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  published uh and it's it's this is longer right so this is a more kind of a this is a much more
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  academic yeah so you have three so with these three we kind of have three different modes of
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  Tolkien's wording right so poetry you have a froze story and then here you have kind of like an
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  academic article um more like and they're all like you said like I said Julia's kind of
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  they're all getting at the same thing but in three different modes of uh imagination right
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  yeah academic imagination uh kind of the narrative imagination and the poetic imagination um so
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  it's fascinating and really to read you can get you can get a lot out of each one of these
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  individually but in reading them together you really kind of get a three-dimensional view uh
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  Tolkien's ideas about what imagination does humanities kind of innate ability to imagine and
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  individual responsibility uh and privilege of creating something for imagination
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  and they're also not very long so if you're listening to this thinking it's not like you're
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  embarking on a new Lord of the Rings so we all would have loved another Lord of the Rings I'm sure
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  but um these these are things you can sit one afternoon and read right so where where I absolutely
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  fell in love with Tolkien both as really aside from being at the reader coming later in life being
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  the writer was the way he helped me formulate my own ideas about what it meant to be creative
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  and let's start with the idea of a sub-creator now let's we're not going to spend very much
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  time thinking about this in the religious sense but for Tolkien it does line up with his
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  faith position um because he what he referenced it overtly so for him the the creator with the
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  big C is God and here he's quoting from Genesis with the creation narratives um particularly the one
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  the second version of this two creation narratives in Genesis which people who read the Silmarine
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  will find very familiar um and the second one when it comes to um it's in the second one
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  or the first one but it's I create man in my own image is the phrase is the first one okay um yeah
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  and the point there is well you know we're not all powerful gods um so what does that mean it
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  means we are created to be creative there's a wonderful phrase in T.S. Eliot's for courtate
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  for courtettes which is basically this idea which is uh we create by the law by which we are
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  created you know it's sort of a circular I've I've misquoted that but it's a beautiful line in
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  the the for courtettes and T.S. Eliot was adjacent to the inkling group um he was friends with
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  Charles Williams in particular so there is this idea washing around amongst literary people
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  in the mid-twentieth century who were of a Christian mindset um that one way of expressing being
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  made in the image of God is to go ahead and be creative the way Tolkien puts this is thinking of
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  the author as a sub-creator so you've got God he creates us we then create our own worlds in our
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  our literary output our music our art painting a leaf uh in the case of Miguel and so on but
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  perhaps the very very best place we can actually understand this is by looking at how Tolkien
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  expresses it in the beginning of the Silmarillion in the music of the valar now Jacob why don't you
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  love this particular part of the Silmarillion and you pronounce the names more fluently than me would
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  you like to quickly sketch out the creation stories in the Silmarillion and how they link to creativity
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  yeah so the uh inalinda lay is the uh creations or they're the very the the very beginning of
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  the Silmarillion and and you have right you're kind of all powerful god essentially right uh
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  arrow uh aluvatar and uh this creator primary creator creates because you know the the valar uh and
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  they he kind of calls them to participate in the creation of of the world uh and so to do that the
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  metaphor that's used is music and so each of these individuals that were created by aluvatar
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  have you know their own minds they have own wills uh and they kind of freely participate in this
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  and they participate in different ways they each bring kind of a different voice uh to a song
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  and uh they're seeing so the the creator aluvatar kind of creates a theme uh and you know i'm
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  gonna say like a musical theme uh and he says okay now is a kandai can you kind of acts as a
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  conductor and says okay now play this name and they play uh and everyone is kind of going along
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  and doing their own thing uh well not doing their own thing they're doing it within the content
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  within the song but then one of the voices ends up kind of drowning out the others kind of trying
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  to draw more attention to themselves they want to kind of break out of that theme they find it
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  a restrictive constraining in some way and just want to be able to do that themselves
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  out of the context of aluvatar's uh song his theme um so they stop start again try it again uh and then
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  it kind of works out a little more uh and uh but then what aluvatar is doing uh is he's he's
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  waiting he's giving these individuals a chance to they'll do their thing bring their own voices
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  see where it goes but with again within the whole theme and then again one voice
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  causes too much commotion and he brings it to a end and in the third one um what aluvatar does is
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  he kind of leans into the the dissonance created by one of these voices and weaves it into
