Perhaps because she wrote a bestselling travel memoir about eating pizza, doing yoga, and falling in love (Eat, Pray, Love) I tried to resist Elizabeth Gilbert. After all, it's easy to be cynical about someone else's wildly successful chronicle of their own happiness. (Says The Onion's A.V. Club: "The mere mention of the title will cause most people to react like they’ve just been handed a bag of dog poop.") But in the end, Gilbert won me over with her sincerity and willingness to turn her lens directly onto herself.
So when a poet-friend sent me a link to a talk she gave about creativity, I watched it and thought Gilbert raised some compelling questions. Essentially, she tries to distinguish between the idea of being a genius and having genius, and it occurred to me as I watched that I alternate between heaping myself with pressure and waiting for some kind of divine inspiration--two contradictory approaches, neither of them helpful. (She also describes an argument between Tom Waits and his muse on a California highway, and I figure it's worth it for that alone. )
Anyway, food for thought. Apologies to those who have already seen it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
AR
