Week 5: A Love Letter to Creativity, Possibility, and PJ Harvey
“We fucking love you Polly,” yelled one of the heads in the sea of adoration.
“How embarrassing, what a bogan,” commented the girl beside me to her partner.
I chuckled, and thought, well, call me a bogan because I fucking love you too Polly!
I saw PJ Harvey perform live a few days ago. She was incredible in every way—her voice, her music, her theatricality, her band, the lighting, the sound quality—everything. Watching her, I felt a deep sense of awe, the same awe I felt when I first discovered her music decades ago.
Creativity Standards
It seems like yesterday I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom in the seedy Victorian terrace I shared with uni mates. I had the cigarette I’d just rolled in one hand and a CD cover in the other. It was Dry, PJ Harvey’s debut.
It's a great album - raw, passionate, stripped back rock. It made a big impression—a genre and generation defining album in my opinion. I spent many hours avoiding study, listening to it.
At the time, PJ’s brilliance felt almost discouraging. She recorded Dry when she was just 22. It planted this idea in me that a life only mattered if it produced something extraordinary. I spent years measuring myself against that impossible standard.
Recovering a Sense of Possibility
Chapter 5 of The Artist’s Way is titled "Recovering a Sense of Possibility." It discusses how we are often limited by our own false assumptions—believing creativity is only for the talented, or that it’s too late for us. But Cameron urges us to challenge these limitations and open ourselves to possibility.
By my own early standards, I’ve failed spectacularly at life. But fortunately, I rewrote my rule book.
I fell in love with the small things. The quiet, invisible things. The so-called unimportant and unremarkable moments that make up a life. And in that, I found a peace and joy I never expected.
Wisdom and Humbleness
While we waited for PJ to start, I mentioned to the friend I went with, that I’d seen a well-known spiritual personality interviewed at the venue. He said he’d met this person and found him to be inauthentic, more interested in fame than truth.
This friend is kind of a spiritual rock star, who just wants to rock, not be a star, so I asked him, “Who do you think is the real deal?”
Some of the people he mentioned were well-known in certain circles. But others were obscure, known only to mountainsides and villagers. These people, he said, were the wisest of all.
It made me think—wisdom and humbleness go hand in hand. The truly wise don’t seek recognition. They don’t need it.
Letting Go and Filling Up
In The Artist’s Way, Cameron talks about how opening ourselves to creative flow means letting go of our ego’s need for control.
In this recent interview, PJ Harvey reflected on something similar. She talked about how, as she’s gotten older, she’s become clearer about simply being a vessel for creativity. Not the creator, not the originator—just the channel. She spoke about how, in the best moments, writing and music flow through her effortlessly. But also hastened to add that most of the time, it’s work. Hard work.
I hear this time and time again from writers, musicians, painters—the idea that creativity isn’t something we own. It’s something we receive, something that moves through us. And the work is just making space for it to happen.
Cameron encourages artists to take small, consistent steps rather than be paralysed by the pressure of perfection. Creativity isn’t about grand achievements—it’s about showing up, again and again.
It’s Not Always Blood, Sweat and Tears
And, whilst sometimes it can take blood, sweat and tears, often it can be as easy as simply noticing all the wonder that surrounds us in each moment.
I’d originally planned to take a photo of my Dry CD for this story. Yes, I still have a box full of beloved CDs gathering dust in my garage!
I didn’t get around to retrieving it, and now I’m away. The photo I chose instead is one I took a couple of days ago of the infamous National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) waterwall.
It’s a combination of human ingenuity, the rippling beauty of water, the play of light and the art of Yayoi Kusama projected upon it.
The only effort it took from me was a one second phone snap and attention, as mentioned in Week 2: Attention & Capacity for Delight.
Isn’t it beautiful.
The NGV Waterwall has been running since 1968, long before I mentally wrote my first impossible creativity standards. I’ve passed by it on my way in to admire the art of others many times.
This time a different person walked by. A wiser and therefore, more joyful person. A person filled with possibility. A blank canvas being painted every moment, instead of waiting to happen.
"I am the light / I am the flame / I am the joy / I am the pain."
PJ Harvey, "All Souls," I Inside the Old Year Dying (2023).
I am the bogan who would gladly yell, “I fucking love you!”
Leonie x
