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Creativity Jijiji
Creativity Jijiji: "Conversations about creativity"
This podcast amplifies the voices of our true leaders—the artists. Writers, composers, producers, singers, actors, and poets show us new ways to see ourselves and the world around us. They illuminate the invisible threads that connect us, revealing the deep ties of our shared humanity.
At a time when we must come together as citizens of a small and fragile planet, the voices of artists matter more than ever.
Creativity Jijiji goes beyond the spotlight to explore the mysteries of creativity—where it comes from, why it moves us, and how it shapes our world.
Join us as we listen, learn, and celebrate the creative minds guiding us into the future.
Creativity Jijiji
Dark Night of the Creative Soul
The haunting vulnerability of 3AM self-doubt is a universal experience, but for creatives, it takes on an almost mythic quality. This raw, unfiltered exploration of the "dark night of the soul" reveals how these moments of paralyzing uncertainty aren't failures but essential initiations into deeper artistry.
What happens when you wake in darkness convinced you're a fraud? When you question every creative choice and wonder if you should abandon your art entirely? I recently endured such a dark night that left me barely able to move, contemplating throwing in the towel on everything I've built. But through this experience, I discovered something profound: the dark night isn't the enemy of creativity—it's the forge where our most authentic work is shaped.
My current project "Song in Space" features an 11-year-old violinist whose journey mirrors this creative struggle. Like her character, I face moments when the song seems gone, when fundraising feels impossible, when self-doubt whispers that I should quit. The wisdom I've gained? Small acts break the spell. Whether it's my midnight prayers with rosary beads or my late brother's ritual of eating Cheerios in darkness, these tiny movements bend the night away from despair. The dark night isn't where creativity dies—it's the hinge point where transformation begins. Something must crack before light can enter.
Join me in embracing both the darkness and the breakfast cereal that gets us through it. Share your own dark night survival tactics or just take comfort knowing we're all facing these demons together. The real music begins precisely when we decide to move forward despite the voice that tells us we can't.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to Creativity GGG, the podcast where Chris insists that making an interstellar audio drama is a perfectly rational use of his time. Today's topic the glamorous world of 3am self-doubt, otherwise known as the Dark Knight of the Soul Spoiler. It involves cereal.
Speaker 2:It's 3am, you wake up up, the doubts come flowing in. You suck, you're fake, you're a failure. If you're an artist, a writer, a songwriter, a pianist, a poet, a performer, you've faced this mess at midnight, at at 3 am. In storytelling I call this the dark night of the soul. It's a big beat in storytelling, but it's not a beat in your life that you ever want to go into. I mean, it's the low point. It's where the hero has lost everything, where you've lost everything, and everything just kind of becomes too much.
Speaker 2:And at 3 am, man, that's not something. That's fun. I mean, you got no sword, you got no map, you got no allies, you got nothing. You're on your own, you're naked. You're naked in front of the worst person on the planet to be naked in front of Yourself. Just the fear that maybe this was all a mistake. I mean, gosh, I should have said that right. Or, oh man, I wish I had said this. Or I should have said that right, oh man, I wish I had said this. What was I thinking to do that? I mean, oh my gosh, it's tough.
Speaker 2:And the older you get, the more deep the dark night of the soul becomes. I mean it can get deep. I just went through one. He wrecked me for a couple of days and I thought, well, maybe I should just throw in the towel, just find a bench and sit on it. Just sit in the park and watch people walk by and just wait out the rest of my time on earth, whatever that was. I mean just sit. I mean I could hardly move. I mean that's how deep it got. And it happens. Come on, it happens. It happens to you, it happens to me, it happens to all of us, because we're human. I look at these presidents and these prime ministers and even these kings and I'm like, oh no, at 3 am these guys go through the same shit that we all go through. It's just the way it is to be a human and I don't think you get out of humanness without a whole series of dark nights of the soul. Okay, so I'm working on this show, song in Space, and a lot of my Creativity to Gigi.
Speaker 2:Podcasts are about the process. It's the show we're building here at Studio to Gigi, and song song goes through it too in the story. Almost every episode, our young violinist the heart of our story faces her own dark night. I mean, why not? That's kind of like the journey we take. She becomes stranded and she becomes defeated. We're talking about an 11-year-old girl. She gets stripped of her confidence Because when you're an artist, that's what it's all about. It's like you are putting yourself out there. I don't care if you're 11, and I don't care if you're 1100. Her bow is broken, her music is gone and the dark night comes. In stories it comes right before the transformation, but in the middle of the dark night it doesn't feel like there's transformation. It feels like there's just end, hopelessness, drowning. I mean, it's tough. I'm talking about this because Creativity to Gigi is really a production diary about pulling this project together at least right now it is and how the process mirrors the story I'm getting together.
