Musing

This picture speaks to me so clearly of creativity. We always start so orderly and controlled. We have our boundaries. We know the pattern and structure, and then damn, if it doesn't start changing until it takes on a life of its own.

It's too easy for creative people to refer to the tools of their trades as mediums, pen and ink, paper, acrylics, oils, watercolors, charcoal, keyboards, guitars, mixing boards, all the techniques we've learned and used. It's also easy to give credit to people for their originality and creativity. When we see someone who does manage to capture a bit of the world in a new and exciting way we haven't recognized until we saw it, we want to give the individual credit, and they do deserve it.

Both are just short of the truth. The truth is that the artist, the writer, the musician, the crafter, any person who tries to distill a bit of life into something other than flesh, blood and breath is the medium and the channel. I get so tied up in knots about what I want to say and how I want to say it, that I block the channel with my own garbage. I limit myself to neat and tidy statements where all the loose ends can be tied up before I think someone will grow bored with what I'm saying. Worse, I make myself mute because I don't know what the next words should be. In not trusting myself to write, to speak, I'm not giving life, the universe and the Creator enough credit to come through. It's life, the glorious and the mundane, the sublime and the bloody that is the essence of all art. Life is surprising, unexpected and difficult to pin down, but it's always there.

The artwork is Liberation by M.C. Escher.


creativity
art