A few months ago I was invited
to be one of the speakers at a prestigious conference
organised by the Women's
Forum for the Economy and Society which
will take place from October 16 to 18 in Deauville, France.
Of course I accepted, as you can see by checking the
list of speakers
here.
UPDATE: the 'here' link doesn't work properly, at least on my browser. It should go to the main Forum site with all speakers pictured and full program as a PDF. Try simply entering Womens Forum Deauville in Google.
The
subject I've been asked to participate in discussing
on Friday, 18th October, along with Russian author
Ludmila
Ulitskaya, and Professor David
Galenson from
the University of Chicago, and
Pamela
Ryckman, American author and journalist, is:
Creativity and,
ahem, Aging
The ahem is entirely
mine and explains why I am simultaneously flattered by
this invitation and stupefaite that
I have turned into someone who can actually be
described as ageing. Moi? Vieillissant? There
isn't even a French word for the process. I hear
you say: fact of life, deal with it! I deal with
it by the effective method known as denial.
Who
says denial is bad? For example, it is perfectly
sensible to deny entry to burglars or cockroaches or poisonous
fumes. So, by denying entry into my psyche of the
concept 'aging' I am sensibly keeping out all the heavy baggage
that comes with it - prejudices, stereotypes, theories,
surveys, statistics. I'm not ignoring death, that
would be idiotic. But let me cross that bridge when it
comes. The period between then and now is
the present and creativity is always in the present
tense.
Does creativity change in
the same way one's body changes with time? I've
spent my whole life in the creativity game - it is
a serious kind of game - and I can't detect any great
differences between past and present in terms of creativity.
Rather than time, what has always deeply affected
creativity for me are life experiences, relationships,
places. I chose art as a child, never considering
any other profession, and choosing to be a full-time
artist is basically giving yourself permission not to
join the adult world, the world in which people have
proper jobs and proper careers and go on holidays and
retire eventually and do that thing called 'aging'.
A full-time life-long artist doesn't retire, doesn't
like going on holidays, and denies aging. Voilà. C'est
tout.
Next week I'm off to Deauville.
Will report, with pictures when I return. I leave you
with a photo of 84-year old Matisse creating with cut-out
coloured paper in 1952.
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