“Better a trickster than a martyr be."

On finding resilience, taking it less seriously, and enjoying it all more.

‘What's the difference between a martyr and a trickster, you ask? Here's a quick primer. Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid. Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.’
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

Are you a trickster or a martyr?

If you had to put yourself on a side, would it be the diligent, pat-on-the-head walkover, or the bumptious opportunist, always expecting an upside?

Maybe it’s being a woman. Maybe it’s that Catholic education. Maybe it’s being a middle child. I’m a people pleaser in recovery, and I am a bit of a (whisper it) martyr at times.

When I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s cheerfully upbeat Big Magic, the chapter about martyr vs trickster energy was a revelation.

Martyrs will slave away on a project long after they have stopped enjoying or appreciating it. They are the embodiment of the cartoon of a pianist sitting in front of the keys, thinking ‘I’m not enjoying this any more,’ with the caption ‘how you know you’re a professional.’

Martyrs are self-flagellating, strict, joyless. And they’re inside all of us. And they love moaning. The other side of the coin, though, is the trickster.

The trickster, too, is inside all of us, says Gilbert. She is the happy-go-lucky chancer who doesn’t mind how things work out because she’s having a ball. She has fun and creates just because she can. And things tend to turn out well because she wears it all lightly. And if they don’t? Well, there’s always next time.

There’s a wall in my garden that I dislike; a flat redbrick expanse that looks like the side of a shower block. It’s never going to be lovely.  

I’m not an artist. But I was sick of looking at it, so I took my daughter’s chalks, put an hour aside, and chalked flowers up and down the wall until I was happy. Every time I see it, it makes me giggle. If I’d have worried whether it would turn out well, or whether anyone else would see it, I wouldn’t have got around to doing it. But now it’s there, I love it and am wondering whether to paint it in properly. A perfect artist’s date activity?  

The poet and critic Edith Sitwell once said, ‘The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation.’ I feel that way sometimes.

I have to remind myself to lift my head up, look people in the eye, and look as though I’m meant to be there. My Mum says that her own mother used to say: ‘Go and put some makeup on, darling. You don’t have to look at yourself, but other people do.’

I recently found some fascinating footage of Edith Sitwell being interviewed on the 1960s on Youtube and it’s fascinating. She says, ‘Being an artist is quite painful, you see; perpetual resurrection. The Art returns after long periods of deadness.’

If your art leaves you, what can you put in place to welcome its return?

THIS MONTH I’M READING

Tanya Shadrick’s The Cure for Sleep.

I have absolutely loved The Cure for Sleep: on Waking Up, Breaking Free and Making a More Creative Life. There are many things to recommend this excellent and powerful book, but her honesty, incredible courage and knack for specific descriptions are utterly gorgeous. I found it fascinating to read about a creative woman who is shy, too, since many writers and creatives dampen that part of themselves down. I highly recommend her Substack and you can read the piece I wrote for the last writing prompt, Terrible Questions, here.

Plus, The Cure for Sleep is just 99p this month on Kindle.

Would you class yourself as a martyr or a trickster?

I would love to hear about it in the comments!