Looping and strange, that’s how I’d describe creativity.
Looping because it isn’t linear, though bursts of it arrive straight out of nowhere, and produce something, start to finish. But looping means its always moving towards you or away from you, and that you can always catch the thread of it, or hop on the next time around.
Strange because, well, it isn’t “regular” or “normal”, even though it is utterly common and every human has experienced it. But it has an oddness, a peculiarity. A weird sparkle, which produces a reciprocating shimmer in its audiences. It's contagious.
Back to that hopping on next time around business. Just like sometimes you have to get on the wrong bus because it’s the only one running at that hour, and later you can transfer to the one you really want, sometimes with creativity you need to be a bit less particular. If your grand scheme has been thwarted, or has come to a disappointing, premature stop, you just hop on whatever’s running –a poem, a dance, a garden- and you ride that one a while. You’ll see, you’ll get where you’re going.
Creativity is the enemy to some. Some who weren’t allowed, or who were made fun of. Kids told not to sing, or who watched other, more openly creative types called “freaks” or no-good, jobless hippies. You can understand their caution. And all of us fall prey to those oppressions of the mind. Those ferocious insinuations that we should be doing something “real.”
Art is real. Craft is real. Creation is real.
But our connection to it can be evanescent. Tenuous. Short-lived. Fickle. Succumbing to an inflated vanishing whimsy or a diabolical internal persecution. Because The Creativity Killer lurks around corners and in alleyways waiting for all of us. Even those born in the land of the flower children. (Secret Encoded Message: the Killer is called Judgment.)
That’s why the first grab at the thread must be done gently, and maybe with a bit of stealth. Simply reach out slowly, and take the nearest loose end. Then, using a light squeeze between thumb and forefinger, ever so amiably, just give it a little tug.
Creativity.
It’s cousin is called “Magic.”
L.H.
Looping because it isn’t linear, though bursts of it arrive straight out of nowhere, and produce something, start to finish. But looping means its always moving towards you or away from you, and that you can always catch the thread of it, or hop on the next time around.
Strange because, well, it isn’t “regular” or “normal”, even though it is utterly common and every human has experienced it. But it has an oddness, a peculiarity. A weird sparkle, which produces a reciprocating shimmer in its audiences. It's contagious.
Back to that hopping on next time around business. Just like sometimes you have to get on the wrong bus because it’s the only one running at that hour, and later you can transfer to the one you really want, sometimes with creativity you need to be a bit less particular. If your grand scheme has been thwarted, or has come to a disappointing, premature stop, you just hop on whatever’s running –a poem, a dance, a garden- and you ride that one a while. You’ll see, you’ll get where you’re going.
Creativity is the enemy to some. Some who weren’t allowed, or who were made fun of. Kids told not to sing, or who watched other, more openly creative types called “freaks” or no-good, jobless hippies. You can understand their caution. And all of us fall prey to those oppressions of the mind. Those ferocious insinuations that we should be doing something “real.”
Art is real. Craft is real. Creation is real.
But our connection to it can be evanescent. Tenuous. Short-lived. Fickle. Succumbing to an inflated vanishing whimsy or a diabolical internal persecution. Because The Creativity Killer lurks around corners and in alleyways waiting for all of us. Even those born in the land of the flower children. (Secret Encoded Message: the Killer is called Judgment.)
That’s why the first grab at the thread must be done gently, and maybe with a bit of stealth. Simply reach out slowly, and take the nearest loose end. Then, using a light squeeze between thumb and forefinger, ever so amiably, just give it a little tug.
Creativity.
It’s cousin is called “Magic.”
L.H.
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