Speaker 2:Last night I had a cast read through with a pilot and we kind of worked through it. So I'm right in the deep, in the middle of this process right now, and what I wrestle with at 3 am is the same thing Song wrestles with on her spaceship the belief that it's over, the belief that she's not enough, that the song is gone. That's what I feel like. You know, the song is gone.
Speaker 2:Why am I doing this? Why don't I just go sit on a beach? I mean, I've lived a long life. How long do I have to keep living? What's the point?
Speaker 2:I mean, these are the things you get to when you're an artist. These are the things you get to when you're an artist, and if you don't think you're going to get to it, I got bad news for you. You are going to get to it, and the thing that really separates out successful artists from artists that are a little less successful is their willingness to face it down, this dark night of the soul, face down the doubt and get to this place, which is fuck it. This is what I'm meant to do, because expressing your art is expressing your truth, and if your truth is dark, then that's the truth you express. That's how you kind of judge it. All right, I mean, you look at art and you're like is that true? Is that speaking to me? Am I speaking the truth In Song and Space? It's like, am I playing true music? But that's just the same. Even if you're work as a barista in a coffee shop, you know, or even if you work picking up the trash at dawn. I mean we're all going through this human experience Look.
Speaker 1:I've learned some stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's go over it. I mean, dark night isn't failure. The dark night isn't failure. The dark night is not failure, it's initiation. Every artistic project we're doing demands a passage through doubt. The doubt is sort of like the anvil that makes our art, our creativity, fully formed. Small acts break the spell. I love that one. Small acts break the spell. Okay, what am I talking about?
Speaker 2:Sometimes I write and sometimes I pray with my rosary beads and sometimes I pour a bowl of Cheerios because, honestly, cereal can be therapy. I'm talking about when you wake up in the middle of the night. I'm talking about when you wake up in the middle of the night. You know, I'm lucky, I have these beads and I work my way through them, prayer by prayer, and that helps. But my brother, my dear beautiful brother, who passed away so many years ago now, he used to tell me that when he had dark nights of the soul, he would go to the kitchen and he would eat a bowl of Cheerios and that kind of helped him, that kind of put him back to sleep. Okay, there you go. You have the two dichotomy of me and my brother, my spiritual brother, my brother, birthday twin Ned. He would get a bowl of Cheerios. I pray with my rosary beads. So it's rosary beads or Cheerios, your choice.
Speaker 2:You know, whatever therapy works and transformation follows the breaking, transformation follows the breaking. You know what do I mean? I mean you need that dark night of? Do I mean I mean you need that dark night of the soul. Like I said, you need it and you just have to trust in that moment at 3.10 am, when the world is so quiet and you look out your window and the streets are quiet and you open your window and you can't hear anything but the, the hum that never seems to go away in a city. It's not the end, it's the transformation in story and in life. Something has to crack before the light can come in.
Speaker 2:So right now, as I said, I'm in the middle of this process and the fundraising feels impossible. I mean it's a thing they never talk about in music school or art school or theater school, you know. But it's the fundraising. It's tough and sometimes it's just like, oh man, fuck the rehearsals, the sound design, the scale of it all. I mean there's a million moving parts, but it's impossible is exactly what the dark knight is whispering to you give up, it's impossible, it's impossible.
Speaker 2:So what you've got to do is get the fuck out of bed and take the next tiny action. Grab your rosary beads or, you know, pour your bowl of Cheerios. Look, it doesn't go away. I mean, it's 3 am again and the chorus comes back. You suck, you're a fake, you're a failure. But this time I've learned. Instead of lying there and tossing and turning, I get up, I grab those beads, I pour that cereal, I get out my sketchbook, sketch an idea, I do the next small thing and the night starts to bend away from the void, away from the black hole, away from the dark night. Because the dark night of the soul is not the end of the story, it's the hinge. It's where you decide to move forward.
Speaker 2:And that's where, and that's where the real music begins.
Speaker 1:So there you have it. At 3am, chris finds enlightenment in Cheerios and rosary beads and somehow still believes producing song in space is a good idea. That, my friends, is creativity or madness, possibly both. Thank you for listening to Creativity, ggg. Until next time, may your dark nights come with a decent breakfast.
