creativity and envelopement
There was a time in my life that I believed myself to be a creative person. I may have been; I'm not sure. Now, however, I no longer think that I am creative.
I think the world, or our culture, or maybe my need to remain in control and stable, has either separated me from such (possible) creativity or has drained it from me.
I haven't written a poem in months. I haven't written a poem that satisfied me in years.
I don't paint or play music. I don't sing or dance. I don't play sports or design buildings. I don't make babies.
Most of the world is like me.
Do most people like me want to create things?
What is it in the creation of things that I find so miraculous? Someone, after all, should analyze what has been created. I am lucky to be able to do that.
That all makes sense. Yet I find that I yearn to make ... to create. I desire. But the safety of the world as it is envelopes me.
I think the world, or our culture, or maybe my need to remain in control and stable, has either separated me from such (possible) creativity or has drained it from me.
I haven't written a poem in months. I haven't written a poem that satisfied me in years.
I don't paint or play music. I don't sing or dance. I don't play sports or design buildings. I don't make babies.
Most of the world is like me.
Do most people like me want to create things?
What is it in the creation of things that I find so miraculous? Someone, after all, should analyze what has been created. I am lucky to be able to do that.
That all makes sense. Yet I find that I yearn to make ... to create. I desire. But the safety of the world as it is envelopes me.
posted by perrykat at
2:48 PM
2 Comments:
For what it is worth, I've felt similar for a long time, though I have at times been creative... a small painting here, the mix album, a cartoon video.
The difference for me seems to be having an audience and a community. For me at least, to create there has to be an audience. Simply creating for its own sake, though noble in my eyes, doesn't do it for me.
Even reading. I just finished a book Serendipities by Umberto Eco, a series of lectures about ... language stuff. I loved it, and got a book of good books, and asked folks what they most enjoyed. In part I think, so that when I finish a book I have someone to talk to about it.
Being out in the working world, especially a corporate one with coworkers who don't seem to have similar interests, is much harder than in college when the whole ethos seemed to be about learning and experience (rather than say stock prices).
Also this: it seems that in part art and creativity for me is a way to share experience, to make it tangible and thereby connect to others and in doing so to make it real and timeless. That context also requires the audience.
Also, I wonder if the resume principle is going on here.
Which is to say, though you haven't written a poem, you did write about 20 parts of Miss.
And you spent a tremendous amount of time on our PhD Thesis. Though that may not seem creative, in the basic sense of originating in yourself, I expect it required a lot of the same mental muscles of how to precisely capture what it is that you are trying to say, trying to determine the right voice, etc.
Plus it would have the added stress of having a degree hanging on it, and upon completion may leave you ready to not have to do that for a while. Or, like being forced to consume prescribed works, it could leave you desperately thirsting to get back to it once the time is available.
I don't know, look forward to talking about it if we get a chance. But I know when it comes time to do one's resume, often we start by thinking, 'what have I been doing?' and by the time we finish going through it, it's a lot more than we thought.
Feel free to bring your guitar when you come down.
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