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  the the rest of the music and the music itself becomes uh more beautiful for that interweaving
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  of this uh you know what was seen as being you know chaotic uh perhaps wrong evil uh that is woven
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  into this uh along with themes of sorrow uh and they're all woven together and creates this kind
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  of beautiful whole uh that then the valar essentially uh that that was kind of the addressed
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  personal for the actual physical creation of the world and then you have what you have in
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  what follows in the Silmarillion is kind of the working out of the creation of uh of Arda of the
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  world um but then you also have that as kind of a spelling out of history and how it's going to work
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  out um in middle earth specifically yeah yeah that's that's the thumbnail it's a definite echo
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  for those of you who've read your Milton it's a definite echo of how it's set up in Paradise Lost
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  with the sort of here's the whole story but here's the yet working out of it structure um I
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  was thinking about this morning and I got very excited about the idea of um Tolkien's idea of
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  music for creation is very much like jazz maybe that will help people think about um so when
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  Iluvatar is saying here's the theme it's like the person on the piano or whoever's in lead
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  position saying here's the theme and then he delights oh they delight in it being played by the rest
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  of the jazz band uh who are the valar and you can see where it goes wrong because it's in a jazz
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  band it's really not the ticket if somebody says I want to be the soloist all the time you know they
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  they do the drum solo and never give way again to the the guy on the saxophone um so that's what's
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  going on with Melco he keeps coming out with the equivalent I think it's called trumpips he keeps
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  trying to sort of destroy the band um and that's why it's wrong because he's he's breaking out
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  of the he's spoiling the beauty um but as you say there's a way that the even cleverer
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  musician is able to even take those row elements and make them make them beautiful again
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  and I think one of the areas where you see this is an area of free will isn't it so the idea is
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  that though the god of this piece the eluvatar says here's the theme chaps chapses off you go um
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  he is allowing them to express it through their own interpretation so that's the free will
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  and it's always a philosophical problem free will um but there is a difference between
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  the working out of someone like i do say aiuli um who creates the dwarves and melco who creates the
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  orcs do you want to sort of unpack what's wrong about yeah dwarves versus the orcs for thing
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  yeah yeah and i think and i have to offer our listeners back to their much more sustained
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  conversation on orcs uh what we talked we went more information about the creation of orcs
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  than you probably ever yeah yeah we've done that and it's been a spastic but it does tie
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  tie into this directly you're right um so where is so just kind of referring back to what we
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  talked about with with melcore um melcore is depending on which version of tukin's uh creation
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  of the orcs it's either uh you know kind of a it no matter what it's done it's done in mockery
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  it's the perversion and or mockery of uh eluvitar's creation of uh eluvitar's children
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  which were elves and men um specifically and then yeah but i suppose you could fall under that then
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  the uh mojabits uh for those kind of fall in there um although the what what the
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  similar thing is primarily concerned about is elves raised right from the eldest per
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  perspective and then men um you don't really have uh habits playing much of a role uh there they're
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  not concerned about that um they're more concerned about uh students uh so melcore is taking these
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  you know what our revered is the children of eluvitar and creating melcore wants his own children
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  and so that's taking either twisting uh perverting uh men elves combination of the two uh to then
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  serve him melcore um uh and to do his own will right to further his uh his agenda
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  whereas alay was one of the valar the valar that's kind of uh he's he's a creator valar in
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  sense that he's working with with earth um he's like a kind of vulcan character isn't he from that
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  yeah yeah five six exactly yeah yeah and so he and so what alay does is alay loves loves creating so
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  much uh and he knows that there's this idea in this song right this the the which happened before
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  the working out of the physical creation in that song he remembers that there are these you know
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  children of eluvitar and he's inspired by that this idea that there is little beings are going to
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  be walking around in popular in this world he's so inspired he wants to create some of his own
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  and so he fashions them and what he thinks is probably the closest to that he doesn't have a clear
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  picture of what these children of eluvitar are going to look like um so he ends up making things
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  they're a little stockier a little or stout the proportions are off compared to elves and men um so
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  this is his attempt you know like when you have a you know a a pre-bullar uh a young you know who's
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  who's trying to draw uh what they think people look like and the proportions are kind of
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  oh because i think this is really unfair to dwarves here because dwarves are perfectly adapted to
