Ivan the Gorilla Wired for Creativity

“To every thing there is a season…”—Ecclesiastes

Ivan the Gorilla

“The One and Only Ivan,” is a book and a movie about Ivan the Gorilla, a beloved Silverback Western Lowland gorilla, who captured the hearts of everyone who met him. Ivan lived in isolation in a 40-by-40 concrete enclosure for twenty-seven years in a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington; didn’t go outside for all this time, touch grass, nor see another gorilla. But, in spite of these bleak circumstances, Ivan continued to delight children and families with his daily antics. He loved to play games, teased his zoo keepers, and was always full of surprises. Ivan especially loved having books read to him.

One day, he was introduced to paper and pots of colored paints and started drawing. And soon, he created painting after painting. Ivan’s bright colorful abstracts were so treasured by the local community they were sold in the zoo’s gift shop and hung in Tacoma’s libraries and around the city. Joyce Barr, one of his last keepers, said Ivan had a certain pattern to his art work that only he understood. While he had many moments when he was inspired to create, there were times Ivan wasn’t interested. I knew when he wanted to paint, Barr said, “I got to know his moods.”

“The One and Only Ivan” is a story of great tenderness, resiliency, and relationship. It’s also a story, perhaps, of how a special gorilla used art to connect, to express something that was deep inside him. Painting for Ivan seemed to bring great joy. Why was painting pleasurable? Was it a form of expression, a yearning to bring more happiness into his life? We know art brings great pleasure to humans because we’re wired for creativity, but what about animals? Scientists tell us many animals draw and paint, chimpanzees, cats, dogs, horses, elephants, rhinos, and giraffes, to name a few. If further research finds that animals draw for pleasure instead of survival, part of the definition of how we define art, we might have to change our minds about how many four-leggeds may be wired for creativity, too.

As I sit in my living room now, I am thinking about my sketch pad downstairs with charcoals of a silly clown and a girl in a fancy dress gathering dust; I haven’t touched my pencils for years. A black-and-white polaroid of my mother who is no longer living; and writing journals accumulating in boxes. There’s plenty to explore. What is holding me back? Maybe it’s worries about people who can’t find jobs. Wondering if I am doing all I can to make sure everyone counts. Listening and acting on my hunches. I know there is a season for all things. There will be a time, I tell myself. Unlike Ivan, I can move out of my own isolation. Do something. There is time.

–Becky Breed

Writing Exercise:

1. Read “How Many Nights” by Galway Kinnell https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=30704
2. Sometimes as artists and as people we are afraid of the so called dark feelings we have inside. Don’t push them down. Let them have a voice, an expression. They are real and part of us.
3. No matter if it’s anger, sadness or great disappointment you feel, let the beat and heat of them put you into action. Make something for yourself today. Make something for our world.

For more creativity, go to thewritingandcreativelife.com