No One Can Explain It

I've been asked to write an article about creativity in daily life. Well, actually I signed up for it. I thought it would be easy. It's not.

My mind is wandering everywhere. I am thinking about laundry. I am thinking about a slide show. I am thinking about disenfranchisement. These are no easy thoughts. They are terribly distracting.

I thought I'd say something about artists--people who putter about with words and images and objects. I thought I would reassure my readers that it doesn't matter if you're an artist or not, you still practice creativity everyday. I dismissed that thought. People usually have a hard time believing it. It is akin to telling someone in the anguishing throes of guilt that it is not his fault.

It's like throwing good money after bad.
It's a senseless and futile task.

It's about acceptance, I decided.
Either we accept our creative natures or we don't.
But how to 'convert' the unaccepting?
Hmmm...trickery sometimes works.

This topic is very difficult to pin down.
I'm thinking about writing. I'm posting on my blog.
I'm looking at my collaborative project and wondering what to post there next.
I'm trying to keep these photos stacked--face down to avoid the dust.
I'm trying to think how I got this way--on the extreme edge of daily creativity...out here where it's tortuous sometime.

I think I know where it began. In loneliness and boredom, in isolation and despair. Yes, I believe that's where I turned to paper and pencil, crayons and paint.

That is an extreme example, an example of needing to connect, to attach, to say something.

That is not what every man's every day creativity is about. Not really.
I don't believe the every day every man suffers that way.

The suffering artist is legendary.
Suffer for one's art? No, I believe it goes another way: suffering because of art.

Here it is, my justification for such a statement: making art is not easy. You get sleep deprived. You feel vulnerable. Your arms hurt. Your materials are too expensive. It doesn't sell well. It fills up your house to remind you it doesn't sell well. You take it personally. You feel like a failure. You try to take the sting out of it and relegate it to "hobby".

In the end, it doesn't matter. Something still wants to be painted, written or drawn. There is the problem of an artist's creativity. It is the problem of compulsion, involuntary behavior.

I don't think that's the every day every man experience.
I think more that a little dab will do you.
I think more that creativity will heal you.
I think you won't become tortured by the drive and vulnerability...that is, unless you need to.

Perhaps you, a nonartist as you say, need something? Perhaps you don't even know what it is. There's the trick. There's where paint and paper and pen and ink will trick you. You will find you needed things you didn't even know you needed.

Ah, what a treacherous business.

Why do it?

Do it to save yourself.
Do it to live.
Do it to hear yourself.
Do it to speak.
Do it to learn.
Do it to distraction.

Yes, distraction.
Take yourself away from there. Go somewhere else. Look around. Bring snapshots home. Do it while you're on the phone...doodle. Do it while you're watching t.v.

See what's going on in that parallel world that is so very distracting.

It opens you up.
It changes you.

No one can explain it.