Bewildered: Not Everything Has to Have a Point
Delightful, meandering, and timely discussion of creativity, especially making “precious pointless things” and how that changes your mindset.
Martha Beck: If you were to dig up a previously unknown Egyptian tomb from like 5,000 years ago and it was all intact and tomb raiders hadn’t gotten it, what would you find, what you would probably find? Pretty beads on a string—bracelets, necklaces—pretty beads on a string.
And if you found a tribe that had not contacted other humans for thousands of years, what would they probably have? Pretty beads on a string.
But there’s no need for pretty beads on a string.
Rowan Mangan: Why do we need shiny, pretty things? We don’t. We objectively don’t.
Martha Beck: And yet we always do. All over the world, people make shiny pretty things.
Rowan Mangan: So here’s my beautiful point. As you start making pretty things—pretty, precious, pointless things—I feel like you kind of turn up your own sensitivity to beauty everywhere in the world, and you become more aesthetically susceptible. Everything looks more beautiful the more I try to make precious, pointless things.
Martha Beck: I always thought I’m being bad because I’m spending all this time drawing and painting. I’m always in my head trying to figure out how to solve a problem and I thought, “Oh, it’s wasting time. It has no point.” But I just went to see old friends and we talked to my older children and they’re like, “You seem really, really happy. You’re really different.” And here’s the thing, here was my point. It was about you being able to see beauty everywhere. Everywhere I went, I thought, “Why are people being so nice? Everyone is just so lovely. People are lovely.” And I was thinking about it. There was a security guard in one of the airports who threw her body out in front of a bunch of passengers and spread her arms wide and said, “You are forbidden.” And I was like, “Ohhh, she’s having such a bad day.” And then my attention drifted on to people who were being lovely. And I think it’s just— selective attention—it’s going to beauty instead of anxiety.
Things that make me feel anxious and mean just don’t interest me, and they don’t keep my attention. When I’m in a creative mode, my whole attention drifts toward whatever is most beautiful in people and landscapes and objects—everything.