It’s Obama’s favorite.
Election night 2008 generated millions of creative sparks that surely led to mountains of photographs, but according to his recent memoire A Promised Land, this one means the most to him.
26 people are gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the chilly, rainy night air. They’re listening in rapt silence (some with muted tears) to a radio broadcast of his victory address from Grant Park in Chicago.
Wedding photographer and former photojournalist Matt Mendelsohn hadn’t planned to be there that night.
He’d been sitting at home in front of the TV, watching the massive crowds gathered in DC and Chicago.
He grew more agitated by the moment, until a creative spark propelled him off the couch.
In a recent Facebook post, he wrote:
“‘The crowd is reaching a million in Grant Park!’ the anchor said. ‘In Washington, tens of thousands of people are gathered at the White House!!’ some TV journalist explained breathlessly. And I couldn’t take it any more. I looked at the clock and it was 11:00.
‘I gotta go,’ I said to Maya.
‘Where?!?’ she replied.
‘I don’t know! I gotta go make a picture of something.’”
He grabbed his gear and jumped in the car.
And as he was driving, lamenting that he wouldn’t be able to find parking anywhere near the White House (“Isn’t it funny how logistics can be such a buzz kill?” he wrote), a little voice told him to go to the Lincoln Memorial.
Expecting a big crowd there as well, he parked blocks away and lugged his equipment on foot, ignoring a news crew who assured him there was nothing to see.
Still driven by that inner creative spark, he arrived on the scene, and he found something they had missed.
“It was around midnight and it was very dark and the rain was fogging things up on my camera. But I made some pictures, because that’s what we journalists do.”
A Series of Unexpected Events
Ironically, he didn’t think much of the photo he took (he calls it “slightly boring”), yet it found its way onto the The New York Times‘ op-ed page the next day.
It became an iconic image that touched millions.
Mendelsohn received a flood of excited emails. Pulitzer Prize winning author Connie Schultz wrote a column about the photo.
He was asked to make copies for members of Congress, one of which was given to President Obama, who hung it in the Oval Office.
And everything was fantastic…
But it turns out that wasn’t the end of the story.
Mendelshon’s post revealed a new plot twist: Obama had singled out the photo in his new memoir.
The former president explained that it’s his favorite because it somehow captured his lived experience of the night, despite being taken hundreds of miles from where he gave his speech.
“…a president is writing lyrically about a photograph I made, all because I missed being a journalist terribly.”
The Resonance of Creative Expression
In less than 36 hours, the post received 440 comments and was shared 2.8 thousand times.
Clearly it struck a chord, and the feeling wasn’t only about politics or accolades.
We as humans recognize the spark of creative energy when we encounter it. We admire people who catch it and let it drive their internal creation to make something magical.
At the same time, we live in a society that for generations has squashed creativity and convinced people to ignore their intuitive impulses in favor of conformity and consumption.
We adore and sometimes obsess about (and, yes, often criticize) creatives who rise above the soul-crush and do their thing anyway.
We know in our hearts that cultivating that creative inclination can give us a more active role in something bigger than ourselves—the ongoing expression and evolution of life itself.
Fortunately, organizations and businesses are discovering new ways to create better culture and get better results by empowering creativity rather than demanding obedient production.
And individuals are finding ways to take control of their time, finances, and energy through entrepreneurialism and artistic endeavors.
But it’s up to each of us to cultivate our own relationship with creative energy.
The Cost of Neglecting Your Creativity
I was fortunate to come up in a time when there was art in schools, in a family that encouraged musicianship. I started exploring writing as a teenager and continued playing music in college.
I’ve also explored various movement arts, I’ve travelled, and I’ve found meaningful work as a writer, yet there have been times over the years when it’s been difficult for me to maintain a connection to that pure creative energy.
And I’ve felt it—a nagging sense of something not right with the world. A creeping malaise.
Not tending the creative fire inside us creates stagnation—mentally, emotionally, and it can even manifest physically in a variety of symptoms and illnesses.
There can be a sense of life passing you by.
Your song unsung.
Your potential contribution to the world unfulfilled.
That’s part of my reason for rebooting this blog—I need to make sure that in the midst of supporting my clients in their awesome creative endeavors, I’m tending my own fire as well.
The Creative Spark is a Gift You Must Be Ready to Receive.
It’s the seed of an idea.
It’s the vision of a new possibility.
It’s the lightbulb moment that brings excitement, sometimes fear, sometimes a compulsion to act.
Mendelsohn wanted to be a part of history, of something bigger than himself—but not just as a spectator.
He wanted to create something.
He wanted to add to the energy.
And he was ready: he had the skills, he had the experience, he had the equipment he needed…
And he was in tune enough with his inner creative spark that he was able to recognize it when it showed up and make his move.
We can’t always know when the spark will come, but we can do our best to be ready with our tinder bundle, so we can catch it and stoke it into a useful fire.
Pivotal moments like that night in 2008 are often major creative catalysts.
But if we wait for big events to inspire our creativity, we do ourselves and the world a disservice. We’ll miss all the small but magical moments happening along the way, and we won’t be ready when a crucial moment does arrive.
Elizabeth Gilbert, acclaimed author of Eat, Pray, Love, gave a great TED talk about inspiration and creative genius. (“Genius,” she pointed out, is a term from ancient Rome that referred to a type of spirit-being who assisted people in their creative work).
She described how inspiration comes when it will, unbidden, uninvited, sometimes unwanted.
It’s up to us to practice our creative pursuits with or without it. That way we’re as ready and open as possible when it does come. And when it doesn’t, at least we showed up to do our part.
“Don’t be daunted,” she said. “Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts, then “Olé!” And if not, do your dance anyhow. And “Olé!” to you, nonetheless.”
Prepare Thyself for Thy Genius
So, a few suggestions, if you want to be ready to catch that spark and dance around the fire with your divine instructeur d’art:
- Keep tools to capture your ideas handy: a small notebook, your phone’s voice recorder, some key art supplies, a camera—whatever works for you.
- Practice letting ideas and creative energy flow through you: free write, doodle, make up stupid rhymes, dance like no one’s looking (pretty much a given at the moment since we’re all stuck at home).
- When the creative spark lands on your head, respond immediately, even in the smallest of ways, if you can.
- When you’re in a creative process and you get stuck, step away or mix it up. As a writer, I frequently get up and move my body in some way, or clean or beautify something in my house, or simply stand still and breathe. The pause invites new ideas and solutions to present themselves.
If you’re indisposed when inspiration arrives—as Gilbert relayed from a story about musician Tom Waits—you can invite it to come back later, or tell it to go bother someone else.
Sometimes inspiration will pass you by and you’ll lose an idea. That’s okay.
Sometimes it won’t turn into anything remarkable or even worth pursuing. That’s okay too.
And sometimes, like Mendelsohn, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what happens next.