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  being in caves i think i reckon he was on to a good oh no i think this right right so in their in their
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  own world yeah so it's just if if my my child's stick figures would come to life completely at home
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  in the world of that drawing right and they wouldn't love it and i'm not saying that that that
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  dwarves are lesser or worse they're a little bit slower and as we're reminded they're better
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  sprinting short distances than in long runs um and so uh so what allie does if he creates these things
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  these these these creatures um and uh they kind of come to life but they're not well we know
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  if we can quite call it life they're just kind of almost automatons are kind of like moving around
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  and he's actually interrupted by uh eluvitar so this is one of the few times where you have eluvitar
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  actually entering into the story um and he kind of schools allays is like you know why are you
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  you making these like oh i didn't know that i wasn't supposed to be doing that i was just so excited
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  by that forgive me and he's and so he says like you can bro i will i will i will crush these myself
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  i will destroy them right now sorry i didn't know that this was a problem uh but eluvitar stays his
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  hand and says no don't don't destroy them these are valuable because they were your creation you
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  were creating them not to do your own will but because you wanted to further the beauty in the world
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  and so don't touch them i'm gonna do something with them and so he kind of puts them put some to
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  sleep lay some down and then uh eluvitar essentially breathed this real life into them so they
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  have you know free will and and they're then kind of functioning within this world and he keeps them
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  instead of you know kind of changing them to make to to meet the proportions of elves and humans uh
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  he keeps them in the same form that alay formed them which was stockier stouter um so he kind of he
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  he essentially blesses uh alay's work where okay i see i missed that step yeah i missed that step
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  oh he wasn't so he so he isn't saying that like okay you like now i'm going to
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  pat pat on the head and then like changes the drawing and says like hey this is what it's supposed
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  to look like he says like no what you did is great as it is and it's going to play a different part
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  but it's going to be a part that weaves into the to the whole and strengthens and adds things
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  that wouldn't be there if they were the same size proportions and had the same interests as elves and men
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  so this is one of these examples of eluvitar taking something that's kind of unexpected that's
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  outside of the plan so this is this is that that conductor or the person in the jazz band
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  who finds something that's kind of wobbly or wonky and then kind of tries bringing you know
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  reaching out and bringing it in rather than just kind of segregating it or separating it from
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  the song it brings it in incorporates that too so this is really yes so that that the alay's
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  creation of the dwarves is a really good idea of an illustration of what it means to be a creator
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  and sort of attitude that Tolkien believes that creators should have so melkor is creating orcs
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  but he's creating them for the purpose of subjugation for his to further his own will whereas
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  alay was doing it to kind of beautify creation as a whole and because that was the attitude or posture
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  of that creator then eluvitar is able to work with that and bring that and kind of elevate the work
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  as a whole okay so this is coming out of Tolkien's sort of theology really but also there's a parallel
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  here between the long running debates within literary criticism of the role of the author
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  as regarding their texts and I want to hear to acknowledge and we'll put a link in the show notes
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  to an excellent article by Benjamin Sachston which looks at this lines out with Roland Barton
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  all that kind of stuff and so the context in which Tolkien is writing he's probably aware and a
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  bit sniffy about all this but literary criticism that's going on and sweeping through the literature
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  schools in Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere where there is this debate about meaning and it does
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  anything have any meaning and structuralism and post-structuralism all that stuff and he is coming in
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  with I suppose in a sense going back to basics what he thinks story does and he's fighting this
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  rearguard action against these movements which are moving towards a sense of there being no meaning
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  the author is dead feel and which is very well explored in that article so if you are studying
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  literature or just interested in it do read this article um so let's turn by the first of these
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  rearguard actions in myth appear um it's beautiful I don't know if you've got any any of it to
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  quote to us um Jacob yeah yeah right I absolutely do um here's right so again this is this is
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  interesting and I so particularly special place uh in my heart because I was able to sneak this
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  into my qualifying exams from my my doctoral qualifying exams I was dealing with mythology
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  kind of comparative myth and and religious ideas movements and so in talking about myth I kind of
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  brought this this particular poem and poem and and like so what what what this is doing again like
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  it's it's kind of a uh in in praise of myth so for those people who might say that like
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  is so the the the the kind of preface to this poem is a line that uh comes from C.S.
