How Creative Practice is like a Greenhouse
Putting seeds in trays, cleaning off potting tables, and tidying string, seed packets, and those gorgeous popsicle sticks for labelling, all in the cocoon of the greenhouse. It’s warm with a breeze blowing through the door. Sometimes the rain starts to spatter and the greenhouse feels like a shelter for my thoughts to quieten down. I spend a lot of my days feeling like a snow globe all shaken up, but here all the glitter dwindles down to the bottom of the quaint scene and it’s still.
As a violinist, I used to get ready to perform in a green room. It was noisy, full of trombones and cellos warming up, cases being clicked open, resin being wiped off under bridges and fingerboards. Despite wearing black, on stage we were like a cut flower garden, all proud and showy, full of colourful sounds, a flutist’s whisper rolls over the orchestra like a gentle breeze. The harmonies swirl around the audience and the trill of the first violinist tickles the air.
Back in the green room, we wilt a bit. We put everything back in order: resin in case pockets, sheet music tucked away, mutes, cloths, bows, reeds, all back in their places. The concert hall has gone quiet and the spell we cast has been snuffed out. We start talking about what we will cook for dinner and how the traffic will be. An air of the quotidian returns, as if when we put our instruments back in their cases we also put away something of that other world.
There’s a tender and generative quality to creativity. If you make your living off your creative practice then it can be easy to overlook that element. We get busy, meet objectives, look after our families. Nurturing a safe space to create work can seem like a luxury we can’t afford. The greenhouse has taught me about what creativity truly is. it’s a part of a growing process that is as inevitable as it is awe-inspiring. We don’t admonish seeds and say, “Oh look how you need so much care to grow!” Not at all. We build them greenhouses to safely grow while they’re tender and new. Creativity is a natural process if we can tend to it with assiduousness, wonder and enthusiasm.
When we look after anything, whether they be house plants, pets, gardens, or children, we bring into our lives some of the soft skills that bring colour to life.In the greenhouse, it comes naturally to tidy up, to step back and take pleasure in how much my lettuces have grown, to feed what looks wilted, and to give space to crowded seedlings. Nature is so generous, she comes in to do the rest of the work. When I work with nature like that, I feel relaxed and return to my work brighter and more open to new ideas.
