Creativity & Crisis

And how to hold both at the same time. 🤝

Hello from the front lines of… Super Flu A. (I heard we made the Approval Matrix! If this is hip, I want to go back to being lame.)

A lot of commonality going on at the moment: Yes, like many others, I am completely flattened by the flu right now. Like many others, I’m devastated by the past week(s)-plus (emphasis on plus) of ICE activity both in Minnesota and in my own home state of Maine. Like many others, I am heartened by the counter-swell of kindness, courage, and frankly, staggering logistical prowess of these communities.

I am also, like many others who write or create other kinds of content, tongue-tied at the moment—flu notwithstanding!

Like all of the groups above, at least I’m in good company: Emily Atkin’s latest post titled “I don’t know how to do this” certainly resonates. Katelyn Jetelina spoke on managing the deeply confusing cognitive dissonance of this moment. On Saturday, emily nunn of Department of Salad simply wrote “No Bulletin tonight. Take care of yourselves.”

So, for this week, I thought I would reprint, for free, an interview from the, normally paid, October print edition. In it, I talk to artist and illustrator Christopher David Ryan—who had been, like me, having a year—about maintaining a creative practice when your life is completely spinning out. It’s not a 100% graft for the current scenario, but there are plenty of good thoughts and nuggets in here, as we navigate holding both truly trying times and our daily, necessary lived lives.

Hope you like it! Don’t be like me, get a flu shot—it’s not too late!

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Treehouse: October 2025

Creativity In Crisis

Featuring: Christopher David Ryan

Illustrations by CDR

In September 2024, artist and illustrator Christopher David Ryan and I both had seismic personal events occur that upended and altered the course of the following year. Mine: the loss of my stepdad and a year of post-mortem tentacle-cyclones; His: a health event of his wife Maria, who suffered a body-wide infection, damaging her heart, requiring open hear surgery; plus two strokes while waiting for surgery, altering her ability to speak, use her right hand, and, for a while, walk. While Maria makes huge metaphorical and literal strides, and as my scenario seems to have mostly settled down, I wanted to talk to CDR, as he is known, about managing one’s creativity—both as a job and as an intrinsic part of one’s self—in the midst of personal crisis.

I met up with CDR at the 1700s farmhouse he shares with Maria, kids Luna and Angelo, and a cat whose name I did not catch.

So, in Treehouse—and personally—I’m interested living with creativity. We’re obsessed with seeing artist homes. Why? There’s a certain way of living that’s different—a way that your art and your life go together. It’s a pretty basic example, but: Monet wasn’t really painting for years because he was building a garden, right? And then the garden became some of his most famous subject matter. That interplay really interests me.

This year, everything has been spinning around. I didn’t know what I’d to have to deal with day-by-day. I got to a certain point this summer, where I thought: my life and my creativity are completely at odds. I can’t even do my job. Plus, because my “job” is to be creative, I ended up alienated from my sense of self. I’m just a person that handles problems. Like, “Of course,” what will happen today? What will it be tomorrow? I wanted to talk to you about, say, what it is to connect with yourself creatively in the midst of, I don’t know, a breakdown?

That’s an interesting place to start because I do that. I say that exact same thing at least once a week where I’m like, Of course, of course.

When you expect things to be bad? Or to be difficult.

There were always “of course” moments.

The climate over the past year has given them so much more weight because I don’t have the bandwidth. I can’t deal with another, not even just a problem, but another input. The context changed. You’re still doing what you were doing before, but the weather’s different. You’re still thinking creatively, because that’s how you’ve always thought. The way you were doing it and the context you needed has changed.

So now, yes, I have less time to stare out the window, or to like, you know, just smoke pot all day and tinker. I don’t have that time, but I still have time. A lot of people in our lives have been like, I can’t believe you drive 40 minutes to school every day. You need to move closer to Portland so we can help you and the kids. But, I like the drive.

It’s a beautiful drive.

It’s a beautiful drive. Maria and I listen to a book, a podcast, music. I look at trees and clouds. It’s beautiful. I use that time to my full advantage. Anything you do can be done creatively.

I try to do this thing, and I don’t always, but whatever I’m doing, even if I’m like making lunches in the morning, I’m working through stuff. It helps me to satisfy this need to be doing what I’ve been calling creativity, which is mostly visual. And mostly around successfully composing or arranging things.

The way that I’ve been thinking about it, these two things are separate and that’s maybe why it’s been frustrating. But what you’re saying is more like braiding the two together, then creativity is an undeniable strand in life.

I mean, there’s always that thing, you know, if you want to change the world, change your thinking.

I’ve spent a good, two, three decades focusing on this idea that, I’ll do these creative things and I will be able to to trade them for money and fame. Right? And come to find out as I continue to get older and I look at the books of painters and artists and designers and musicians, they were never really famous or wealthy.

Right. You’ve got Agnes Martin right on the top here.

Yeah. This is something I’ve just made up. The thing is I am successful, but not in the way I want to be. And I’m like, what is that? Why can’t I be okay with that? The reason I’m saying that is like, I have to now do that with my children, you know? And Maria’s recovery, and myself. I now need to interface with all this stuff with the same intensity that I was doing before. I was applying it to something that was made up, but this thing that’s going on now is actually happening.

