To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one's mouth. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
—What lingers after this line?
The Necessary Risk of Looking Foolish
Clarissa Pinkola Estés begins with a provocation: anyone who wants to create must accept appearing “stone stupid.” In other words, genuine making starts where polish, certainty, and social dignity begin to fail. The artist, writer, or thinker often looks clumsy at first, not because the work lacks value, but because invention rarely arrives in a respectable form. This is precisely why the quote feels liberating. Rather than treating embarrassment as a sign to stop, Estés reframes it as evidence that one has entered the creative arena. Much as Samuel Beckett’s oft-cited “Fail again. Fail better” suggests, the awkward beginning is not separate from creation; it is one of its essential conditions.
Sitting on the Jackass
From that opening image, Estés turns to a more comic one: sitting “upon a throne on top of a jackass.” The contrast is deliberate. A throne implies grandeur, authority, and vision, while a jackass suggests stubbornness, humility, and absurdity. Together, they capture the strange dual nature of creative life: one may hold an inner sense of purpose while outwardly inhabiting inconvenience, ridicule, or ungainly process. Thus the quote resists romantic myths of effortless genius. Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605) similarly blends nobility with foolishness, showing how lofty imagination can ride alongside apparent absurdity. Estés implies that creators must endure this doubleness, accepting both the dignity of their calling and the ridiculousness of how it often looks in practice.
Why Rubies Emerge From Disorder
Yet the final image transforms the whole passage: despite the foolish posture, one may still “spill rubies from one’s mouth.” Here Estés suggests that beauty, truth, and value can emerge from unlikely vessels. The ruby stands for something rare and luminous, and by using the verb “spill,” she hints that creative gifts do not always arrive in neat, controlled statements. Often they pour out messily, emotionally, and unexpectedly. This insight echoes artistic testimony across centuries. In Plato’s Ion (c. 4th century BC), poetic speech is described as a kind of inspired transport rather than a purely rational performance. Estés updates that ancient idea with earthy humor: the creator may look inelegant, but the work itself can still carry brilliance.
The Psychology of Creative Surrender
Seen psychologically, the quote points to the suspension of self-conscious control that creativity often demands. Many artists describe entering periods where they cannot fully explain what they are doing, only that they must continue. Research on flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, especially in Flow (1990), likewise suggests that deep creative engagement requires immersion beyond constant self-monitoring. Accordingly, Estés is not praising ignorance for its own sake. She is praising surrender: the willingness to move through uncertainty without demanding immediate mastery. The “stone stupid” state may therefore be less about lacking intelligence than about tolerating not yet knowing. In that interval, imagination gains room to operate.
A Defense Against Perfectionism
Just as importantly, the quote serves as a sharp antidote to perfectionism. Perfectionism insists that one should begin only when one can guarantee elegance, coherence, and success. Estés rejects that demand outright. Her imagery suggests that waiting to appear wise, refined, or fully prepared may be the surest way never to create anything at all. For that reason, her words resonate with everyday practice. A novice painter wasting canvas, a poet drafting sentimental lines, or a musician missing notes may feel foolish, but these humiliations are often the compost of later excellence. What looks like stupidity from the outside is frequently apprenticeship from the inside.
The Sacred and Comic United
Finally, what makes the quotation memorable is its union of the sacred and the comic. Estés does not depict creation as merely solemn, nor merely ridiculous. Instead, she shows that the creative act often contains both at once: one can be humbled to the point of absurdity while also serving something precious. That tension gives the line its force and warmth. In the end, the quote invites creators to trade vanity for vitality. If one can bear the donkey, the awkward posture, and the momentary loss of dignity, one may still speak rubies. Creation, then, is not the art of always looking wise; it is the courage to remain open until something valuable comes through.
One-minute reflection
What feeling does this quote bring up for you?
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