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  Louis the C.S. Louis apparently said in this kind of long night walk nighttime walk uh that that
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  Louis had with Tolkien and Dyson and their you know Louis at this point is you know uh on his journey
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  from you know was it was kind of Christian feast to then kind of agnostic atheist and then he
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  kind of was shifting kind of back but like needs some sort of like resonance or convincing both
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  like intellectually but as well as you know kind of deeper kind of in the heart um uh that you know
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  what what's the value of uh of of these these different stories so he's Louis was very touched by
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  the you know Norse some of these Norse stories um uh the ring cycle was something was one that
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  for like particularly touched him you know Ragnarok and these uh different ideas and uh but he said
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  like but they're just their lies so this is the line the line that starts myth up here is
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  it's dedicated to the one quote who said that myths lies and therefore worthless even though
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  breathed through silver so those were apparently Louis's words that they're breathed through silver
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  so these myths they downgrade and they have these great ideas and you might feel something but
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  essentially their lies because he you know Louis is arguing that there wasn't a font near there
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  wasn't store and odin and um hella and all these like he's he's saying these these aren't actual
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  creatures like so they're their lies they're worthless they sound great but there's no worth to them
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  and so so Tolkien writes this um because it's from filo mythus to miso mythus which is from the
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  lover of myths to the hater of myths essentially is these characters that he's creating
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  my academic character is rising yes right yes uh some of the best jokes are right um uh so
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  so one one one of the things that he's that he says here you know he's combating these ideas that
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  you know trees are just trees um that that they're they're that it's a combination of you know
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  cells uh structures uh that they you know creates um you know it it it sustains itself through
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  soil through some particular chemical composition uh takes certain elements from uh that are around it
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  um from water uh that takes sunlight and transforms that you know chlorophyll etc etc and so
• 30:39
  it's kind of he's fighting against labeling things like you can dissect things and label them
• 30:45
  and that is the thing um but in this poem Tolkien says that the naming of things is part of the
• 30:53
  magic this is something we'll we'll circle back to on fairy stories is the power of words and
• 30:58
  language in creating and creating a world and an experience rather than just kind of a taxonomy
• 31:05
  of or an anatomy of something um and so so this is kind of what he's fighting is the kind of a cold
• 31:12
  view of reality that you can just label things and things in that sense become tools for
• 31:18
  furthering human ambitions and make you a human greed of human self referential ends rather than
• 31:26
  putting in the context of creation as a whole um and so back to what you you were saying earlier
• 31:32
  about um about humanity as subcreators right Tolkien sees the world as a creation that somebody
• 31:41
  else created um then for it Tolkien's mind this is a creation that that god made and so while humans
• 31:48
  can't do the sort of thing that god does which is create an entire physical planet populated
• 31:54
  by x, y and z um humanity can take of the raw materials and elements and shape them into something
• 32:01
  unique and so one of the phrases that i i love here is uh he says man subcreator the reflected light
• 32:10
  through whom is splintered from a single white to many hues and endlessly combined in living
• 32:16
  shapes that move fine to mind so this idea that each person is essentially kind of a prism right so
• 32:22
  everybody has the same kind of sorts of input you know create an input that's coming in but each
• 32:28
  person is taking from the world around them and putting them into an endlessly uh you know kind of
• 32:37
  infinite number of different possibilities a certain combination of those possibilities that's
• 32:41
  only available from say my perspective and from your perspective and each person has a particular
• 32:47
  sensitivity to the world around them and so a kind of creation a literary creation is essentially
• 32:53
  filtering of something larger than yourself through your experience your eyes and sensitivities
• 33:01
  into something that's unique and new and that never created you know never existed before and could
• 33:05
  never exist throughout all eternity if it weren't for you the creator uh and yeah i mean that's
• 33:12
  created yourself can then move and yeah that's really true to my experiences uh an author so i often
• 33:18
  do talks in schools and pretty much every time i get asked um you know why be an author you know
• 33:24
  why do you write kind of thing and that is one of the answers the answer is um i could
• 33:31
  i've done other jobs in the workplace where when i leave somebody takes my job on and they they
• 33:37
  they do it fine you know the the places if i've never been um but nobody else can write
• 33:44
  the book i've written the world i've created in that book it's a unique thing uh it's this i'm
• 33:50
  sure it's exactly the same for someone who composes a piece of music or paints a picture
• 33:55
  creates a garden i mean it doesn't have to be just you know art forms you buy in a shop um and
• 34:02
  that's very profound so that splinter idea i love that quote as well um and i was thinking about
