Thoughts from a Phone Booth
Dropping you a line to share three compelling quotes on creativity.
Thank you for reading The Gargoyle – my newsletter on authenticity, creativity, and curiosity.
Happy September. I’m writing this post on my Notes app inside what I believe may be the last phone booth standing in the city of Rahway, New Jersey.*
The blue paint is chipping badly, and spiderweb cracks have overtaken the south-facing glass. But the door still opens and shuts, the faint overhead light still works, and the receiver still carries a dial tone.
This phone booth abuts Rahway’s three-story Museum of Incandescence. The sign beside the entrance says you can still become a member for just $12 a year. That’s the same price it was nine years ago, when I last stood in this phone booth. Good deal. Get it while you still can.
Electromagnetic radiation fascinated my grandad all his life. When he dropped dead on the boardwalk during the 1989 Coney Island Mermaid Festival (dressed as Triton) his Museum of Incandesence membership card was one of just three items the EMTs fished from his wallet.
The other two items in his wallet were:
One decades-old, unclaimed ticket from a dry cleaner in Saul Ste. Marie - a city he never once spoke of visiting, according to friends and family.
One black-and-white photograph of an alluring woman posing nude beside a heap of sketchpads and pencils. The woman was not my grandmom.
There is a phone number written on the back of the photograph. If you’re in New Jersey and you call that number from a local landline, you’ll reach a phone booth in downtown Rahway. The same booth I’m standing in now.
Alright, enough chit-chat. Several people in raincoats and fedoras have formed a queue outside the glass door, so let me get to the point of today’s post. Besides, I can only pretend to be speaking into this scuffed-up mouthpiece for so long before I’d need to pretend to insert another coin, which I don’t have.
Here’s what I want to share: three quotes on creativity that have caught my recent attention.
The first quote often makes the rounds on social media:
“The magic is in the work you are avoiding.”
This quote draws you in with the “magic” up front, then hits you with the guilt-inducing “avoiding” at the end. A perfect one-two punch! Yeah, you, it says. YOU know what you SHOULD be doing instead of scrolling. So why aren’t you?
While I can’t source the author of the quote above, this next one is often attributed to Carl Jung, or Joseph Campbell:
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
This second quote offers more compassion and encouragement than the first. Yes, sometimes our creative attempts falter because we’ve avoided the work we should be doing. But other times, our efforts falter even when we’re trying our hardest.
Consider Luke Skywalker on Dagobah, training his ass off with Yoda and being haunted by the terrifying specter of Darth Vader. Luke is “doing the work,” as it were. And yet Luke’s “treasure” (becoming a full Jedi Knight) eludes him because (at least in The Empire Strikes Back) it still lies hidden deep within the terrifying cave he isn’t quite ready to enter.
Lastly, here is the third quote I’ve seen recently about creativity, from the active American sculptor Nancy Rubins. Hers is my favorite of the three:
“The only advice I could give any artist is just to make the work. And the work will lead to more work and you’ll figure things out for yourself through doing that work.”
In my admittedly limited experience so far, Nancy’s quote rings truest for me.
This I know: the creative journey is not linear. It’s neither a race, nor a sprint to the summit. Rather, it is an ever-deepening spiral, with each piece of “work” leading inward, and onward.
This I believe: the only way to fail in creativity is to abandon the journey!
Alright, the folks in line are starting to pound on the door. Whoops - I think they’ve realized that I was never actually talking on the pay phone. The overhead light flickers. My cell phone battery blips low. Time to move.
As I slip out the door and past the queue into the September evening, the many enigmas of my wander-lusting grandad’s existence yield to the far echoes of commuter trains howling through post-industrial New Jersey. Their fluorescent-lit cars screech over rusting rails paralleling bereft factories, forlorn church spires, and weed-strangled baseball fields.
It’s all so lovely. On I go, chasing this ghost.
Until next entry, I remain yours truly,
Rian Casey Cork
I love that Jung/Campbell quote!