Does Comfort Stifle Creativity?

The New York Times recently ran an article looking back on the golden age of “SoHo”(or, for those unfamiliar with the shorthand of New York’s neighborhoods, the artistically inclined neighborhood in Manhattan located SOuth of HOuston Street) back in the 1970s, when it was a gritty, unfinished and cheap place to find studio space instead of the chic zip code it has become today.

Titled “When Art and Energy Were SoHo Neighbors,” the article looks at why that particular place—at that particular time—was such a hotbed and incubator of budding artistic talent.

“Back then … we were all broke,” reported musician/artist Laurie Anderson, who first made a name for herself in that SoHo world. “We saw ourselves as workers, conquering someplace inhospitable, and we had a real sense of place.”
The article goes on to list a number of later-famous artists who got their start chronicling, or incorporating, the rough edges of the neighborhood. Some did performance art in abandoned buildings, others took photographs of abandoned property fragments the city would later sell at auction. Others wrote and performed music. But they all contributed to a body of work that was powerful, memorable, and highly creative.

What made that particular neighborhood such a fertile creative landscape? Or, as the article’s author put it, “Why was SoHo in its early days vibrant and special in ways that, despite the art world’s current money and hype, seem so hard to come by now?”

Several of the artists interviewed for the article said it was a particular sense of “place” that residents felt; a sense of neighborhood and community that informed their work. But I think it’s more than that. The residents of Scarsdale, NY and Beverly Hills, CA (e.g. extremely affluent communities) have a strong sense of “place,” as well. But neither of those towns is an epicenter of innovative, artistic expression and creativity.

So what makes the difference? A longstanding question among creative types is the role money plays in creative accomplishments. The cliché about the “starving artist” goes back a long way, but is it the starving part that leads to the art? Or does a career in art simply pay so poorly that one is often starving?

Personally, I don’t think one needs to be starving, or suffering, to be a good writer, artist, or musician. To tell moving stories in any medium, one has to have good insight or intuition about nature and/or the human mind, heart and soul, as well as a good instinct for how to best express the heights, depths, overlooked and/or somehow telling aspects of all those elements and life in general. James Michener is one of my favorite role models as a writer because, at least from what I’ve read, he seems to have been a happy man who led a balanced life—and still managed to write great stories. And there are many artists and musicians who have continued to create wonderful works despite great commercial success.

In other words, one doesn’t have to be poor in a gritty, run-down neighborhood to produce compelling works of creative expression. On the other hand, there’s a reason I went back to Africa, after experiencing the chaos and disturbing contradictions of the aid effort into Sudan during Sudan’s 22-year civil war. It was because on my first trip, I’d learned that at the extremes of human existence … where comfort is stripped away and people are pushed to their limits … the heights and depths that humans can rise or sink to are exposed in a way they aren’t in a civilized, safe environment.

So perhaps one of the reasons living in SoHo, back when it was a rougher place, helped people there create such memorable works of art was because the material the neighborhood offered, every day, on every corner, was more raw and, therefore, more powerful. Neglect, loss, and struggle make for more powerful stories than beautifully cared-for and manicured lawns.

But part of it may have to do with the artists themselves. One of the reasons that famous people often don’t make as interesting interviews as “everyday” folks is that private individuals don’t have a public image to protect. Likewise, a successful artist or author (or perhaps more accurately, the agent or publishers of said successful artist or author) may be loath to “lose” their audience by breaking away from the genre or type of work that created that audience in the first place. So the second book ends up being along the lines of the first, or the succeeding albums begin to sound like little more than variations on a theme.
Those with nothing established, and therefore nothing to lose, have a whole lot more freedom to experiment, speak out, or express themselves. Hence the willingness of SoHo artists to be radical or make art out of walking down the side of a building. And, it should be added, fewer objections from the neighbors about any disruptions caused by those edgy expressions of art or viewpoint.

It also undoubtedly helped that many of those artists were, in fact, “coming of age” in SoHo in the 1970s. Unburdened by life experience that eventually proves many of the clear-cut answers we thought we had at 20 to be far fuzzier and more complex, young people are more easily fired up about shouting their thoughts, beliefs, and indignations from the rooftops, in any media available.

But I think the discomfort of SoHo’s gritty environment, and the challenge its “struggling artist” residents had just making ends meet back then, undoubtedly played a role in the creative works it spawned. Why? Because growth doesn’t happen in a comfort zone.

SoHo’s bohemian artists didn’t have a comfortable place where they could retreat and let life play out on autopilot. They lived in the moment, one day at a time, alert and engaged in the challenges and opportunities around them. That meant their lives weren’t exactly easy, of course. But it also meant they were observing, learning, and growing, each and every day. It also meant they were constantly coming up with new things to say: new observations, lessons and ideas, discussed at length in cafes and makeshift studios with other minds engaged in the same life adventure.

There’s no reason that comfort or success has to impinge upon one’s willingness to take risks or step out of a comfort zone, of course, any more than having a heavenly bed at home should make anyone more hesitant to go backpacking. And yet, it does. Not always. But it’s harder to voluntarily choose to step out of comfort than it is to simply cope with necessarily austere or challenging environments. It’s why the first step of any voluntary adventure is the hardest.

But if SoHo produced so much great art in its challenging, pre-chic days, it’s also a testament to the power of community. Not just geographical, but personal. All of those artists had more than just a love of their neighborhood with all its great material, and the need to stay alert enough to notice it. They also had each other; a support network of kindred spirits and partners in passionate, creative endeavors that allowed them to reach further together than they ever might have alone.

Artist and musician Laurie Anderson is far better known, and better heeled, today, than she was when she lived in SoHo all those years ago. And yet, she looks back on that time not as dues paid, but as a privilege to have known. “I was lucky,” she told the Times writer.

Worth pondering, even if we’re not attempting to be artists, and have never set foot in the neighborhood south of Houston Street on the lower east side of New York.