• 34:08
  that a little bit more and how it chimes with what talking goes on to write or is writing probably
• 34:16
  at the same time particularly in the silmarillion part of the the bit about the silmarils the the
• 34:23
  jewels that are made by fiano because that elven smith um he's like the original craftsman of the
• 34:31
  elves who's living in the land of the valar the undying lands he creates the silmarils capturing
• 34:41
  the light a splinter of the light from i think it's from the trees at this point isn't it um
• 34:48
  because there's a number of light sources in in middle earth anyway so he's he's creating the
• 34:55
  these jewels and they become amazingly beautiful um with the light inside and then when melco
• 35:03
  and the ungulliant is it ungulliant the spider kill the trees um that light leaves the earth and
• 35:12
  melco runs off with the the jewels and this is really the major moment of disaster in the first age
• 35:23
  and what then happens is an interesting discussion so yavana who's one of the um one of the valar the
• 35:33
  one who sort of creates the nature goddess i suppose is the best way of thinking about her
• 35:39
  who created the trees um she says well if we could have a bit of that light from the silmarils
• 35:45
  then maybe we can illuminate this again we can recreate this but fiano's decided it's his by now
• 35:54
  no one's touching no one's touching silmarils at mine they're my families and this begins that
• 36:00
  almost Greek what is the kind of Greek tragedy of brothers against brothers and all this kind of
• 36:04
  thing and um he's forgotten that he owes his creativity to something that isn't him he has grown
• 36:12
  to be this monster ego and that's what's wrong with him is he no longer gives up his creation
• 36:21
  in thanks in the way that are you really with the dwarfs did here's what he's what i've done oh
• 36:28
  okay you know here it is for you um he's he's he's going more into the melco idea which is it's mine
• 36:34
  it's my precious familiar so that splinter idea i think is the difference between healthy and unhealthy
• 36:41
  creativity that i don't think talking how much time he was fairly suppose he you could say he was
• 36:49
  obsessive about middle earth but he was never um he was happy to share it with other people
• 36:56
  and talk about it relatively he didn't sort of clutch it so close he shared he read it had it
• 37:01
  published um so he didn't fall off the the wagon of healthy creativity but he sees that potential i
• 37:10
  think in that that splinter idea so that's another area where we think about a creative mind has to
• 37:16
  be aware that it's only part of a process um and i don't think that's really
• 37:25
  reflected so going on to the Lord of the Rings which some of you may be more familiar with Lord
• 37:30
  of the Rings rather than the Silmarillion you get that in the ring the ring is a dark version of
• 37:35
  this so um it's been created and part a splinter or power from saron's been put in it and then
• 37:48
  that is the kind of poisonous creativity because that then goes on to spread like a cancer through
• 37:54
  everybody it touches um so you've got these themes it's growing back to the music it's a different
• 38:03
  version of the theme being played in a darker key and that's what i love about how he thinks
• 38:09
  through this because he keeps playing a different version of his theme and you're always saying oh
• 38:13
  yeah that that too is true about creativity so have you i think more to say about Mr. Pier other than
• 38:20
  it's a fun thing to go away and read because it's full of some wonderful images um and again not too
• 38:26
  long read um yeah it's you know it is great one yeah i just won one last one last phrase that i love
• 38:32
  i think it's encouraging for creators all all sorts uh he says here that this essentially so like
• 38:39
  creation uh he is done by people have hearts essentially right they they care about the world
• 38:46
  around them um no matter who you are and he i love the word that he uses here that gives me hope
• 38:51
  right so as i feel like i'm not you know not measuring up to my own ideas of who i should be or who
• 38:58
  i want to be as an author right as a poet as as fill in the blank he says here blessed are the
• 39:06
  timid hearts uh the evil hate that quail in it shadow and yet shut gate that seek no parlay and
• 39:13
  in guarded room though small and bare upon a clumsy loom we've tissues gilded by the far off day
• 39:20
  hope believed in under shadows way so this like idea of like i especially like the the clumsy loom
• 39:27
  right these people that are just like they're they're they're reacting they want to bring the they
• 39:31
  recognize that the world around them can be bleak and dark um but he's saying like blessed are those
• 39:35
  people that even though they're scared and uh you know trembling and they don't have the best materials
• 39:42
  yet they're trying to do something to bring something good into the world no no matter what it is
• 39:48
  no matter how clumsy or loom or fingers the fact that you are trying to do something make it in
• 39:53
  whatever mode that's going to be like you're mentioning gardening but painting your house uh
• 39:58
  well whatever it is you you're you're beautifying you're doing something good to share to enrich the
• 40:03
  world around you that's what's important in the creative process and that's worthy in and of
• 40:08
  itself yeah and so i just love that idea it's inspiring for me yeah so it means that everybody out
• 40:14
  there who's having a go at their poetry or their novel writing whatever that's that's good
• 40:20
  that's valued the fact that you're doing that the fact you are a poet you are a writer if you're
• 40:25
  writing if you're in the act of writing you're a writer yeah if you're in the act of painting whatever
• 40:30
  it is you're a painter it's that it's a desire to do it and do it again not for just yourself for
• 40:36
  those greedy self-serving purposes it's to let you to enrich those around you to enrich yourself
• 40:41
  but also to bring something into the world that didn't exist before it doesn't mean you can't get
• 40:44
  better at it just as you do painting browsers you can come on one of our writing writing courses
• 40:49
  that we do here that little effort there um but it's still worthwhile even without any sort of
• 40:56
  extra um sort of formal education about it thank you for listening to part one
• 41:04
  rejoin us next week to listen to the second part of our discussion
• 41:12
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• 41:18
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