Going back to “of course.” There’s a sort of exasperating “of course,” right? But there’s also flexibility in saying, of course, like, great, got it, here we go.

I’ve talked to a lot of friends and they ask me, how’s it going? How are you? They’re like, wow, you’re a superhero, whatever. And I am like, who else is going to do this? This is my life and this is my family. And this is my duty. And it’s not only my duty, this is what I’m doing.

Right.

I’m on this epic journey with these people and I really look at it like that. We were watching The Hobbit last night and these guys are trying to get to Erebor, you know? And they’re having to cross through these forests and things—and there’s scary stuff in there—and they’re just fighting. And I’m like, that’s what I feel like I’m doing on most days. I’m cutting this guy’s head off while I reach behind me and stab this other thing that’s coming up. Just trying to get where we’re going.

I guess I can sort of feel that way when I’m all, task, task, task. But it can feel self-indulgent sometimes to just say, I’m gonna come up with ideas today. You know, The Hobbit image is really pointed, right? It’s a clear path. But, other times it’s like, is this how I should be using my time?

Do you feel that you should be able to kind of dip your bucket into the creative stream at any time and pull out something good?

That’s the pressure when you have limited time.

OK that’s interesting: I think it’s okay for the way you interact with the source to change based on your situation. It has to, I think, in order for it to be really honest.

I can continue making these types of pictures because I know how to do it and I know people will like it, but what am I doing? Throughout the year, I started to see I can’t do things that way anymore. I can do things in 10, 15 minute intervals. I started doing all these geometric paintings or whatever. I’m literally recording the time. Like notation almost. That started to work for me.

I like that.

I had to meet myself where I’m at. The kind of year that I’ve had, I kind of really got to a place where, like I said, there was so many inputs. I had to teach myself how to be like, “Not important.” I’ll wake up the next day and the sun will still be there, you know?

Right.

This past year has just really made me go, oh my gosh, your chess board can be flipped over at any time. No matter how much you think you have it dialed in, all that can change. I know that I can’t do things the way I was a year and a half ago, where I am right now.

The board’s flipped over. And so the game is different, right?

I’m trying to be open to what comes, especially creatively. And this is the thing I learned something from. I’m going to put some paint on a canvas and then I’m going to go make dinner. I’ll come back in and look at it again tonight. If I have more time, I’ll put some more on and then in the morning the paint will be dry and I’ll see it in light and I’ll think about it. And I’ll let it unfold over time and maybe that’s going somewhere. Maybe not. I’m just trying to be open to what, kind of, starts to emerge and what has started to emerge overall is this type of painting I was painting in college. My professors hated it. I was into it back then and I made myself stop doing it.

What’s happened in the past year got me to a place where I’m like, let it all go. I don’t need to make these paintings that are fine, that I’m just trying to get them out the door. Last summer, before Maria got sick, we were in the car and I was super stressed about painting. It wasn’t coming together. I would have sketchbooks full of drawings and I would just be like, well, I’ll paint this one. Fucking boring.

She goes, you need to figure out what it is that makes it you. But the stuff I’m doing now, it may not be what I thought it was going to be. But it’s what it is. And I look at this stuff and it’s like looking in the mirror. This is what the inside of my head looks like. And I’m just going to give myself to that. You gotta let go of the fact that you ever thought someone was supposed to care besides you.

Right. Let’s get back to the other thing about changing the way you think. And also, thinking about these paintings and your approach now, it’s much more honest, right?

It was honest before, but I think it was wrong. It was honestly wrong. I’m being honest about the fact that I’m like, a flat earther. You know, you can say those words, but they’re wrong.

Right, I’m going to confidently tell you a wrong opinion. I liked when you were like, sometimes your connection to source changes, right? I’ve been sort of letting go and thinking my mode for the past seven years isn’t connecting right now.

We have a tendency as people to not make things easy for ourselves. I am going to eat only this way, I am going to work out in this style, these days. A lot of rules. How about: hey, when I can, when it feels right, it goes this way.

Totally. Yeah, yeah.

It doesn’t have to be creative. There was a period where I was getting up at 5 to do something for my physicality. I was just exhausted and sore all time. I’m like, this is what you do to be strong. This is doing the exact opposite. I feel like shit. I’m hurting my back. And it’s like, dude, you need to find something else. I realized a lot of this hell that I’m putting myself through is self-inflicted.

That’s interesting. It’a different way of saying what you said in the beginning about changing your mentality.

It’s what you can control, right? You can’t control everything else, but you can control yourself. Looking back on the past year, I found that if I wore my frustration and stress and sadness, it appeared outwardly and the interactions I got with others were different. Very early on, when Maria was still in the hospital, I was like, I can’t be sad-dad. Inside, I was freaking out, but I was like, I gotta get on top of the freakout or everything’s gonna be freaked out.

Right, totally.

And I remember we were with the palliative care group, talking about what was going to go down and what could go down, all of our friends and family were just bawling and freaking out. Maria’s unconscious and I was like, Guys, whoa. Like, she’s in there. She’s good. We’ve got to stop this. It’s not that I don’t care, but I think it’s super important to be open to the fact that it can’t all be the way you want. Say, ‘I want it to all work out’ and then get out of the way.