Still More on Creativity and the Open Faucet

by John Aquino on 03/16/12

One interesting sidelight of the discussion about creativity is "the open faucet" concept.

I remember reading about this in Jean Anouilh's introduction to his play Becket, which dramatized the events leading to the assassination of Thomas Becket. It's funny that 30 or so years ago the names Jean Anouilh, Christopher Fry, and Terrence Rattigan were well known. They were leading playwrights. Anouilh had sort of an existential cast. When Noel Coward went to Vegas and performed in a one-person show, he received Cole Porter's permission to add versions to "Let's Fall in Love" and wrote,

Anouilh and Sarte, God knows why, do it,

As a sort of a curse,

Eliot and Fry do it,

But they do it in verse.

Anyway, Anouilh wrote in his introduction that Becket came about after he had finished a major play. Rather than being exhausted and deciding to go to Riveria, he found that he wanted to continue writing. "Talent," he said, "is like a faucet. Once it is open, one must write."

He went onto to describe how he actually looked around in his library for a book to adapt into a play, the talent faucet being open. He found an old book he had bought because its color fit in well on his bookshelf and opened it to read the story of Thomas Becket. He reportedly wrote the first half of the play in 15 days. Becket is probably Anouilh's most remembered play, if only because of the 1964 film version starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole.

And, although I have not and probably ever will write anything as lasting as Becket, I have found the same thing happening to me. Just yesterday, I finished a long article and should have been exhausted. I was then asked to write something else and told I could wait until after the weekend, and I discovered I was able and anxious to just finish it.

I'm sure there's a neurological explanation for this, I just don't know it. I see Jonah Lehrer has written a book titled Imagine: How Creativity Works that is due out March 9, 2012, perhaps he addresses it.

Looking from the outside in, I think we can see examples of this "open faucet" phenomenon. Steig Larsson completed three novels, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest, and reportedly portions of additional novels in the series in a burst of creativity before his death in 2004. They were unpublished before his death, and the three completed novels all became international best sellers and were made into movies.

George Bernard Shaw, about whose work I wrote my master's thesis, spent World War I writing very little. At war's end, he produced Heartbreak House, a moody, lyrical, metaphorical play about a world drifting toward destruction. He then wrote Back to Methusaleh, a five-play cycle about creative evolution that spans from the Garden of Eden to the distant, distant future. Still looking for things to write, Shaw translated a play by his German translator, Jitta's Atonement. Seeing her husband at loose ends, Shaw's wife began leaving books about St. Joan around the house and, although it was an atypical subject for him in many ways, took it up and wrote his most famous play, which led to his winning the Noble Prize for literature in 1924. And he was in his 60s during this time.

You can see it in Alfred Hitchcock's work in the 1950s. After a difficult period in Hollywood in the late 1940s, he directed, one after another, Strangers on a Train, I Confess, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. Although some can debate the quality of some, there's not a clinker in the bunch and a few--Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho--are masterpieces. Also during this period, he produced and hosted a television program than ran for 10 years and directed a handful of episodes. The ideas kept coming, moving from style to style, never repeating.

After these "open faucet" periods, Shaw, in was in his 70s and Hitchcock, who was in his 60s, saw a falling off in their work.

For some writing or directing or whatever the creative outlet is easy, for others it is hard, but when the faucet is open we should work because you never know when it will close.